A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What are the economics of cash machines like, anyway? The two nearest to me are in micro corner shops and charge (Two quid?! I should coco.) There are others in co-ops and post offices a longer walk away that are free to use.
We had one in each of our amusement arcades when I was in the game years ago . It’s all to do with if one is installed will it improve the installers turnover . Therefore amusement arcades , big shops etc will find it economical to do so but other businesses less so
The US can bugger off. Trump is running the show and has made clear through his actions he doesn't want allies, and none of us have much capacity to offer anyway even though it's in everyone's interests to open the strait.
Sadly that won’t happen anytime soon and we have to prepare for that.
Neither side seems willing to budge on terms to end. The war has ground to a halt (sorry Bart 😢) and we are at stalemate and unless something gives that will perpetuate indefinitely and people just don’t seem concerned.
Surely there have to be at least a couple more opportunities for the Trump Crime Consortium to make a few more billions gaming the oil price?
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
A Reform government would love a judicial review.
Which law specifically would it breach
Judicial review is not just about the breach of a 'specific' law. It's more complicated. All government decisions (unless an act says otherwise - Leon may have a draft of such an act available) have to be rational, within the panoply of law and regulation about the criteria for and process of decision making, consistent with natural justice and accompanied by all the relevant consultations to be conducted according to the meaning of the word 'consult'.
Whether Reform would like such a JR about a punitive Trumpian policy is moot. Suppose, for example, that a Reform government decide to place a huge detention facility in a Green controlled LA or constituency. They then discover that legal action, accompanied by mass demos and threats to set fire to stuff, is taken not be a Green council but by the local branches of Reform, Reclaim, Restore, Renewal, Repair, Repent, BNP, BUF and their irksome friends.
Isn't there a legal difference between stuff the government does via its statutory powers, and actual laws passed by parliament?
If the secretary of state is empowered to build detention centres at places of his choosing, you can probably go to JR that his choice to build one in Chipping Bufton wasn't made correctly, that he hadn't do so in accordance with the equalities act etc etc.
If parliament passes the "Chipping Bufton Detention Centre Act" , which explicitly permits the secretary of state to build a detention centre in Chipping Bufton, regardless of the provisions of the town and country planning act, the human rights act or the equality act, then there isn't going to be much of an angle for JR.
The US can bugger off. Trump is running the show and has made clear through his actions he doesn't want allies, and none of us have much capacity to offer anyway even though it's in everyone's interests to open the strait.
There is a deep reserve of sensible moderate people in the US fighting a slow losing battle against the insanity. The world should be infinitely grateful to these people but we should also be aware that they can't hold back the tide indefinitely, and plan accordingly.
It really only needs about 30 Republican Senators to make a stand for sanity.
The US can bugger off. Trump is running the show and has made clear through his actions he doesn't want allies, and none of us have much capacity to offer anyway even though it's in everyone's interests to open the strait.
Sadly that won’t happen anytime soon and we have to prepare for that.
Neither side seems willing to budge on terms to end. The war has ground to a halt (sorry Bart 😢) and we are at stalemate and unless something gives that will perpetuate indefinitely and people just don’t seem concerned.
However, the Iranian government doesn't give a flying one about the welfare of its people.
The American government doesn't give much of a flying one about the welfare of its people, but has to a bit. The serious consequences of the Straits being closed just haven't hit yet.
Someone produced a map of when the shit would hit the fan in various countries, given how predictable ship motion is. I assume we're still on schedule.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
The US can bugger off. Trump is running the show and has made clear through his actions he doesn't want allies, and none of us have much capacity to offer anyway even though it's in everyone's interests to open the strait.
There is a deep reserve of sensible moderate people in the US fighting a slow losing battle against the insanity. The world should be infinitely grateful to these people but we should also be aware that they can't hold back the tide indefinitely, and plan accordingly.
It really only needs about 30 Republican Senators to make a stand for sanity.
Yeah that won't happen, I don't think. The Republican party with a few honourable exceptions has largely folded.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Shabana Mahmood, the diminutive Home Secretary, says she can lift the weight of a fully grown man. “I love weightlifting,” she told podcaster Matt Forde. “I’m not that fit at the moment but my lifetime personal best on the deadlift is 105kg.” For those – like me – who struggle with metric measurements, that is the weight of a pretty big man: 16st 7lb 8oz. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/01/rees-mogg-has-a-diamond-deal-for-mamdani/ (£££)
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
A Reform government would love a judicial review.
Which law specifically would it breach
Judicial review is not just about the breach of a 'specific' law. It's more complicated. All government decisions (unless an act says otherwise - Leon may have a draft of such an act available) have to be rational, within the panoply of law and regulation about the criteria for and process of decision making, consistent with natural justice and accompanied by all the relevant consultations to be conducted according to the meaning of the word 'consult'.
Whether Reform would like such a JR about a punitive Trumpian policy is moot. Suppose, for example, that a Reform government decide to place a huge detention facility in a Green controlled LA or constituency. They then discover that legal action, accompanied by mass demos and threats to set fire to stuff, is taken not be a Green council but by the local branches of Reform, Reclaim, Restore, Renewal, Repair, Repent, BNP, BUF and their irksome friends.
Isn't there a legal difference between stuff the government does via its statutory powers, and actual laws passed by parliament?
If the secretary of state is empowered to build detention centres at places of his choosing, you can probably go to JR that his choice to build one in Chipping Bufton wasn't made correctly, that he hadn't do so in accordance with the equalities act etc etc.
If parliament passes the "Chipping Bufton Detention Centre Act" , which explicitly permits the secretary of state to build a detention centre in Chipping Bufton, regardless of the provisions of the town and country planning act, the human rights act or the equality act, then there isn't going to be much of an angle for JR.
Reform would struggle to get that through. The leadership might be willing, and there'd be loyalists to be sure, but a lot of rank and file MPs would be normal (ish) and like any MP worry 'what if we do this then they decide to put a resevoir or power plant etc in my seat? What if Greens get in one day and do the same?'
IIRC one provision in getting rid of the fixed term parliament act was to state proroguing parliament was nob-justiciable, funnily enough.
Shabana Mahmood, the diminutive Home Secretary, says she can lift the weight of a fully grown man. “I love weightlifting,” she told podcaster Matt Forde. “I’m not that fit at the moment but my lifetime personal best on the deadlift is 105kg.” For those – like me – who struggle with metric measurements, that is the weight of a pretty big man: 16st 7lb 8oz. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/01/rees-mogg-has-a-diamond-deal-for-mamdani/ (£££)
Having ghastly visions of Michael Gove’s come face.
The US can bugger off. Trump is running the show and has made clear through his actions he doesn't want allies, and none of us have much capacity to offer anyway even though it's in everyone's interests to open the strait.
There is a deep reserve of sensible moderate people in the US fighting a slow losing battle against the insanity. The world should be infinitely grateful to these people but we should also be aware that they can't hold back the tide indefinitely, and plan accordingly.
It really only needs about 30 Republican Senators to make a stand for sanity.
Yeah that won't happen, I don't think. The Republican party with a few honourable exceptions has largely folded.
And even the ones who did come out against Trump barely did so. Ones who are retiring and who Trump hates presumably could speak out without worry but don't. Because they don't disagree with him.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
If mayors are going to agitate to take over the top job in politics like this, without hard yards in the Commons (recently) maybe Labour should revisit their plans for everywhere* to get a mayor.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
And yet Metro continue to open branches while Barclays are equally starting to open some of their branches back up
The UK intends to begin negotiations to join a £78bn (€90bn) European Union loan scheme seen as providing vital support for Ukraine. The prime minister said the talks are aimed at strengthening Ukraine's defences while also trying to give UK firms access to future contracts.
"trying to give access"....still no closer to actually getting access to a scheme that Mr Agreement about an Agreement didn't actually get an agreement. I said when he first said he had got an agreement to talk about an agreement by the time he finally gets it over the line all the best contracts will have already been awarded to the Germans and French contractors.
You don't think the UK should support the EU loan agreement with Ukraine? Is that a Brexit freedom?
It depends if our defence industry gets access to Ukraine. Too often the EU loves countries which give them money for no return.
The US can bugger off. Trump is running the show and has made clear through his actions he doesn't want allies, and none of us have much capacity to offer anyway even though it's in everyone's interests to open the strait.
Sadly that won’t happen anytime soon and we have to prepare for that.
Neither side seems willing to budge on terms to end. The war has ground to a halt (sorry Bart 😢) and we are at stalemate and unless something gives that will perpetuate indefinitely and people just don’t seem concerned.
However, the Iranian government doesn't give a flying one about the welfare of its people.
The American government doesn't give much of a flying one about the welfare of its people, but has to a bit. The serious consequences of the Straits being closed just haven't hit yet.
Someone produced a map of when the shit would hit the fan in various countries, given how predictable ship motion is. I assume we're still on schedule.
I suspect we are, and nothing seems to have gone through Hormuz in the last few days too. Last transit the 29th.
Both sides seem to be gambling the other won’t be able to withstand their respective blockade. Iran are reportedly slowing oil production and filling tankers as storage.
Israel are now re-considering the previously mooted Ben Gurion canal. Tactically closing Hormuz may make sense, strategically it’s not. Medium to Longer term strategies to mitigate Will be implemented. However short term we all get to feel the pain.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
A Reform government would love a judicial review.
Which law specifically would it breach
Judicial review is not just about the breach of a 'specific' law. It's more complicated. All government decisions (unless an act says otherwise - Leon may have a draft of such an act available) have to be rational, within the panoply of law and regulation about the criteria for and process of decision making, consistent with natural justice and accompanied by all the relevant consultations to be conducted according to the meaning of the word 'consult'.
Whether Reform would like such a JR about a punitive Trumpian policy is moot. Suppose, for example, that a Reform government decide to place a huge detention facility in a Green controlled LA or constituency. They then discover that legal action, accompanied by mass demos and threats to set fire to stuff, is taken not be a Green council but by the local branches of Reform, Reclaim, Restore, Renewal, Repair, Repent, BNP, BUF and their irksome friends.
Isn't there a legal difference between stuff the government does via its statutory powers, and actual laws passed by parliament?
If the secretary of state is empowered to build detention centres at places of his choosing, you can probably go to JR that his choice to build one in Chipping Bufton wasn't made correctly, that he hadn't do so in accordance with the equalities act etc etc.
If parliament passes the "Chipping Bufton Detention Centre Act" , which explicitly permits the secretary of state to build a detention centre in Chipping Bufton, regardless of the provisions of the town and country planning act, the human rights act or the equality act, then there isn't going to be much of an angle for JR.
In a word yes. We have no idea if a Reform government will go down that route in general. Certainly the Lords will slow it down, unless Reform appoint about 800 new peers.
There are three considerations:
1) This sort of thing would need a Reform majority (325+) not just a Reform led government. This is about 11/4 at the moment. It won't happen. 2) Courts interpret statutes in the light of all other laws which bind us. There are about 800 years worth of these and will take some unravelling by a Reform government. 3) The possibility of the SC declaring some part of some statutes unconstitutional in themselves is untested, despite the fact that everyone always says they can't. The SC also has the interesting power of being able to overrule itself. It can and possibly will do all this when faced with plainly unconstitutional action. Note the prorogation case, where it was assumed by many that the SC could not and would not interfere with Royal Prerogative. They simply found a way of bypassing it.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
Historically by-elections flatter to deceive in relation to GEs.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
It probably isn't- or not sufficiently profitable for those who now own banks and our former building societies. Actual building societies, who only need to make sufficient profit to keep going, can make different calculations.
Why don't we have many financial institutions capable of doing that? Largely because a generation of carpetbaggers decided to take the money upfront.
(I know, there's more to it than that. Since the Coventry BS took over Co-op bank, they've cut branch opening hours massively. But it's not more complicated than that.)
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
And yet Metro continue to open branches while Barclays are equally starting to open some of their branches back up
And that’s all great but it’s not really a local authority policy is it? If the banks want to open new branches with cash machines then they will. Otherwise they wont
The UK intends to begin negotiations to join a £78bn (€90bn) European Union loan scheme seen as providing vital support for Ukraine. The prime minister said the talks are aimed at strengthening Ukraine's defences while also trying to give UK firms access to future contracts.
"trying to give access"....still no closer to actually getting access to a scheme that Mr Agreement about an Agreement didn't actually get an agreement. I said when he first said he had got an agreement to talk about an agreement by the time he finally gets it over the line all the best contracts will have already been awarded to the Germans and French contractors.
You don't think the UK should support the EU loan agreement with Ukraine? Is that a Brexit freedom?
It depends if our defence industry gets access to Ukraine. Too often the EU loves countries which give them money for no return.
That's irrelevant to this caper. The UK has given Ukraine over £10bn and clearly can't afford to keep doing it. Joining in this lavish subsidy to Bentley Kiev allows SKS to wind down the direct UK effort and hide behind the 90bn number.
I'm told, apparently by those in the know, the latest policy inanity from Zia Yusuf and Reform is "good news for Kemi".
I'm not so sure - it puts into closer focus the question of whether the Conservatives could or should support a Reform minority Government were such an eventuality to transpire at the next GE. Is Badenoch really going to sign up to this nonsense for a few seats at Cabinet?
The problem with coalitions (as Nick Clegg will tell you) is you may get some of what you want but you will also have to support some things you don't want because they are the policy of the other partyand this is the point where notions of "red lines" come into play.
Would Badenoch agree to support this as Reform policy were a Conservative Party led by her to be supporting a minority Reform Government?
Badenoch, Davey and, to an extent, Polanski can all play the equidistance game for now but as the GE approaches and we start to see the possible shape of the next House of Commons, the time for hard decisions will approach. Seat projections seem only to agree on Reform as largest party - it could be any of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green who form the lead opposition party as the second largest bloc of seats (it's seats that count, not votes, unfortunately).
It's also worth noting the Government only needs to command the confidence of the House. It doesn't have to be formed from the party with the most seats or even the second largest group of seats as long as it has a majority (not even an overall majority).
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
Historically by-elections flatter to deceive in relation to GEs.
Is Reform's policy only to build detention centres in constituencies with Green MPs voted in at general elections, but not constituencies with Green MPs voted in at by-elections? Yusuf didn't comment on that.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
Head office might not. They have been brilliantly successful at turning their customers into unpaid cashiers.
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
A Reform government would love a judicial review.
Which law specifically would it breach
Judicial review is not just about the breach of a 'specific' law. It's more complicated. All government decisions (unless an act says otherwise - Leon may have a draft of such an act available) have to be rational, within the panoply of law and regulation about the criteria for and process of decision making, consistent with natural justice and accompanied by all the relevant consultations to be conducted according to the meaning of the word 'consult'.
Whether Reform would like such a JR about a punitive Trumpian policy is moot. Suppose, for example, that a Reform government decide to place a huge detention facility in a Green controlled LA or constituency. They then discover that legal action, accompanied by mass demos and threats to set fire to stuff, is taken not be a Green council but by the local branches of Reform, Reclaim, Restore, Renewal, Repair, Repent, BNP, BUF and their irksome friends.
Isn't there a legal difference between stuff the government does via its statutory powers, and actual laws passed by parliament?
If the secretary of state is empowered to build detention centres at places of his choosing, you can probably go to JR that his choice to build one in Chipping Bufton wasn't made correctly, that he hadn't do so in accordance with the equalities act etc etc.
If parliament passes the "Chipping Bufton Detention Centre Act" , which explicitly permits the secretary of state to build a detention centre in Chipping Bufton, regardless of the provisions of the town and country planning act, the human rights act or the equality act, then there isn't going to be much of an angle for JR.
In a sense it's irrelevant.
The worst thing about this policy isn't the location childishness, it's the idea of spending billions on detention centres, alongside targets for mass deportation which imply a similar contempt for due process and resort to random detention that's currently on show in the US.
Yusuf is just another tinpot would-be authoritarian.
What's a reasonable worst-case scenario for the GOP in the midterms if we assume that the elections aren't stolen and the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened?
Lose the senate and the house.
The GOP would deserve it.
Let's consider the Senate seats they could pick up.
Assuming a hold in Georgia and Michigan, which didn't look certain a year ago (certainly the former).
Maine looks a certainty.
Ohio and North Carolina look very possible.
Texas and Alaska both look realistic if not straightforward.
If they have an astonishing night they might pick up one of Kansas or Florida and the independent they are backing in Nebraska might pull off a win.
So in a very best case scenario where on top of everything else Donald Trump is caught publicly masturbating over a photo of Barack Obama or something, they might pick up six seats and a Dem-leaning independent one.
In a more normal scenario, they should pick up three, maybe four or five.
If therefore they do any better than that we can fairly safely say no Republican will be in the White House in 2028 without even more substantial vote rigging than they have managed up to now.
The Dems got hammered in 2010 yet Obama won easily in 2012.
The GOP got hammered in 1982 yet Reagan won easily in 1984.
The GOP got hammered in 1974 yet Ford almost won in 1976.
So it is possible for big shifts to happen but the main requirement is competent government amid an improving world situation.
The problem for the GOP is that competent government is something we've seen little of from either Trump administration while an improving world situation also looks doubtful.
And drop the drivel about vote rigging - both sides manipulate the electoral system as much as they can and Trump didn't win because of it.
That's an irregular verb, isn't it? I tell home truths, he is exaggerating, you talk drivel.
On that basis, I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging when you stop talking drivel about Trump's attempted coup in 2020.
And what drivel have I ever said about Trump's attempted coup ?
You will not be able to answer that question because I haven't said any drivel about Trump's attempted coup.
Unless that is you think that saying Trump attempted to overturn a fair election result through legal manipulations backed up by encouraging street thuggery is drivel.
Whereas, sadly, it seems that you would prefer to retreat into comforting fictions rather than attempting to understand why Trump won. Which is especially sad from someone with an academic background,
Still I'll leave you to continue waving the pompoms.
Altogether now with yodders:
"Our vote rigging good, their vote rigging bad."
I'll be the one at the back, shaking my head at both sides and wishing we could have some competent government from somebody for the USA and world as a whole.
You said nobody died during the riots,* and you said he did not incite them.
Feel free to deny that, but we all saw your posts.
And that, as you apparently now know perfectly well, is drivel.
I am interested to see you are now rowing back on your previously full throated support for Trump, but I note you still struggle to admit your previous error of judgement. An interesting case study in light of a previous poster's comment on his support.
*This may be very technically true, but for the four people who died as a direct result the following day any reasonable person would say that is a distinction without a difference.
Everyone saw my posts ?
I certainly do not remember them.
I dare say if you had nothing else to do you could go through my comments for the last ten years and find all sorts of odd things because of the discussions that were ongoing, or just my mood, at that time.
So if you want me to comment on a specific allegation then you'll have to substantiate it.
And when the hell have I ever been a full throated supporter of Trump ???
I've never been a full throated supporter of any politician or any party.
Now there have been things I've said Trump was correct about and many more when I have said a specific Dem or Dems in general have been wrong about something.
But that also applies to my opinions about UK politicians and parties as well.
I thought Trump a mediocre President in his first term and that his refusal to accept his fair defeat made him unfit for further office. I think its a tragedy that the Dems were unable to produce a candidate who was worth supporting.
TBF, on the first point I have accidentally elided you with another poster with a similar avatar who was saying those things while you were wittering on about Hunter Biden, so I will withdraw that.
I modify my original statement thus:
I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging* when you stop talking drivel that Kamala Harris is some kind of woke loon and that ICE's murders were the fault of the people they shot.
*Which interestingly at one point you conceded yourself, calling Trump a 'failed vote rigger' although your hatred of the Dems is such you immediately said that wasn't as bad as it might be because Lyndon Johnson was worse.
Thank you for acknowledging your error.
Landslide Lyndon was indeed a worse vote rigger.
Or rather a better vote rigger as his vote rigging was successful whereas Trump's attempts were as incompetent and thuggish as everything else he does.
Still I'll leave you with your fantasies that Trump won in 2024 because of 'substantial vote rigging' and not because the Dems had among other failings lost control of the border, driven away centrists, near unanimously chosen an senile octogenarian as candidate and then replaced him with someone who was dismally mediocre and who didn't even campaign on the successful signature policy of the administration she was VP of.
As to ICE, anyone having multiple violent confrontations with US law enforcement is behaving very rashly. Anyone doing so while being in possession of a handgun even more so. Did Alex Pretti deserve to die ? No, but he did deserve a spell in prison in the same way the Wath rioters did in this country.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
The flaw in this argument is that it wasn't the working class bits of G&D which elected a green - it was the 2/3rds if the seat that was a mixture of students and Muslim voters which went great. Working class Denton taken alone would have easily elected a Reform MP.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
Head office might not. They have been brilliantly successful at turning their customers into unpaid cashiers.
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
Yes, and that’s good! But it’s not really a local authority gift, is it? It’s just the free market. Our local councillors should in my opinion focus on their actual job
“Where Wes has an advantage is that the cabinet won’t want to hand the party over to Sam Tarry. Where he has a disadvantage is that his colleagues can’t stand him.”
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
Historically by-elections flatter to deceive in relation to GEs.
Is Reform's policy only to build detention centres in constituencies with Green MPs voted in at general elections, but not constituencies with Green MPs voted in at by-elections? Yusuf didn't comment on that.
Who cares ? It's an absurd policy, and we shouldn't waste mental energy on parsing the petty detail.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
For sure; I had some shocking conversations with Tory councillors when I was in coalition who objected to doing things in Labour wards. But I'm pretty sure that if either a council or the government made the political colour of the local representatives a decision-making criterion for distributing or providing any sort of public service they'd be in very hot legal water.
“Where Wes has an advantage is that the cabinet won’t want to hand the party over to Sam Tarry. Where he has a disadvantage is that his colleagues can’t stand him.”
If you have ever wondered how the hell Starmer got the party leadership and Premiership, you just have to look at the rivals seeking to push him aside.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
The flaw in this argument is that it wasn't the working class bits of G&D which elected a green - it was the 2/3rds if the seat that was a mixture of students and Muslim voters which went great. Working class Denton taken alone would have easily elected a Reform MP.
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
The flaw in this argument is that it wasn't the working class bits of G&D which elected a green - it was the 2/3rds if the seat that was a mixture of students and Muslim voters which went great. Working class Denton taken alone would have easily elected a Reform MP.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
Head office might not. They have been brilliantly successful at turning their customers into unpaid cashiers.
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
Yes, and that’s good! But it’s not really a local authority gift, is it? It’s just the free market. Our local councillors should in my opinion focus on their actual job
The Banking Hub was organised by our previous Conservatve MP. It is a political option, working with local councillors.
I'm told, apparently by those in the know, the latest policy inanity from Zia Yusuf and Reform is "good news for Kemi".
I'm not so sure - it puts into closer focus the question of whether the Conservatives could or should support a Reform minority Government were such an eventuality to transpire at the next GE. Is Badenoch really going to sign up to this nonsense for a few seats at Cabinet?
The problem with coalitions (as Nick Clegg will tell you) is you may get some of what you want but you will also have to support some things you don't want because they are the policy of the other partyand this is the point where notions of "red lines" come into play.
Would Badenoch agree to support this as Reform policy were a Conservative Party led by her to be supporting a minority Reform Government?
Badenoch, Davey and, to an extent, Polanski can all play the equidistance game for now but as the GE approaches and we start to see the possible shape of the next House of Commons, the time for hard decisions will approach. Seat projections seem only to agree on Reform as largest party - it could be any of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green who form the lead opposition party as the second largest bloc of seats (it's seats that count, not votes, unfortunately).
It's also worth noting the Government only needs to command the confidence of the House. It doesn't have to be formed from the party with the most seats or even the second largest group of seats as long as it has a majority (not even an overall majority).
Surely Reform floating all this sort of nonsense is great new for Kemi, it gives her the chance to set herself up to be a "moderating influence" in future a Ref-Tory coalition.
It will suit Reform to have a coalition too, they can ditch some of the more performative nonsense they've spouted (and they'll know it's performative nonsense now, even as they say it) and blame the Tories. Everyone's a winner.
If that happens, quite probably, like Canada, Reform will absorb the Tories at the end of the next parliament, and it will be one centre right party vs three left wing parties in the 2034 elections.
What's a reasonable worst-case scenario for the GOP in the midterms if we assume that the elections aren't stolen and the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened?
Lose the senate and the house.
The GOP would deserve it.
Let's consider the Senate seats they could pick up.
Assuming a hold in Georgia and Michigan, which didn't look certain a year ago (certainly the former).
Maine looks a certainty.
Ohio and North Carolina look very possible.
Texas and Alaska both look realistic if not straightforward.
If they have an astonishing night they might pick up one of Kansas or Florida and the independent they are backing in Nebraska might pull off a win.
So in a very best case scenario where on top of everything else Donald Trump is caught publicly masturbating over a photo of Barack Obama or something, they might pick up six seats and a Dem-leaning independent one.
In a more normal scenario, they should pick up three, maybe four or five.
If therefore they do any better than that we can fairly safely say no Republican will be in the White House in 2028 without even more substantial vote rigging than they have managed up to now.
The Dems got hammered in 2010 yet Obama won easily in 2012.
The GOP got hammered in 1982 yet Reagan won easily in 1984.
The GOP got hammered in 1974 yet Ford almost won in 1976.
So it is possible for big shifts to happen but the main requirement is competent government amid an improving world situation.
The problem for the GOP is that competent government is something we've seen little of from either Trump administration while an improving world situation also looks doubtful.
And drop the drivel about vote rigging - both sides manipulate the electoral system as much as they can and Trump didn't win because of it.
That's an irregular verb, isn't it? I tell home truths, he is exaggerating, you talk drivel.
On that basis, I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging when you stop talking drivel about Trump's attempted coup in 2020.
And what drivel have I ever said about Trump's attempted coup ?
You will not be able to answer that question because I haven't said any drivel about Trump's attempted coup.
Unless that is you think that saying Trump attempted to overturn a fair election result through legal manipulations backed up by encouraging street thuggery is drivel.
Whereas, sadly, it seems that you would prefer to retreat into comforting fictions rather than attempting to understand why Trump won. Which is especially sad from someone with an academic background,
Still I'll leave you to continue waving the pompoms.
Altogether now with yodders:
"Our vote rigging good, their vote rigging bad."
I'll be the one at the back, shaking my head at both sides and wishing we could have some competent government from somebody for the USA and world as a whole.
You said nobody died during the riots,* and you said he did not incite them.
Feel free to deny that, but we all saw your posts.
And that, as you apparently now know perfectly well, is drivel.
I am interested to see you are now rowing back on your previously full throated support for Trump, but I note you still struggle to admit your previous error of judgement. An interesting case study in light of a previous poster's comment on his support.
*This may be very technically true, but for the four people who died as a direct result the following day any reasonable person would say that is a distinction without a difference.
Everyone saw my posts ?
I certainly do not remember them.
I dare say if you had nothing else to do you could go through my comments for the last ten years and find all sorts of odd things because of the discussions that were ongoing, or just my mood, at that time.
So if you want me to comment on a specific allegation then you'll have to substantiate it.
And when the hell have I ever been a full throated supporter of Trump ???
I've never been a full throated supporter of any politician or any party.
Now there have been things I've said Trump was correct about and many more when I have said a specific Dem or Dems in general have been wrong about something.
But that also applies to my opinions about UK politicians and parties as well.
I thought Trump a mediocre President in his first term and that his refusal to accept his fair defeat made him unfit for further office. I think its a tragedy that the Dems were unable to produce a candidate who was worth supporting.
TBF, on the first point I have accidentally elided you with another poster with a similar avatar who was saying those things while you were wittering on about Hunter Biden, so I will withdraw that.
I modify my original statement thus:
I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging* when you stop talking drivel that Kamala Harris is some kind of woke loon and that ICE's murders were the fault of the people they shot.
*Which interestingly at one point you conceded yourself, calling Trump a 'failed vote rigger' although your hatred of the Dems is such you immediately said that wasn't as bad as it might be because Lyndon Johnson was worse.
Thank you for acknowledging your error.
Landslide Lyndon was indeed a worse vote rigger.
Or rather a better vote rigger as his vote rigging was successful whereas Trump's attempts were as incompetent and thuggish as everything else he does.
Still I'll leave you with your fantasies that Trump won in 2024 because of 'substantial vote rigging' and not because the Dems had among other failings lost control of the border, driven away centrists, near unanimously chosen an senile octogenarian as candidate and then replaced him with someone who was dismally mediocre and who didn't even campaign on the successful signature policy of the administration she was VP of.
As to ICE, anyone having multiple violent confrontations with US law enforcement is behaving very rashly. Anyone doing so while being in possession of a handgun even more so. Did Alex Pretti deserve to die ? No, but he did deserve a spell in prison in the same way the Wath rioters did in this country.
You see, the irony is you are completely wrong about Lyndon Johnson. It was Kennedy who was the vote rigger.
Still, speaking about leaving you with your fantasies…
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
For sure; I had some shocking conversations with Tory councillors when I was in coalition who objected to doing things in Labour wards. But I'm pretty sure that if either a council or the government made the political colour of the local representatives a decision-making criterion for distributing or providing any sort of public service they'd be in very hot legal water.
NO, and it cannot work like that.
When you are elected, you are not the representative of Much Binding South or wherever, you are a Member of the Council which requires you to take the overview. That means if a service needs to be cut in your area to fund a better provision somewhere else where it's needed, you can argue the case but if the view is the provision is needed elsewhere, you support that and you have to argue the case locally to your possibly angry constituents.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
Head office might not. They have been brilliantly successful at turning their customers into unpaid cashiers.
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
Yes, and that’s good! But it’s not really a local authority gift, is it? It’s just the free market. Our local councillors should in my opinion focus on their actual job
The Banking Hub was organised by our previous Conservatve MP. It is a political option, working with local councillors.
What's a reasonable worst-case scenario for the GOP in the midterms if we assume that the elections aren't stolen and the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened?
Lose the senate and the house.
The GOP would deserve it.
Let's consider the Senate seats they could pick up.
Assuming a hold in Georgia and Michigan, which didn't look certain a year ago (certainly the former).
Maine looks a certainty.
Ohio and North Carolina look very possible.
Texas and Alaska both look realistic if not straightforward.
If they have an astonishing night they might pick up one of Kansas or Florida and the independent they are backing in Nebraska might pull off a win.
So in a very best case scenario where on top of everything else Donald Trump is caught publicly masturbating over a photo of Barack Obama or something, they might pick up six seats and a Dem-leaning independent one.
In a more normal scenario, they should pick up three, maybe four or five.
If therefore they do any better than that we can fairly safely say no Republican will be in the White House in 2028 without even more substantial vote rigging than they have managed up to now.
The Dems got hammered in 2010 yet Obama won easily in 2012.
The GOP got hammered in 1982 yet Reagan won easily in 1984.
The GOP got hammered in 1974 yet Ford almost won in 1976.
So it is possible for big shifts to happen but the main requirement is competent government amid an improving world situation.
The problem for the GOP is that competent government is something we've seen little of from either Trump administration while an improving world situation also looks doubtful.
And drop the drivel about vote rigging - both sides manipulate the electoral system as much as they can and Trump didn't win because of it.
That's an irregular verb, isn't it? I tell home truths, he is exaggerating, you talk drivel.
On that basis, I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging when you stop talking drivel about Trump's attempted coup in 2020.
And what drivel have I ever said about Trump's attempted coup ?
You will not be able to answer that question because I haven't said any drivel about Trump's attempted coup.
Unless that is you think that saying Trump attempted to overturn a fair election result through legal manipulations backed up by encouraging street thuggery is drivel.
Whereas, sadly, it seems that you would prefer to retreat into comforting fictions rather than attempting to understand why Trump won. Which is especially sad from someone with an academic background,
Still I'll leave you to continue waving the pompoms.
Altogether now with yodders:
"Our vote rigging good, their vote rigging bad."
I'll be the one at the back, shaking my head at both sides and wishing we could have some competent government from somebody for the USA and world as a whole.
You said nobody died during the riots,* and you said he did not incite them.
Feel free to deny that, but we all saw your posts.
And that, as you apparently now know perfectly well, is drivel.
I am interested to see you are now rowing back on your previously full throated support for Trump, but I note you still struggle to admit your previous error of judgement. An interesting case study in light of a previous poster's comment on his support.
*This may be very technically true, but for the four people who died as a direct result the following day any reasonable person would say that is a distinction without a difference.
Everyone saw my posts ?
I certainly do not remember them.
I dare say if you had nothing else to do you could go through my comments for the last ten years and find all sorts of odd things because of the discussions that were ongoing, or just my mood, at that time.
So if you want me to comment on a specific allegation then you'll have to substantiate it.
And when the hell have I ever been a full throated supporter of Trump ???
I've never been a full throated supporter of any politician or any party.
Now there have been things I've said Trump was correct about and many more when I have said a specific Dem or Dems in general have been wrong about something.
But that also applies to my opinions about UK politicians and parties as well.
I thought Trump a mediocre President in his first term and that his refusal to accept his fair defeat made him unfit for further office. I think its a tragedy that the Dems were unable to produce a candidate who was worth supporting.
TBF, on the first point I have accidentally elided you with another poster with a similar avatar who was saying those things while you were wittering on about Hunter Biden, so I will withdraw that.
I modify my original statement thus:
I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging* when you stop talking drivel that Kamala Harris is some kind of woke loon and that ICE's murders were the fault of the people they shot.
*Which interestingly at one point you conceded yourself, calling Trump a 'failed vote rigger' although your hatred of the Dems is such you immediately said that wasn't as bad as it might be because Lyndon Johnson was worse.
Thank you for acknowledging your error.
Landslide Lyndon was indeed a worse vote rigger.
Or rather a better vote rigger as his vote rigging was successful whereas Trump's attempts were as incompetent and thuggish as everything else he does.
Still I'll leave you with your fantasies that Trump won in 2024 because of 'substantial vote rigging' and not because the Dems had among other failings lost control of the border, driven away centrists, near unanimously chosen an senile octogenarian as candidate and then replaced him with someone who was dismally mediocre and who didn't even campaign on the successful signature policy of the administration she was VP of.
As to ICE, anyone having multiple violent confrontations with US law enforcement is behaving very rashly. Anyone doing so while being in possession of a handgun even more so. Did Alex Pretti deserve to die ? No, but he did deserve a spell in prison in the same way the Wath rioters did in this country.
You see, the irony is you are completely wrong about Lyndon Johnson. It was Kennedy who was the vote rigger.
Still, speaking about leaving you with your fantasies…
It is highly contentious as to whether Mayor Daly's interference in Cook County actually delivered to result to Kennedy.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
"This year’s price £477.99. Last year’s price £326.99"
The price of a normal recovery is about £100-£150 so unless whatever piece of shit you're driving leaves you stranded on the side of the road more than twice a year it's just not worth it.
And even if you want the RAC as an intermediary, they will happily recover you if you sign up for a subscription over the phone at the time of the incident. So there's no reason to hold a subscription.
The Reform policy is red meat for their base, probably to help drive turnout on Thursday. It won’t help them convert anyone new (or at least, not anyone who wouldn’t have been wavering anyway). That’s pretty much all there is to it.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
Head office might not. They have been brilliantly successful at turning their customers into unpaid cashiers.
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
Yes, and that’s good! But it’s not really a local authority gift, is it? It’s just the free market. Our local councillors should in my opinion focus on their actual job
The Banking Hub was organised by our previous Conservatve MP. It is a political option, working with local councillors.
What's a reasonable worst-case scenario for the GOP in the midterms if we assume that the elections aren't stolen and the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened?
Lose the senate and the house.
The GOP would deserve it.
Let's consider the Senate seats they could pick up.
Assuming a hold in Georgia and Michigan, which didn't look certain a year ago (certainly the former).
Maine looks a certainty.
Ohio and North Carolina look very possible.
Texas and Alaska both look realistic if not straightforward.
If they have an astonishing night they might pick up one of Kansas or Florida and the independent they are backing in Nebraska might pull off a win.
So in a very best case scenario where on top of everything else Donald Trump is caught publicly masturbating over a photo of Barack Obama or something, they might pick up six seats and a Dem-leaning independent one.
In a more normal scenario, they should pick up three, maybe four or five.
If therefore they do any better than that we can fairly safely say no Republican will be in the White House in 2028 without even more substantial vote rigging than they have managed up to now.
The Dems got hammered in 2010 yet Obama won easily in 2012.
The GOP got hammered in 1982 yet Reagan won easily in 1984.
The GOP got hammered in 1974 yet Ford almost won in 1976.
So it is possible for big shifts to happen but the main requirement is competent government amid an improving world situation.
The problem for the GOP is that competent government is something we've seen little of from either Trump administration while an improving world situation also looks doubtful.
And drop the drivel about vote rigging - both sides manipulate the electoral system as much as they can and Trump didn't win because of it.
That's an irregular verb, isn't it? I tell home truths, he is exaggerating, you talk drivel.
On that basis, I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging when you stop talking drivel about Trump's attempted coup in 2020.
And what drivel have I ever said about Trump's attempted coup ?
You will not be able to answer that question because I haven't said any drivel about Trump's attempted coup.
Unless that is you think that saying Trump attempted to overturn a fair election result through legal manipulations backed up by encouraging street thuggery is drivel.
Whereas, sadly, it seems that you would prefer to retreat into comforting fictions rather than attempting to understand why Trump won. Which is especially sad from someone with an academic background,
Still I'll leave you to continue waving the pompoms.
Altogether now with yodders:
"Our vote rigging good, their vote rigging bad."
I'll be the one at the back, shaking my head at both sides and wishing we could have some competent government from somebody for the USA and world as a whole.
You said nobody died during the riots,* and you said he did not incite them.
Feel free to deny that, but we all saw your posts.
And that, as you apparently now know perfectly well, is drivel.
I am interested to see you are now rowing back on your previously full throated support for Trump, but I note you still struggle to admit your previous error of judgement. An interesting case study in light of a previous poster's comment on his support.
*This may be very technically true, but for the four people who died as a direct result the following day any reasonable person would say that is a distinction without a difference.
Everyone saw my posts ?
I certainly do not remember them.
I dare say if you had nothing else to do you could go through my comments for the last ten years and find all sorts of odd things because of the discussions that were ongoing, or just my mood, at that time.
So if you want me to comment on a specific allegation then you'll have to substantiate it.
And when the hell have I ever been a full throated supporter of Trump ???
I've never been a full throated supporter of any politician or any party.
Now there have been things I've said Trump was correct about and many more when I have said a specific Dem or Dems in general have been wrong about something.
But that also applies to my opinions about UK politicians and parties as well.
I thought Trump a mediocre President in his first term and that his refusal to accept his fair defeat made him unfit for further office. I think its a tragedy that the Dems were unable to produce a candidate who was worth supporting.
TBF, on the first point I have accidentally elided you with another poster with a similar avatar who was saying those things while you were wittering on about Hunter Biden, so I will withdraw that.
I modify my original statement thus:
I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging* when you stop talking drivel that Kamala Harris is some kind of woke loon and that ICE's murders were the fault of the people they shot.
*Which interestingly at one point you conceded yourself, calling Trump a 'failed vote rigger' although your hatred of the Dems is such you immediately said that wasn't as bad as it might be because Lyndon Johnson was worse.
Thank you for acknowledging your error.
Landslide Lyndon was indeed a worse vote rigger.
Or rather a better vote rigger as his vote rigging was successful whereas Trump's attempts were as incompetent and thuggish as everything else he does.
Still I'll leave you with your fantasies that Trump won in 2024 because of 'substantial vote rigging' and not because the Dems had among other failings lost control of the border, driven away centrists, near unanimously chosen an senile octogenarian as candidate and then replaced him with someone who was dismally mediocre and who didn't even campaign on the successful signature policy of the administration she was VP of.
As to ICE, anyone having multiple violent confrontations with US law enforcement is behaving very rashly. Anyone doing so while being in possession of a handgun even more so. Did Alex Pretti deserve to die ? No, but he did deserve a spell in prison in the same way the Wath rioters did in this country.
You see, the irony is you are completely wrong about Lyndon Johnson. It was Kennedy who was the vote rigger.
Still, speaking about leaving you with your fantasies…
What the Kennedys via Mayor Daley got up to in Chicago in 1960 has never been conclusively settled.
Whereas there's not much doubt that Landslide Lyndon's 87 vote victory in the 1948 Dem Primary for the Texas Senate seat was fraudulent:
I'm told, apparently by those in the know, the latest policy inanity from Zia Yusuf and Reform is "good news for Kemi".
I'm not so sure - it puts into closer focus the question of whether the Conservatives could or should support a Reform minority Government were such an eventuality to transpire at the next GE. Is Badenoch really going to sign up to this nonsense for a few seats at Cabinet?
The problem with coalitions (as Nick Clegg will tell you) is you may get some of what you want but you will also have to support some things you don't want because they are the policy of the other partyand this is the point where notions of "red lines" come into play.
Would Badenoch agree to support this as Reform policy were a Conservative Party led by her to be supporting a minority Reform Government?
Badenoch, Davey and, to an extent, Polanski can all play the equidistance game for now but as the GE approaches and we start to see the possible shape of the next House of Commons, the time for hard decisions will approach. Seat projections seem only to agree on Reform as largest party - it could be any of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green who form the lead opposition party as the second largest bloc of seats (it's seats that count, not votes, unfortunately).
It's also worth noting the Government only needs to command the confidence of the House. It doesn't have to be formed from the party with the most seats or even the second largest group of seats as long as it has a majority (not even an overall majority).
Surely Reform floating all this sort of nonsense is great new for Kemi, it gives her the chance to set herself up to be a "moderating influence" in future a Ref-Tory coalition.
It will suit Reform to have a coalition too, they can ditch some of the more performative nonsense they've spouted (and they'll know it's performative nonsense now, even as they say it) and blame the Tories. Everyone's a winner.
If that happens, quite probably, like Canada, Reform will absorb the Tories at the end of the next parliament, and it will be one centre right party vs three left wing parties in the 2034 elections.
That's a fair bit of hopecasting from a "right wing" or should that be "anti left wing" perspective.
Is there a philosophical convergence between Reform and Conservatives? I don't see it - Reform themselves are conflicted between the Thatcherite leadership and the ex-Boris Johnson supporters who actually want more money spent in WWC areas rather than big spending and tax cuts.
Actually, the Conservatives are also still throwing out the barely costed pledges and have yet to really explain what Services they would cut and how they would reduce Welfare to pay for some of their pledges.
Putting all that to one side, the personal relationship between Cameron and Clegg is to an extent paralleled with Farage and Badnoch but does that apply through the two parties since they would (possibly) have been in close competition in the preceding election?
Badenoch will be aware of what happened to the LDs when they were the "junior partner" in the 2010-15 coalition and the notion of Reform activists not wanting to mop up Conservative seats is absurd. Yes, you may be right in that Reform will "absorb" the Conservatives but I can't see the Conservative Party wanting to die for convenience any more than the LDs did.
That's the tightrope Badenoch has to walk between now and the election and even after it.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
I agree that the open declaration of this as policy is a bad turn in our politics - but let’s not pretend that geographical considerations (with a view to certain constituencies) hasn’t played a part in government spending/policy decisions and strategy over the years.
“Where Wes has an advantage is that the cabinet won’t want to hand the party over to Sam Tarry. Where he has a disadvantage is that his colleagues can’t stand him.”
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
“Where Wes has an advantage is that the cabinet won’t want to hand the party over to Sam Tarry. Where he has a disadvantage is that his colleagues can’t stand him.”
How very progressive! Of course the little woman is controlled by her man.
Good morning one and all. May the Fourth be with you!
On topic, you clearly have no conception of the power of the working class woman. Back in the day it wasn't uncommon for a man to hand over his pay-packet, unopene,d to his wife, who would then dole out his beer and horses money.
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
I agree that the open declaration of this as policy is a bad turn in our politics - but let’s not pretend that geographical considerations (with a view to certain constituencies) hasn’t played a part in government spending/policy decisions and strategy over the years.
Investing in marginal constituencies was a running joke in Yes, Minister. More recently we had Rishi redirecting Levelling Up funds to the Home Counties (arguably against government policy).
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
What's a reasonable worst-case scenario for the GOP in the midterms if we assume that the elections aren't stolen and the Strait of Hormuz isn't opened?
Lose the senate and the house.
The GOP would deserve it.
Let's consider the Senate seats they could pick up.
Assuming a hold in Georgia and Michigan, which didn't look certain a year ago (certainly the former).
Maine looks a certainty.
Ohio and North Carolina look very possible.
Texas and Alaska both look realistic if not straightforward.
If they have an astonishing night they might pick up one of Kansas or Florida and the independent they are backing in Nebraska might pull off a win.
So in a very best case scenario where on top of everything else Donald Trump is caught publicly masturbating over a photo of Barack Obama or something, they might pick up six seats and a Dem-leaning independent one.
In a more normal scenario, they should pick up three, maybe four or five.
If therefore they do any better than that we can fairly safely say no Republican will be in the White House in 2028 without even more substantial vote rigging than they have managed up to now.
The Dems got hammered in 2010 yet Obama won easily in 2012.
The GOP got hammered in 1982 yet Reagan won easily in 1984.
The GOP got hammered in 1974 yet Ford almost won in 1976.
So it is possible for big shifts to happen but the main requirement is competent government amid an improving world situation.
The problem for the GOP is that competent government is something we've seen little of from either Trump administration while an improving world situation also looks doubtful.
And drop the drivel about vote rigging - both sides manipulate the electoral system as much as they can and Trump didn't win because of it.
That's an irregular verb, isn't it? I tell home truths, he is exaggerating, you talk drivel.
On that basis, I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging when you stop talking drivel about Trump's attempted coup in 2020.
And what drivel have I ever said about Trump's attempted coup ?
You will not be able to answer that question because I haven't said any drivel about Trump's attempted coup.
Unless that is you think that saying Trump attempted to overturn a fair election result through legal manipulations backed up by encouraging street thuggery is drivel.
Whereas, sadly, it seems that you would prefer to retreat into comforting fictions rather than attempting to understand why Trump won. Which is especially sad from someone with an academic background,
Still I'll leave you to continue waving the pompoms.
Altogether now with yodders:
"Our vote rigging good, their vote rigging bad."
I'll be the one at the back, shaking my head at both sides and wishing we could have some competent government from somebody for the USA and world as a whole.
You said nobody died during the riots,* and you said he did not incite them.
Feel free to deny that, but we all saw your posts.
And that, as you apparently now know perfectly well, is drivel.
I am interested to see you are now rowing back on your previously full throated support for Trump, but I note you still struggle to admit your previous error of judgement. An interesting case study in light of a previous poster's comment on his support.
*This may be very technically true, but for the four people who died as a direct result the following day any reasonable person would say that is a distinction without a difference.
Everyone saw my posts ?
I certainly do not remember them.
I dare say if you had nothing else to do you could go through my comments for the last ten years and find all sorts of odd things because of the discussions that were ongoing, or just my mood, at that time.
So if you want me to comment on a specific allegation then you'll have to substantiate it.
And when the hell have I ever been a full throated supporter of Trump ???
I've never been a full throated supporter of any politician or any party.
Now there have been things I've said Trump was correct about and many more when I have said a specific Dem or Dems in general have been wrong about something.
But that also applies to my opinions about UK politicians and parties as well.
I thought Trump a mediocre President in his first term and that his refusal to accept his fair defeat made him unfit for further office. I think its a tragedy that the Dems were unable to produce a candidate who was worth supporting.
TBF, on the first point I have accidentally elided you with another poster with a similar avatar who was saying those things while you were wittering on about Hunter Biden, so I will withdraw that.
I modify my original statement thus:
I will stop telling home truths about vote rigging* when you stop talking drivel that Kamala Harris is some kind of woke loon and that ICE's murders were the fault of the people they shot.
*Which interestingly at one point you conceded yourself, calling Trump a 'failed vote rigger' although your hatred of the Dems is such you immediately said that wasn't as bad as it might be because Lyndon Johnson was worse.
Thank you for acknowledging your error.
Landslide Lyndon was indeed a worse vote rigger.
Or rather a better vote rigger as his vote rigging was successful whereas Trump's attempts were as incompetent and thuggish as everything else he does.
Still I'll leave you with your fantasies that Trump won in 2024 because of 'substantial vote rigging' and not because the Dems had among other failings lost control of the border, driven away centrists, near unanimously chosen an senile octogenarian as candidate and then replaced him with someone who was dismally mediocre and who didn't even campaign on the successful signature policy of the administration she was VP of.
As to ICE, anyone having multiple violent confrontations with US law enforcement is behaving very rashly. Anyone doing so while being in possession of a handgun even more so. Did Alex Pretti deserve to die ? No, but he did deserve a spell in prison in the same way the Wath rioters did in this country.
You see, the irony is you are completely wrong about Lyndon Johnson. It was Kennedy who was the vote rigger.
Still, speaking about leaving you with your fantasies…
The LBJ vote rigging stories centre around his Senate election, TBF.
There are multiple ironies in that, unacknowledged by another_richard. Texas politics was corrupt long before LBJ came in the scene; Texas Democrats were back then as right wing as today's MAGA; LBJ was as corrupt as anyone in Washington, but at the same time, a liberal Trojan horse in the racist southern Democrat caucus, and a genuine social reformer, who but for the Vietnam quagmire might now be considered one of the greatest US Presidents. And unlike Nixon, LBJ paid the price for lying to Congress, simply by recognising his own party's disgust with him, and not running for re-election.
Well, he's not wrong. Δρ = –ρ x β x ΔT and fuel is sold by volume.
You get about 0.8% increase in energy density in your fuel for every 1 deg C decrease. Down to about 5 deg C when the additives might start fucking up.
A malign government can effectively do whatever they like . In the past we’ve generally not faced this scenario, Tory or Labour governments might have been useless at times but I wouldn’t have classed them as malign or a threat to our democracy .
Um, that's not true these days. Sumption makes the point that the increased activism and scope creep of the two courts (ECtHR and SC) interacting with the Human Rights Act means that the courts do modify/throw out primary legislation, even though they shouldn't
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
It's also quite blatantly illegal. Absolutely zero chance of it surviving judicial review.
With a majority on the Commons, Reform could make it legal. Not without massively deforming the UK's existing constitutional setup, but they could do it.
Talking of old style right wing Texas Democrats...
Tomorrow, @TexasMonthly will be dropping a ~12,000 word story on Paul Pressler, the alleged sexual predator who remade the Southern Baptist Convention and helped ordain the marriage between the GOP and white evangelical voters. There is *a lot* in there and I hope you'll read it. https://x.com/RobertDownen_/status/2051060558112162211
Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson · 1h Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
It's also quite blatantly illegal. Absolutely zero chance of it surviving judicial review.
With a majority on the Commons, Reform could make it legal. Not without massively deforming the UK's existing constitutional setup, but they could do it.
A Green party candidate in Rochdale is campaigning for more cash machines in the town centre.
I'm sure the #endofcash PBers will be interested how this goes
Is that in the gift of a local authority?
If some applied for permission.
I don’t know why the banks or whatever don’t install those machines that charge in places like this so it becomes viable
Presumably the problem is that even less people would use ones which charge, and there is no price point at which the machine will make enough to cover it's costs.
What do people want? If they want cash machines they might need to pay for them
What do people want? In unfashionable Cumberland the amount of activity at branches of the Cumberland Building Society, long established, well regarded and with branches in small communities suggest an answer no-one seems to want to hear.
Right but if the banks don’t think it’s profitable…
Head office might not. They have been brilliantly successful at turning their customers into unpaid cashiers.
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
Yes, and that’s good! But it’s not really a local authority gift, is it? It’s just the free market. Our local councillors should in my opinion focus on their actual job
It’s perfectly possible to set up a cash machine without being a major bank. Indeed, there is a fair sized business in doing so.
If this was so profitable - why doesn’t someone undercut the large charges that these “independent” machines charge for withdrawals?
Lol - Kemi reels off a list of "excellent councils" in a radio interview and it turns out that a good batch of them have been controlled by the LibDems for some years.....
A malign government can effectively do whatever they like . In the past we’ve generally not faced this scenario, Tory or Labour governments might have been useless at times but I wouldn’t have classed them as malign or a threat to our democracy .
Um, that's not true these days. Sumption makes the point that the increased activism and scope creep of the two courts (ECtHR and SC) interacting with the Human Rights Act means that the courts do modify/throw out primary legislation, even though they shouldn't
Not quite. Individual laws do not stand alone. Every court, and advocate, in every case is dealing with the law as a whole. This is 800 years worth of common law, equity, legislation, case law, regulation and interpretation. The HRA and Equality Act (for example) are as much 'law' as any other primary legislation. Parliament can of course repeal them but they haven't. A perfectly sensible SC judgment on a single word (woman) in a single act (EQ) has caused a divisive hoohah which appears to be a never ending embarrassment to government and everyone else with a loo. Polemicists regard this modest action of the SC doing its boring day job as activism. It isn't.
The remote possibility of a Reform, or worse, government should remind normal people that the rule of law, the separation of powers and democracy as the system by which losers consent to be governed by sane governments they have not voted for is precious even when annoying litigants and lawyers clog up the courts.
I'm told, apparently by those in the know, the latest policy inanity from Zia Yusuf and Reform is "good news for Kemi".
I'm not so sure - it puts into closer focus the question of whether the Conservatives could or should support a Reform minority Government were such an eventuality to transpire at the next GE. Is Badenoch really going to sign up to this nonsense for a few seats at Cabinet?
The problem with coalitions (as Nick Clegg will tell you) is you may get some of what you want but you will also have to support some things you don't want because they are the policy of the other partyand this is the point where notions of "red lines" come into play.
Would Badenoch agree to support this as Reform policy were a Conservative Party led by her to be supporting a minority Reform Government?
Badenoch, Davey and, to an extent, Polanski can all play the equidistance game for now but as the GE approaches and we start to see the possible shape of the next House of Commons, the time for hard decisions will approach. Seat projections seem only to agree on Reform as largest party - it could be any of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green who form the lead opposition party as the second largest bloc of seats (it's seats that count, not votes, unfortunately).
It's also worth noting the Government only needs to command the confidence of the House. It doesn't have to be formed from the party with the most seats or even the second largest group of seats as long as it has a majority (not even an overall majority).
I"'m told, apparently by those in the know, the latest policy inanity from Zia Yusuf and Reform is "good news for Kemi".
How amusing that you choose to miss out the part of the quote which begins: "could be ... good news for Kemi". Those distorting LD genes again....
In order to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, Reform will need to detain tens of thousands at a time.
Migrants will not be able to leave these detention centres, and each will be held there a couple of weeks before being deported.
So here’s our promise:
A Reform government will not put any migrant detention facilities in any constituency with a Reform MP.
Nor will we put them where Reform controls the council.
And of the remaining areas, we will prioritise Green controlled parliamentary constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate the detention centres.
Put simply, if you vote in a Reform council or Reform MP, we guarantee you won’t have a detention centre near you.
If you vote Green, there’s a good chance you will.
This is an important exercise in democratic consent, not just for our mass deportation policy, but for where the detention centres are placed.
On top of sounding like you are going to set up a copy of the US system, which is too much for even a lot of people who would prefer the government to get tougher on immigration, if they want to be treated as a serious grown up party of government, that is absolutely the opposite. You can be tough on immigration without the nonsense of only detention centres in lefty seats etc, that's not a serious proposal, it a policy for the sort of people think the way to stop the small boats is to send the one navy boat in operation to gun down the small boats in the channel.
Making policy decisions explicitly on the basis of the political voting behaviour of a locality surely isn’t legal? It would be a judicial review waiting to happen.
It's not that novel in reality, even if if it's not usually expressed so blatantly? E.g. I'm pretty sure the Tories had a town centres fund of some sort that mysteriously only appeared to dole out cash in Tory held seats.
I think it's a dumb policy for practical reasons - I would have thought they'd need to use one of the old RAF bases or similar if they want a secure pre-deportion holding pen up and running any time soon - but I'm mildly ammused by the idea that those who claim to love migrants might actually have to experience them being dumped in their communities, rather than the usual approach of dumping them on the long suffering working class.
Working class people vote Green too.
Not often in sufficient numbers to elect an MP!
Gorton & Denton says otherwise.
The flaw in this argument is that it wasn't the working class bits of G&D which elected a green - it was the 2/3rds if the seat that was a mixture of students and Muslim voters which went great. Working class Denton taken alone would have easily elected a Reform MP.
Regarding Reform's policy on migrant return centres, I'm absolutely not a fan of this 'policy' whatsoever. There is a sort of satisfying shitpostery aspect to it. It draws attention to the fact that Reform will deport thousands. It draws attention to the fact that the Greens have an open door policy. These aren't small things when the average person on the street is blithely unaware of the platforms of the main parties.
So it might be a good piece of opposition politics - but it's a hell of a bad piece of Government politics. When they're in power, Reform will need to actually place such infrastructure somewhere one anticipates. They've just made it wayyy more difficult with this silliness. Portraying them as a blight is stupid in itself - we cannot build any prisons because communities protest at having them. These places are infrastructure and a source of employment. Some of these places will need to be built in Reform-voting areas, so Reform have just stored up a promise to break. I think it's a Zia Yusuf policy. He's combative and in many ways very impressive, but hotheaded and doesn't think things through enough.
It is not related to this specifically, but I'd already decided to vote Tory.
I'm a bit rusty on the numbers. How many individuals are Reform talking about? And what is their definition of migrants, refugees and illegals Do they include people given a visa to work here i.e. economic migrants or not?
Google tell me there are only 80K (compared to 70mn population) so can't see what's the fuss. I'm I missing something here.
Comments
If the secretary of state is empowered to build detention centres at places of his choosing, you can probably go to JR that his choice to build one in Chipping Bufton wasn't made correctly, that he hadn't do so in accordance with the equalities act etc etc.
If parliament passes the "Chipping Bufton Detention Centre Act" , which explicitly permits the secretary of state to build a detention centre in Chipping Bufton, regardless of the provisions of the town and country planning act, the human rights act or the equality act, then there isn't going to be much of an angle for JR.
The American government doesn't give much of a flying one about the welfare of its people, but has to a bit. The serious consequences of the Straits being closed just haven't hit yet.
Someone produced a map of when the shit would hit the fan in various countries, given how predictable ship motion is. I assume we're still on schedule.
The effects of our policies are so bad that we promise not to put them in your constituency is certainly an interesting campaign message
https://bsky.app/profile/henrymance.ft.com/post/3mkzamr2fes25
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/01/rees-mogg-has-a-diamond-deal-for-mamdani/ (£££)
IIRC one provision in getting rid of the fixed term parliament act was to state proroguing parliament was nob-justiciable, funnily enough.
They've also made this useful graphic:
‘Lift me, lift me, ma bonnie, wee lassie!’
Mayor of Greater Manchester’s camp makes discreet approaches to senior officials as speculation mounts about his return to Westminster
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/03/andy-burnham-allies-keir-starmer-downing-street-staff-stay/ (£££)
Mayor of Greater Manchester’s camp makes discreet approaches to senior officials as speculation mounts about his return to Westminster
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/03/andy-burnham-allies-keir-starmer-downing-street-staff-stay/ (£££)
* England only I think?
Both sides seem to be gambling the other won’t be able to withstand their respective blockade. Iran are reportedly slowing oil production and filling tankers as storage.
Israel are now re-considering the previously mooted Ben Gurion canal. Tactically closing Hormuz may make sense, strategically it’s not. Medium to Longer term strategies to mitigate Will be implemented. However short term we all get to feel the pain.
https://hormuztracking.com/
In Antigua & Barbuda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Antiguan_general_election
There are three considerations:
1) This sort of thing would need a Reform majority (325+) not just a Reform led government. This is about 11/4 at the moment. It won't happen.
2) Courts interpret statutes in the light of all other laws which bind us. There are about 800 years worth of these and will take some unravelling by a Reform government.
3) The possibility of the SC declaring some part of some statutes unconstitutional in themselves is untested, despite the fact that everyone always says they can't. The SC also has the interesting power of being able to overrule itself. It can and possibly will do all this when faced with plainly unconstitutional action. Note the prorogation case, where it was assumed by many that the SC could not and would not interfere with Royal Prerogative. They simply found a way of bypassing it.
Why don't we have many financial institutions capable of doing that? Largely because a generation of carpetbaggers decided to take the money upfront.
(I know, there's more to it than that. Since the Coventry BS took over Co-op bank, they've cut branch opening hours massively. But it's not more complicated than that.)
The Express: Princess Di's memorial damaged by Russian vandals.
wondering how Farage would react if Labour said no new hospitals would be built in Reform constituencies?
Are you twelve ?
In Armenia, Zelenskyy says Ukrainian drones could also fly over Russia’s May 9 parade in Moscow.
I'm told, apparently by those in the know, the latest policy inanity from Zia Yusuf and Reform is "good news for Kemi".
I'm not so sure - it puts into closer focus the question of whether the Conservatives could or should support a Reform minority Government were such an eventuality to transpire at the next GE. Is Badenoch really going to sign up to this nonsense for a few seats at Cabinet?
The problem with coalitions (as Nick Clegg will tell you) is you may get some of what you want but you will also have to support some things you don't want because they are the policy of the other partyand this is the point where notions of "red lines" come into play.
Would Badenoch agree to support this as Reform policy were a Conservative Party led by her to be supporting a minority Reform Government?
Badenoch, Davey and, to an extent, Polanski can all play the equidistance game for now but as the GE approaches and we start to see the possible shape of the next House of Commons, the time for hard decisions will approach. Seat projections seem only to agree on Reform as largest party - it could be any of Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Green who form the lead opposition party as the second largest bloc of seats (it's seats that count, not votes, unfortunately).
It's also worth noting the Government only needs to command the confidence of the House. It doesn't have to be formed from the party with the most seats or even the second largest group of seats as long as it has a majority (not even an overall majority).
However, they have won no friends. If there was an alternative, people would jump at it. So Building Societies are mopping up - and the Banking Hub in Dartmouth is very popular.
The worst thing about this policy isn't the location childishness, it's the idea of spending billions on detention centres, alongside targets for mass deportation which imply a similar contempt for due process and resort to random detention that's currently on show in the US.
Yusuf is just another tinpot would-be authoritarian.
Landslide Lyndon was indeed a worse vote rigger.
Or rather a better vote rigger as his vote rigging was successful whereas Trump's attempts were as incompetent and thuggish as everything else he does.
Still I'll leave you with your fantasies that Trump won in 2024 because of 'substantial vote rigging' and not because the Dems had among other failings lost control of the border, driven away centrists, near unanimously chosen an senile octogenarian as candidate and then replaced him with someone who was dismally mediocre and who didn't even campaign on the successful signature policy of the administration she was VP of.
As to ICE, anyone having multiple violent confrontations with US law enforcement is behaving very rashly. Anyone doing so while being in possession of a handgun even more so. Did Alex Pretti deserve to die ? No, but he did deserve a spell in prison in the same way the Wath rioters did in this country.
“Where Wes has an advantage is that the cabinet won’t want to hand the party over to Sam Tarry. Where he has a disadvantage is that his colleagues can’t stand him.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/starmer-fight-political-rivals-labour-party_uk_69f5a850e4b06e9242f49010
It's an absurd policy, and we shouldn't waste mental energy on parsing the petty detail.
It will suit Reform to have a coalition too, they can ditch some of the more performative nonsense they've spouted (and they'll know it's performative nonsense now, even as they say it) and blame the Tories. Everyone's a winner.
If that happens, quite probably, like Canada, Reform will absorb the Tories at the end of the next parliament, and it will be one centre right party vs three left wing parties in the 2034 elections.
Still, speaking about leaving you with your fantasies…
When you are elected, you are not the representative of Much Binding South or wherever, you are a Member of the Council which requires you to take the overview. That means if a service needs to be cut in your area to fund a better provision somewhere else where it's needed, you can argue the case but if the view is the provision is needed elsewhere, you support that and you have to argue the case locally to your possibly angry constituents.
Fraser Nelson
@FraserNelson
·
1h
Another significant evolution in Reform's style of politics. Its proposed internment camps will only be built in parts of the country that vote for its rivals.
This is a new departure for UK politics: rejecting the idea of PM-for-all and instead a new partisan style.
https://x.com/FraserNelson/status/2051206493182018013
https://x.com/SpencerHakimian/status/2051162859472658812?s=20
The verdict is in. 🗳️
Gary like so many people is voting Green. 💚
Whereas there's not much doubt that Landslide Lyndon's 87 vote victory in the 1948 Dem Primary for the Texas Senate seat was fraudulent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_Senate_election_in_Texas#Democratic_primary
Is there a philosophical convergence between Reform and Conservatives? I don't see it - Reform themselves are conflicted between the Thatcherite leadership and the ex-Boris Johnson supporters who actually want more money spent in WWC areas rather than big spending and tax cuts.
Actually, the Conservatives are also still throwing out the barely costed pledges and have yet to really explain what Services they would cut and how they would reduce Welfare to pay for some of their pledges.
Putting all that to one side, the personal relationship between Cameron and Clegg is to an extent paralleled with Farage and Badnoch but does that apply through the two parties since they would (possibly) have been in close competition in the preceding election?
Badenoch will be aware of what happened to the LDs when they were the "junior partner" in the 2010-15 coalition and the notion of Reform activists not wanting to mop up Conservative seats is absurd. Yes, you may be right in that Reform will "absorb" the Conservatives but I can't see the Conservative Party wanting to die for convenience any more than the LDs did.
That's the tightrope Badenoch has to walk between now and the election and even after it.
Who is this man and what have they done with the President?
https://x.com/Proper_Memes/status/2050908832553951486
On topic, you clearly have no conception of the power of the working class woman. Back in the day it wasn't uncommon for a man to hand over his pay-packet, unopene,d to his wife, who would then dole out his beer and horses money.
There are multiple ironies in that, unacknowledged by another_richard.
Texas politics was corrupt long before LBJ came in the scene; Texas Democrats were back then as right wing as today's MAGA; LBJ was as corrupt as anyone in Washington, but at the same time, a liberal Trojan horse in the racist southern Democrat caucus, and a genuine social reformer, who but for the Vietnam quagmire might now be considered one of the greatest US Presidents.
And unlike Nixon, LBJ paid the price for lying to Congress, simply by recognising his own party's disgust with him, and not running for re-election.
In any event, it's ancient history now.
You get about 0.8% increase in energy density in your fuel for every 1 deg C decrease. Down to about 5 deg C when the additives might start fucking up.
Tomorrow, @TexasMonthly will be dropping a ~12,000 word story on Paul Pressler, the alleged sexual predator who remade the Southern Baptist Convention and helped ordain the marriage between the GOP and white evangelical voters. There is *a lot* in there and I hope you'll read it.
https://x.com/RobertDownen_/status/2051060558112162211
NEW THREAD
If this was so profitable - why doesn’t someone undercut the large charges that these “independent” machines charge for withdrawals?
The remote possibility of a Reform, or worse, government should remind normal people that the rule of law, the separation of powers and democracy as the system by which losers consent to be governed by sane governments they have not voted for is precious even when annoying litigants and lawyers clog up the courts.
We are possibly going to need them.
The location methodology brings to mind a quote.
“Own the Libtards”
The location is half of the reason for them - to “give Them a taste of their own medicine”.
How amusing that you choose to miss out the part of the quote which begins: "could be ... good news for Kemi". Those distorting LD genes again....
Just more vague posting
So it might be a good piece of opposition politics - but it's a hell of a bad piece of Government politics. When they're in power, Reform will need to actually place such infrastructure somewhere one anticipates. They've just made it wayyy more difficult with this silliness. Portraying them as a blight is stupid in itself - we cannot build any prisons because communities protest at having them. These places are infrastructure and a source of employment. Some of these places will need to be built in Reform-voting areas, so Reform have just stored up a promise to break. I think it's a Zia Yusuf policy. He's combative and in many ways very impressive, but hotheaded and doesn't think things through enough.
It is not related to this specifically, but I'd already decided to vote Tory.
Google tell me there are only 80K (compared to 70mn population) so can't see what's the fuss. I'm I missing something here.
https://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/stay-informed/explainers/top-facts-from-the-latest-statistics-on-refugees-and-people-seeking-asylum/