Sorry to go off topic so soon but in response to this comment by Mr Meeks on the previous thread -
“This morning has consisted largely of Leavers choosing to ignore an inconvenient poll finding. Roughly a quarter of the population believe that the referendum was won by cheating. That has big implications for the democratic process.”
I agree. But what to do?
Personally I don't see it as any different to Labour's manifesto that they went to court to prove was bunkum, or the posters depicting Alex Salmond as a thief in Broxtowe.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
How is he doing with the Jews do you think?
Much the same as before....the Jewish who are fervently nationalist about their home state will give him short change. And as someone who deeply loves Israel, I can understand their perspective, sort of. The diminishing group of Jewish folk who believe an accommodation with Palestine is achievable and desirable will still lend him their ear.....
JC is no anti semite....that is stating the bleeding obvious....
Was before any Scottish results and reliable sources saying Canterbury and Shipley were lost, oh and the Tooting result had just come in.
They remembered I called Tory Majority and a Leave victory before the networks did.
Curtice never had the Conservatives on fewer than 311 seats, so I never thought Corbyn would be in a position to govern. I was still shocked by the exit poll, though.
I think Corbyn will lead Labour for as long as he wishes.
I was very disappointed at the Exit Poll, but I wasn't shocked at it. No, I was far more shocked at May calling a surprise GE when she had previously said she would not do so. That was the far bigger political mistake, even more so than May's poor performance during the campaign. Calling an unnecessary GE looked like a very cynical and self serving move, even more so after the launch of that disasterous manifesto which seemed to indicate that May and her team really were rather arrogantly taking not just their own voter base for granted, but the electorate in general. Its no wonder with hind sight that Corbyn and his team were able to energise not just their own supporters, but other more normally disinfranchised voters.
It still amazes me that May and her team obiviously ignored all the clear political risks, especially after what happened to Gordon Brown so early in his premiership when he allowed speculation of an early snap GE to get out of hand before bottling it when the polls became less favourable. I thought that they had when May initially shut down similar speculation. And as with Corbyn and the Labour party, the threat of that unnecessary snap Autumn GE back in 2007 galvanised Cameron and the Conservative party rather than sending them into dissarray.
Corbyn will stay until the next election shows he is unelectable.
The “wildcard” is Theresa May. She is one of the few Tory leaders who could lose to Corbyn, as she so nearly did last year.
Side topic:
We’ve heard a lot about the dodgy harvesting of Facebook data by Leave. We haven’t heard much about the proliferation of pro-Brexit, fake news pushed by Russia online. How much was that worth to Leave?
And, it could have made the difference. TV was pretty equal Leave v Remain. But newspapers were pro-Leave, as was social media.
At the end of the day, I don’t find the election particularly safe and it’s another good reason for a vote - this time on the Deal.
But the real reason Remain lost was because Remain were crap and complacent.
Actually the last polling comparing Hammond, Rudd, Davis and Boris and May v Corbyn Labour from Survation showed May got a higher Tory voteshare than all of them bar Boris
Was before any Scottish results and reliable sources saying Canterbury and Shipley were lost, oh and the Tooting result had just come in.
They remembered I called Tory Majority and a Leave victory before the networks did.
Curtice never had the Conservatives on fewer than 311 seats, so I never thought Corbyn would be in a position to govern. I was still shocked by the exit poll, though.
I just read that thread and thought they actually had lost Shipley - didnt remember that!
I heard the rumour, but disbelieved it.
I heard it from two reliable sources.
One of whom also said Canterbury was gone.
I struggled to process it.
GIven Canterbury was won by 187 votes at 10:43 AM there is no way anyone could have known it was gone before about 6 AM.
You can tell by looking at the piles of votes and teller returns from the day.
And for betting at 25/1 you do not need to be sure. Just knowing things are too close to call in a constituency accustomed to weighing the vote is enough to get your betting boots on.
Oh for sure you can tell it is TCTC but it could have just as easily ended up in the pile of this lot..
bigjohnowls Posts: 9,489 June 2017 Amber Rudd is officially an ex MP
Its going to be 330. I told you 4.5 hours ago now.
Paristonda said: Hahaha Philip Davies gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Best result so far.
Not my finest hour. I was assuming that we would have a repeat of 2015 where the number of Tory seats edged up over the night into a modest majority. If anything in 2017 the Tories went backwards with unexpected losses and only Scotland saving them from a completely ungovernable disaster.
The Tories got 318 seats which was still 4 better than the 314 the BBC exit poll predicted
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Middle aged voters who were scared at the prospect of Mrs May taking away their inheritance.
You mean people who actually wanted to keep a smaller inheritance - £23k as opposed to £100k.
Pensioners who own a home - so have negligible housing costs - and a modest private and or state pension will mostly end up paying for the entire cost of their home care. It's residential care that costs the big bucks and where dementia patients eventually end up.
Of course how socialist is it to say someone worth £5 million (as they own a £3m house which a charge could be places) but savings of £20k should get free home care in reality - assuming they even get a package from their council which is a big if - but someone who is worth only £50k (in Savings) who rents has to pay 100 per cent of the costs.
What a shameful system whereby someone who is worth 100 times as much gets something for free whereas the other pays the entire cost - which May tried to suggest should be changed - but failed to explain why.
Social care is in a shocking state and many homes are frankly a disgrace with poor care staffed by minimum wage earning staff - but hey let's worry about the inheritance not the care of the person who we inherit from.
Only about a quarter of pensioners will ever end up in a care home, a higher percentage will need personal care
On topic, I agree with Mike. The value is with Corbyn staying the year. He's shown vulnerabilities these last weeks - and the vulnerability of hubris, which is particularly dangerous - but there's unlikely to be any issue that brings matters to a head in such a way that he can be deposed. Brexit won't be easy for him but either there's a relatively easy agreement in October - in which case the pressure will be off Corbyn a bit - or that it won't get serious on the domestic front until December, in which case the divisions will come too late for 2018.
I don't think that it's a given that Corbyn will serve through to 2022 but it is likely, with all that means for the future of Labour.
Corbyn is vulnerable to an internal coup by his own supporters, who may conclude (correctly, I think) that he is an overall drag on the ticket (not to mention the age concerns).
But not this year - if you're planning for a 2022 election then a new leader around 2020 would probably be about right. The competition amongst the left to be that leader will be intense.
I think that Corbyn is safe as long as he has broad support with the membership, as no-one else on the left has the same personal appeal. This is true even if he is vulnerable with the wider electorate.
I think the probability is that once he has control of the party apparatus (which he seems to at the moment), he will step down. He was very close to stepping down after Brexit. So a 2018 exit may not be that unrealistic, but 3/1 is not good value.
I don't recall having seen any debate on how Corbyn's age impacts on this. He's obviously not young and sometimes he looks really old and I'm sure can be made to look so. If he were a woman, I think appearance would be central to perceptions even of competence but, as a man, I suspect this is less of an issue but still an issue. Personal appeal is surely a very flaky central plank in the "appeal" factors generally.
Recognising my own bias, I still reckon than Corbyn is past peak appeal with little chance of doing anything but slow down a relentless decline. Happy birthday Jeremy.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Lots of the naive (of whom there are many) will have voted for Corbyn.
Was before any Scottish results and reliable sources saying Canterbury and Shipley were lost, oh and the Tooting result had just come in.
They remembered I called Tory Majority and a Leave victory before the networks did.
Curtice never had the Conservatives on fewer than 311 seats, so I never thought Corbyn would be in a position to govern. I was still shocked by the exit poll, though.
I think Corbyn will lead Labour for as long as he wishes.
I was very disappointed at the Exit Poll, but I wasn't shocked at it. No, I was far more shocked at May calling a surprise GE when she had previously said she would not do so. That was the far bigger political mistake, even more so than May's poor performance during the campaign. Calling an unnecessary GE looked like a very cynical and self serving move, even more so after the launch of that disasterous manifesto which seemed to indicate that May and her team really were rather arrogantly taking not just their own voter base for granted, but the electorate in general. Its no wonder with hind sight that Corbyn and his team were able to energise not just their own supporters, but other more normally disinfranchised voters.
It still amazes me that May and her team obiviously ignored all the clear political risks, especially after what happened to Gordon Brown so early in his premiership when he allowed speculation of an early snap GE to get out of hand before bottling it when the polls became less favourable. I thought that they had when May initially shut down similar speculation. And as with Corbyn and the Labour party, the threat of that unnecessary snap Autumn GE back in 2007 galvanised Cameron and the Conservative party rather than sending them into dissarray.
Though had Brown called that 2007 general election he would certainly have got more than the 29% he got in 2010
Corbyn will stay until the next election shows he is unelectable.
The “wildcard” is Theresa May. She is one of the few Tory leaders who could lose to Corbyn, as she so nearly did last year.
Side topic:
We’ve heard a lot about the dodgy harvesting of Facebook data by Leave. We haven’t heard much about the proliferation of pro-Brexit, fake news pushed by Russia online. How much was that worth to Leave?
And, it could have made the difference. TV was pretty equal Leave v Remain. But newspapers were pro-Leave, as was social media.
At the end of the day, I don’t find the election particularly safe and it’s another good reason for a vote - this time on the Deal.
But the real reason Remain lost was because Remain were crap and complacent.
Actually the last polling comparing Hammond, Rudd, Davis and Boris and May v Corbyn Labour from Survation showed May got a higher Tory voteshare than all of them bar Boris
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
Good post Foxy....kind of explains why someone like Corbyn has grown on people like us...the Russia and anti semitic stuff is going to get as much traction as a coach stuck in a snowstorm....
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English. You'd trust him to look after your kids and you would always appreciate bumping into him in the street to have a quick natter...
Speak for yourself. I wouldn't trust him with my cat and I'd cross the M1 on foot to avoid talking to him.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Lots of the naive (of whom there are many) will have voted for Corbyn.
The LDs got 7%, the Liberals lowest general election voteshare since 1959, UKIP and the Greens got under 2%, their lowest voteshare since 2001, most of the non Tory protest vote went to Corbyn and a fair few who did not vote in 2015 too
1987, 2001, 2005 were particularly boring nights.....
The hegemony of Thatcher and Blair made election nights akin to watching Man City play West Brom.....
Completely agree. 2017 was supposed to be another one of those walkovers. Instead it proved to be rather gripping. After 2015 as well we are probably a bit spoilt for excitement on election nights. We are due a dull one.
For me, 2015 was the exact opposite of 2017. I was delighted that Cameron and Osborne had somehow manufactured a majority but I was in despair at the success of the SNP in Scotland. Avalanche doesn't quite do it credit. Probably the most remarkable achievement by any political party in my adult lifetime.
I disagree a little about the SNP. While not healthy at the time for one party to have such dominance, that's eased off now but what it has shown is that no party can rely on voters it takes for granted, and that there are no safe seats anywhere in Scotland any more. That has to be a good thing.
To win 56/59 seats was an astonishing achievement. Scottish Labour had been a tottering edifice for years hollowed out, unloved and neglected but the extent of its demolition was incredible. The Scottish Liberal Democrats were in a similar position. Of course only FPTP could really deliver a result like that in a true democracy. I don't think we will see the like again.
I put this idea forward with a little trepidation, but it's possible that AV could as well? (As indeed could the French two-round system).
I don't think that AV or 2-round run-offs would have worked that well for the SNP - it would have allowed unionist votes to consolidate - but that's down to the nature of the SNP. In other scenarios - where the dominant party is less divisive and fairly centralist, as in 1997, for example, AV translates a party's lead in votes into an even greater one in seats than FPTP does.
Sorry to go off topic so soon but in response to this comment by Mr Meeks on the previous thread -
“This morning has consisted largely of Leavers choosing to ignore an inconvenient poll finding. Roughly a quarter of the population believe that the referendum was won by cheating. That has big implications for the democratic process.”
I agree. But what to do?
What do you expect when the majority of our TV news media are remainers and easily getting the message out from the remain die hards.
The leave side need to fight back,laziness has set in on the leave side.
Leave 'fighting back' would be counterproductive. All we are seeing now is a natural consequence of the referendum win: before that, leave were the insurgents and remain the status quo. Insurgents are always more interesting for the media than the establishment. Therefore before the vote, leave got the media attention. Now it's been switched.
The best thing leave can do is produce a good Brexit for the country. That's the way to 'win'; if you fail in that, then it doesn't matter how much you fight on the airwaves: you'll lose.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
Good post Foxy....kind of explains why someone like Corbyn has grown on people like us...the Russia and anti semitic stuff is going to get as much traction as a coach stuck in a snowstorm....
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English. You'd trust him to look after your kids and you would always appreciate bumping into him in the street to have a quick natter...
He does seem to do well with people.He came to York in late 2015 to visit flood victims.He stayed for ages speaking to them.The local media seem impressed with his presence.As did the flood victims in all the reports.This was at a time when he was getting the MSm treatment as now.
However my brother originally very anti Corbyn person.Now states to everyone who will listen he supports him after the last GE, but he will not become PM , as they will do him in, one way or another.He does go in for a lot of Conspiracy theories though.Nevertheless you do get the feeling , the full force of the establishment is against him.
Corbyn is vulnerable to an internal coup by his own supporters, who may conclude (correctly, I think) that he is an overall drag on the ticket (not to mention the age concerns).
But not this year - if you're planning for a 2022 election then a new leader around 2020 would probably be about right. The competition amongst the left to be that leader will be intense.
I don't think he's vulnerable to an internal coup at all - his supporters are notably loyal (although McDonnell is much wilier, he's remained strikingly on-message) and Corbyn is personally far more popular in the party than any other left-winger. What might happen is that he decided himself that the cause was best served by someone else, in which case he'd stand down in a heartbeat - I don't know anyone who puts the cause ahead of his own role more than he does. But for the present, I don't see that someone else would do better, and I doubt if he does.
We will have to see what details emerged, but I think it is entirely reasonable for a 78-year old man to use a weapon against an intruder in his house.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
How is he doing with the Jews do you think?
Much the same as before....the Jewish who are fervently nationalist about their home state will give him short change. And as someone who deeply loves Israel, I can understand their perspective, sort of. The diminishing group of Jewish folk who believe an accommodation with Palestine is achievable and desirable will still lend him their ear.....
JC is no anti semite....that is stating the bleeding obvious....
Only he will know the truth of your last sentence but it certainly isn't bleeding obvious, only a myopic would think so.
Corbyn is vulnerable to an internal coup by his own supporters, who may conclude (correctly, I think) that he is an overall drag on the ticket (not to mention the age concerns).
But not this year - if you're planning for a 2022 election then a new leader around 2020 would probably be about right. The competition amongst the left to be that leader will be intense.
I don't think he's vulnerable to an internal coup at all - his supporters are notably loyal (although McDonnell is much wilier, he's remained strikingly on-message) and Corbyn is personally far more popular in the party than any other left-winger. What might happen is that he decided himself that the cause was best served by someone else, in which case he'd stand down in a heartbeat - I don't know anyone who puts the cause ahead of his own role more than he does. But for the present, I don't see that someone else would do better, and I doubt if he does.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
Jezza is not a horned demon no, he's worse. Horns at least would warn the ignorant on how dangerous he is.
His idols that have destroyed their nations economy and impoverished their people weren't horned demons either.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Voters didn't think Theresa May deserved a 100 seat majority and swung against her at the end of the campaign.
We will have to see what details emerged, but I think it is entirely reasonable for a 78-year old man to use a weapon against an intruder in his house.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Middle aged voters who were scared at the prospect of Mrs May taking away their inheritance.
You mean people who actually wanted to keep a smaller inheritance - £23k as opposed to £100k.
Pensioners who own a home - so have negligible housing costs - and a modest private and or state pension will mostly end up paying for the entire cost of their home care. It's residential care that costs the big bucks and where dementia patients eventually end up.
Of course how socialist is it to say someone worth £5 million (as they own a £3m house which a charge could be places) but savings of £20k should get free home care in reality - assuming they even get a package from their council which is a big if - but someone who is worth only £50k (in Savings) who rents has to pay 100 per cent of the costs.
What a shameful system whereby someone who is worth 100 times as much gets something for free whereas the other pays the entire cost - which May tried to suggest should be changed - but failed to explain why.
Social care is in a shocking state and many homes are frankly a disgrace with poor care staffed by minimum wage earning staff - but hey let's worry about the inheritance not the care of the person who we inherit from.
Only about a quarter of pensioners will ever end up in a care home, a higher percentage will need personal care
That still doesn't discount the fact that warehousing old people in care homes staffed by people paid a pittance is really quite disgusting. Many go because they lose mental capacity, and the rest go because they are bullied by their families who cannot cope and have no alternatives. The vast majority of the population would not wish a care home on themselves...so why have we created these horrible, dehumanised institutions to care for our loved ones is really quite unfathomable and cruel. As I posted earlier, it is one of those things that future generations will berate us for because surely they would have come up with something much more imaginative and satisfying for for those at the end of their lives.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
I think Jezza wrong about many things, and he has a Thatcher like rigidity of opinion, that is similtaneously a strength and also an Achilles heel. What he has done for Labour most of all is to give them back their Mojo. For too long there have been grey party leaders without a vision, and when someone comes along with one, the world beats a path to their door.
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, but they will need to maintain the same level of passion. Parties change tack surprisingly quickly. 10 years after Foot, Blair was in post and 10 years after Blair, Corbyn was. The common factor of all of these was their ability to inspire. Labour Moderates should take comfort from this, but also work on why they should have support. What can they offer the country?
Curtice never had the Conservatives on fewer than 311 seats, so I never thought Corbyn would be in a position to govern. I was still shocked by the exit poll, though.
I just read that thread and thought they actually had lost Shipley - didnt remember that!
I heard the rumour, but disbelieved it.
I heard it from two reliable sources.
One of whom also said Canterbury was gone.
I struggled to process it.
GIven Canterbury was won by 187 votes at 10:43 AM there is no way anyone could have known it was gone before about 6 AM.
You can tell by looking at the piles of votes and teller returns from the day.
And for betting at 25/1 you do not need to be sure. Just knowing things are too close to call in a constituency accustomed to weighing the vote is enough to get your betting boots on.
Oh for sure you can tell it is TCTC but it could have just as easily ended up in the pile of this lot..
bigjohnowls Posts: 9,489 June 2017 Amber Rudd is officially an ex MP
Its going to be 330. I told you 4.5 hours ago now.
Paristonda said: Hahaha Philip Davies gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Best result so far.
Not my finest hour. I was assuming that we would have a repeat of 2015 where the number of Tory seats edged up over the night into a modest majority. If anything in 2017 the Tories went backwards with unexpected losses and only Scotland saving them from a completely ungovernable disaster.
The Tories got 318 seats which was still 4 better than the 314 the BBC exit poll predicted
True but I think that was because of some truly sensational swings in NE Scotland.
Corbyn is vulnerable to an internal coup by his own supporters, who may conclude (correctly, I think) that he is an overall drag on the ticket (not to mention the age concerns).
But not this year - if you're planning for a 2022 election then a new leader around 2020 would probably be about right. The competition amongst the left to be that leader will be intense.
I don't think he's vulnerable to an internal coup at all - his supporters are notably loyal (although McDonnell is much wilier, he's remained strikingly on-message) and Corbyn is personally far more popular in the party than any other left-winger. What might happen is that he decided himself that the cause was best served by someone else, in which case he'd stand down in a heartbeat - I don't know anyone who puts the cause ahead of his own role more than he does. But for the present, I don't see that someone else would do better, and I doubt if he does.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Lots of the naive (of whom there are many) will have voted for Corbyn.
The LDs got 7%, the Liberals lowest general election voteshare since 1959, UKIP and the Greens got under 2%, their lowest voteshare since 2001, most of the non Tory protest vote went to Corbyn and a fair few who did not vote in 2015 too
All the fault of the so-called "Progressive Alliance", which more or less instructed everybody to vote Labour. This worked, though, because the Tory campaign focused on the creation of a Tory-May dictatorship, which everybody wanted to prevent. I don`t think the Tories will make that mistake again.
You are in that tricky area where public policy dictates that killing someone requires a full investigation, although it is hard to see any jury ever convicting him of defending himself against an intruder. So the process is essentially a waste of police time, but one we - and the poor bugger whose house was invaded - have to go through.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
I think Jezza wrong about many things, and he has a Thatcher like rigidity of opinion, that is similtaneously a strength and also an Achilles heel. What he has done for Labour most of all is to give them back their Mojo. For too long there have been grey party leaders without a vision, and when someone comes along with one, the world beats a path to their door.
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, but they will need to maintain the same level of passion. Parties change tack surprisingly quickly. 10 years after Foot, Blair was in post and 10 years after Blair, Corbyn was. The common factor of all of these was their ability to inspire. Labour Moderates should take comfort from this, but also work on why they should have support. What can they offer the country?
The common factor is that both Foot and Corbyn failed to win an election. Despite all the rhetoric and 'inspiration'.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Nah. It was Boris and the FCO saying Porton Down had confirmed it was Russia now they are deleting all evidence of them saying that.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Nah. It was Boris and the FCO saying Porton Down had confirmed it was Russia now they are deleting all evidence of them saying that.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
Like I said, journalists don't seem to understand how science works.
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Middle aged voters who were scared at the prospect of Mrs May taking away their inheritance.
You mean people who actually wanted to keep a smaller inheritance - £23k as opposed to £100k.
Pensioners who own a home - so have negligible housing costs - and a modest private and or state pension will mostly end up paying for the entire cost of their home care. It's residential care that costs the big bucks and where dementia patients eventually end up.
Of course how socialist is it to say someone worth £5 million (as they own a £3m house which a charge could be places) but savings of £20k should get free home care in reality - assuming they even get a package from their council which is a big if - but someone who is worth only £50k (in Savings) who rents has to pay 100 per cent of the costs.
What a shameful system whereby someone who is worth 100 times as much gets something for free whereas the other pays the entire cost - which May tried to suggest should be changed - but failed to explain why.
Social care is in a shocking state and many homes are frankly a disgrace with poor care staffed by minimum wage earning staff - but hey let's worry about the inheritance not the care of the person who we inherit from.
Only about a quarter of pensioners will ever end up in a care home, a higher percentage will need personal care
That still doesn't discount the fact that warehousing old people in care homes staffed by people paid a pittance is really quite disgusting. Many go because they lose mental capacity, and the rest go because they are bullied by their families who cannot cope and have no alternatives. The vast majority of the population would not wish a care home on themselves...so why have we created these horrible, dehumanised institutions to care for our loved ones is really quite unfathomable and cruel. As I posted earlier, it is one of those things that future generations will berate us for because surely they would have come up with something much more imaginative and satisfying for for those at the end of their lives.
Depends on the care home, the best ones provide all round care with a range of social activities, reasonable food and entertainments
Corbyn is vulnerable to an internal coup by his own supporters, who may conclude (correctly, I think) that he is an overall drag on the ticket (not to mention the age concerns).
But not this year - if you're planning for a 2022 election then a new leader around 2020 would probably be about right. The competition amongst the left to be that leader will be intense.
I don't think he's vulnerable to an internal coup at all - his supporters are notably loyal (although McDonnell is much wilier, he's remained strikingly on-message) and Corbyn is personally far more popular in the party than any other left-winger. What might happen is that he decided himself that the cause was best served by someone else, in which case he'd stand down in a heartbeat - I don't know anyone who puts the cause ahead of his own role more than he does. But for the present, I don't see that someone else would do better, and I doubt if he does.
The naivety is mind boggling
Whose? Nick P? or Labour members?
I can't see anything wrong with Nick's analysis. Jezza aint going anywhere soon.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Nah. It was Boris and the FCO saying Porton Down had confirmed it was Russia now they are deleting all evidence of them saying that.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
Like I said, journalists don't seem to understand how science works.
It Boris and the FCO who don’t seem to understand how science works.
Mr. Price, indeed. The media are being useful idiots over this. The ITV journalist asking the chemical weapons expert to confirm Porton Down made/could make Novichok was baffling in its stupidity.
An ex-Russian spy has been killed using chemical weaponry in Salisbury. Following on from the Litvinenko case, you'd have to be crackers to think the UK, US, France or any comparable power was to blame.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
Jezza is not a horned demon no, he's worse. Horns at least would warn the ignorant on how dangerous he is.
His idols that have destroyed their nations economy and impoverished their people weren't horned demons either.
Many of his idols did far worse than your last sentence suggests
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
I think Jezza wrong about many things, and he has a Thatcher like rigidity of opinion, that is similtaneously a strength and also an Achilles heel. What he has done for Labour most of all is to give them back their Mojo. For too long there have been grey party leaders without a vision, and when someone comes along with one, the world beats a path to their door.
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, e country?
The common factor is that both Foot and Corbyn failed to win an election. Despite all the rhetoric and 'inspiration'.
Though after Blair, Wilson and Attlee Corbyn is now Labour's 4th most successful post-war leader, in voteshare terms at least, though Kinnock got slightly more seats in 1992
@DavidL The post wasn't about your prediction particularly, more that "very close" results can't be predicted so early in the night..
Oh no worries. I was not offended.
It was a weird night, elated at the results in Scotland (Alex Salmond being a true highlight) but bewildered at what those Sassenachs were playing at down south. Watching Balls and Osborne through the internet was another pleasure. Some elections don't stay long in the memory. That one will.
1987, 2001, 2005 were particularly boring nights.....
The hegemony of Thatcher and Blair made election nights akin to watching Man City play West Brom.....
I’m going to the cathedral of football tonight, hopefully to see Citeh spanked.
Mr. Price, indeed. The media are being useful idiots over this. The ITV journalist asking the chemical weapons expert to confirm Porton Down made/could make Novichok was baffling in its stupidity.
An ex-Russian spy has been killed using chemical weaponry in Salisbury. Following on from the Litvinenko case, you'd have to be crackers to think the UK, US, France or any comparable power was to blame.
Boris and a FCO tweet said Porton Down had confirmed it was Russian.
So it was inevitable that people would ask why that wasn’t mention in the PD report.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, but actually a rather popular eccentric Englishman, with a deep and passionate feeling for the downtrodden. He fought on his own terms about domestic issues of fairness, intergenerational justice and a country fit to live in.
As @NickPalmer has pointed out, votes are not decided by their accountants going over the manifestos, it is an emotional choice about themes and values. Jezza does well with these, and despite his eccentricity has an Emotional Intelligence that connects, particularly outside the Westminster bubble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
I think Jezza wrong about many things, and he has a Thatcher like rigidity of opinion, that is similtaneously a strength and also an Achilles heel. What he has done for Labour most of all is to give them back their Mojo. For too long there have been grey party leaders without a vision, and when someone comes along with one, the world beats a path to their door.
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, but they will need to maintain the same level of passion. Parties change tack surprisingly quickly. 10 years after Foot, Blair was in post and 10 years after Blair, Corbyn was. The common factor of all of these was their ability to inspire. Labour Moderates should take comfort from this, but also work on why they should have support. What can they offer the country?
I agree , they do like a good tubthumper , Corbyn came to York and spoke in the main square.In contrast May came to York and went to the Barbican centre to speak to invited conservatives.
The Corbyn event generated a lot of local media coverage.It also imo produced a good result in York Central which spread to York Outer.
F1: Ladbrokes markets are up. There's also a special, 3.75 on Williams not getting a point in the next 5 races. It's a credible possibility, not sure if it counts as value.
That’s crap value as it includes Baku and Monaco, where things can and do happen.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
I am quite surprised that the man from Dstl was allowed to answer such questions. It should have been blindingly obvious that any ambiguity in his answers would be seized upon by Russia.
I don't expect any UK chemical forensics capability, or UK intelligence on Russian WMD programmes, that would definitively point the finger, to be disclosed to the public.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
I am quite surprised that the man from Dstl was allowed to answer such questions. It should have been blindingly obvious that any ambiguity in his answers would be seized upon by Russia.
I don't expect any UK chemical forensics capability. or UK intelligence on Russian WMD programmes, that would definitively point the finger to be disclosed to the public.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Lots of the naive (of whom there are many) will have voted for Corbyn.
The LDs got 7%, the Liberals lowest general election voteshare since 1959, UKIP and the Greens got under 2%, their lowest voteshare since 2001, most of the non Tory protest vote went to Corbyn and a fair few who did not vote in 2015 too
All the fault of the so-called "Progressive Alliance", which more or less instructed everybody to vote Labour. This worked, though, because the Tory campaign focused on the creation of a Tory-May dictatorship, which everybody wanted to prevent. I don`t think the Tories will make that mistake again.
No a majority of 1 would suffice for the Tories next time
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, bble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
I think Jezza wrong about many things, and he has a Thatcher like rigidity of opinion, that is similtaneously a strength and also an Achilles heel. What he has done for Labour most of all is to give them back their Mojo. For too long there have been grey party leaders without a vision, and when someone comes along with one, the world beats a path to their door.
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, but they will need to maintain the same level of passion. Parties change tack surprisingly quickly. 10 years after Foot, Blair was in post and 10 years after Blair, Corbyn was. The common factor of all of these was their ability to inspire. Labour Moderates should take comfort from this, but also work on why they should have support. What can they offer the country?
I agree , they do like a good tubthumper , Corbyn came to York and spoke in the main square.In contrast May came to York and went to the Barbican centre to speak to invited conservatives.
The Corbyn event generated a lot of local media coverage.It also imo produced a good result in York Central which spread to York Outer.
The only Tory who can attract a crowd like Corbyn is Boris which is why he is still the most likely candidate to succeed May in my view
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
I am quite surprised that the man from Dstl was allowed to answer such questions. It should have been blindingly obvious that any ambiguity in his answers would be seized upon by Russia.
I don't expect any UK chemical forensics capability, or UK intelligence on Russian WMD programmes, that would definitively point the finger, to be disclosed to the public.
I am amused by the ability of some people to appreciate nuance and ambiguity when it comes to Corbyn and anti-semitism, but not when it comes to Russia and chemical weapons. And vice versa.
No surprise that the media don't want to know about nuance in both situations.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
Middle aged voters who were scared at the prospect of Mrs May taking away their inheritance.
You mean people who actually wanted to keep a smaller inheritance - £23k as opposed to £100k.
Pensioners who own a home - so have negligible housing costs - and a modest private and or state pension will mostly end up paying for the entire cost of their home care. It's residential care that costs the big bucks and where dementia patients eventually end up.
Of course how socialist is it to say someone worth £5 million (as they own a £3m house which a charge could be places) but savings of £20k should get free home care in reality - assuming they even get a package from their council which is a big if - but someone who is worth only £50k (in Savings) who rents has to pay 100 per cent of the costs.
What a shameful system whereby someone who is worth 100 times as much gets something for free whereas the other pays the entire cost - which May tried to suggest should be changed - but failed to explain why.
Social care is in a shocking state and many homes are frankly a disgrace with poor care staffed by minimum wage earning staff - but hey let's worry about the inheritance not the care of the person who we inherit from.
Only about a quarter of pensioners will ever end up in a care home, a higher percentage will need personal care
That still doesn't discount the fact that warehousing old people in care homes staffed by people paid a pittance is really quite disgusting. Many go because they lose mental capacity, and the rest go because they are bullied by their families who cannot cope and have no alternatives. The vast majority of the population would not wish a care home on themselves...so why have we created these horrible, dehumanised institutions to care for our loved ones is really quite unfathomable and cruel. As I posted earlier, it is one of those things that future generations will berate us for because surely they would have come up with something much more imaginative and satisfying for for those at the end of their lives.
Ever considered such an option here? I am sure that there would be a market for it in Norfolk. A dementia village with pub, footy, dogs and betting shops might not be so bad.
1987, 2001, 2005 were particularly boring nights.....
The hegemony of Thatcher and Blair made election nights akin to watching Man City play West Brom.....
Completely agree. 2017 was supposed to be another one of those walkovers. Instead it proved to be rather gripping. After 2015 as well we are probably a bit spoilt for excitement on election nights. We are due a dull one.
For me, 2015 was the exact opposite of 2017. I was delighted that Cameron and Osborne had somehow manufactured a majority but I was in despair at the success of the SNP in Scotland. Avalanche doesn't quite do it credit. Probably the most remarkable achievement by any political party in my adult lifetime.
I disagree a little about the SNP. While not healthy at the time for one party to have such dominance, that's eased off now but what it has shown is that no party can rely on voters it takes for granted, and that there are no safe seats anywhere in Scotland any more. That has to be a good thing.
To win 56/59 seats was an astonishing achievement. Scottish Labour had been a tottering edifice for years hollowed out, unloved and neglected but the extent of its demolition was incredible. The Scottish Liberal Democrats were in a similar position. Of course only FPTP could really deliver a result like that in a true democracy. I don't think we will see the like again.
I put this idea forward with a little trepidation, but it's possible that AV could as well? (As indeed could the French two-round system).
I don't think that AV or 2-round run-offs would have worked that well for the SNP - it would have allowed unionist votes to consolidate - but that's down to the nature of the SNP. In other scenarios - where the dominant party is less divisive and fairly centralist, as in 1997, for example, AV translates a party's lead in votes into an even greater one in seats than FPTP does.
On topic, I agree with Mike. The value is with Corbyn staying the year. He's shown vulnerabilities these last weeks - and the vulnerability of hubris, which is particularly dangerous - but there's unlikely to be any issue that brings matters to a head in such a way that he can be deposed. Brexit won't be easy for him but either there's a relatively easy agreement in October - in which case the pressure will be off Corbyn a bit - or that it won't get serious on the domestic front until December, in which case the divisions will come too late for 2018.
I don't think that it's a given that Corbyn will serve through to 2022 but it is likely, with all that means for the future of Labour.
Yup - Corbyn stays and moreover the cancer in the party will continue to spread.
The Russians doing their usual thing of lying 100% of the time, and taking advantage of everyone else when they tell the truth, messy as it usually is.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
I am quite surprised that the man from Dstl was allowed to answer such questions. It should have been blindingly obvious that any ambiguity in his answers would be seized upon by Russia.
I don't expect any UK chemical forensics capability, or UK intelligence on Russian WMD programmes, that would definitively point the finger, to be disclosed to the public.
Did the man from DSTI say anything at all in public? The 22 Mar tweet is from the FO, not from Porton Down.
This is all embarrassing, but doesn't ultimately matter unless it turns out that it wasn't Russia at all. The countries who have pitched in on our side know that Boris is an arsehole, and have their own scientists who will have spoken direct to PD. So if they think it was Russia, it probably was.
Depends on the care home, the best ones provide all round care with a range of social activities, reasonable food and entertainments
Hyfud....even the "best" ones are staffed by people paid a pittance, with incredibly high staff turnover, and where old people are left languishing with other old people at the end of their lives....
whichever spin you put on it, and how much money you throw at a home...the concept is fundamentally wrong....
I've put a mother in a home, a father in law in a home, and now we are angling for a mother in law....there are no alternatives....but every relative who has this agonising decision to make has one thing in common..they are happy when they can make their excuse to bring any one visit at any one time to an end and leave said care home. And the vast majority are riddled with guilt about leaving them there. And that guilt never really goes away.
I do a spot of volunteering walking dogs for the elderly..it enables them to keep pets at home. It's a start. We just need to be a whole lot more imaginative about this population...in time with robots, greater professionalism and pay within care staff, unlocking some of the housing problem by mixed communities with young people, pets, students and families living amongst ailing old people..we'll find much better solutions than we have now.
An ex-Russian spy has been killed using chemical weaponry in Salisbury. Following on from the Litvinenko case, you'd have to be crackers to think the UK, US, France or any comparable power was to blame.
Yet people still do insist that the Litvinenko murder could have beenc carried out by someone else. On that issue I highly recommend Luke Harding's book A Very Expensive Poison, I honestly don't see how anyone could read the book and conclude that anyone other than the Russian state killed Litvinenko.
The amount of polonium used, its short half-life, and the processing to produce a soluble compound all point to the Russian state producing it.
The trail of radiation which tied up with flights, CCTV, hotel reservations, witnesses, and phone records, pointed to Lugovoi as the assassin.
The only two people present a both of the poisoning attemps were Lugovoi and Litvinenko, so Litvinenko was the target.
Lugovoi's spurious business dealings in London also suggest assassination was the true purpose of his visit, and he wasn't an unwilling mule.
And nothing that Russia has done since then suggests anything other than the guilt of the Russian state.
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
So British is he that he seems to hate everything about Britain. Sure he makes jam and has an allotment and is probably fun to chat to in the pub. My son has met him and had a selfie with him and said he was pleasant and polite. But so what? What he gets inspiration from - the Far Left - has caused misery to millions everywhere it has been tried. He is good at whipping up a crowd and is inspirational. Lots of good leaders are like that. Lots of bad ones too. It doesn't tell you anything about the quality of what he says.
He has not shown much emotional intelligence in the way he has dealt with his Jewish MPs and the Jewish community more widely. Perhaps that is his one blind spot. But it is one he has in relation to attacks against women in his party as well. It's a pretty large blind spot and suggests that his arc of sympathy and empathy is pretty limited to those who agree with him. In that, he is not that unusual but it is at odds with how he is presented by his supporters which is getting so untethered from the facts about him that it's beginning to resemble that house in Up, attached to balloons and floating well away from Planet Earth.
No jury is going to convict if the story is even half true. Nonetheless, I can see why the Police have to take a fatal stabbing so seriously, Albeit one rather different to the usual teenage gangsters.
Sorry to go off topic so soon but in response to this comment by Mr Meeks on the previous thread -
“This morning has consisted largely of Leavers choosing to ignore an inconvenient poll finding. Roughly a quarter of the population believe that the referendum was won by cheating. That has big implications for the democratic process.”
I agree. But what to do?
What do you expect when the majority of our TV news media are remainers and easily getting the message out from the remain die hards.
The leave side need to fight back,laziness has set in on the leave side.
Bollocks. The media was mostly for Leave
Mail..Sun..Express..Telegraph...S Times... and who has had more appearances on QT than anyone else - Farage.
Face facts: Remain had a huge advantage across the board, and totally blew it.
I don't buy that at all. I think it was finely balanced. Where papers were pro remain, it was quite highly caveated. It was the Times, as I recall, who were spectacularly critical of Camerons original deal.
As for the broadcast media, I don't accept that there was any significant bias towards Remain. The BBC was always presenting a countervailing view from 'leave' whenever some 'expert' or 'grandee' was wheeled out by the remain side.
The way I see it, there were were two dubious memes that were deployed very effectively by the leave side. One was that 'people are tired of experts', and the second was 'turkey is about to join the EU and 70 million turks are coming to the UK'. On the other hand, the remain side were seeking to rely on general statements like 'stronger in Europe', 'safer in Europe' , and hoping that people would accept this on the authority of the people who were telling them it, which turned out to be insufficient to get them over the line.
I thought the campaign on both sides was very poor. But I think the idea that leave cheated or there is some underlying conspiracy is nonsense. They won, at least partly because people are tired of experts and don't want 70 million Turks arriving in the UK. As disturbing as that may be, that is democracy, and we have to live with it.
Look at the link: Remain had overwhelming advantages. You might not like to buy it, but I'm afraid it's a fact.
The fact that so much of the support for Remain was qualified just goes to show what a poor product the EU was and is.
Has it been satisfactorily explained yet how Labour got 40% ? Apart from vague stuff about youth and collapsing UKIP it is still not clear who .voted for the berk.
We know that the Tories finished the election on much the same polling as they started, so there seem to be few Tory to Corbyn switchers, not surprisigly. What Jezza managed was to appeal to the other 58% more than Tories could comprehend, and judging by this thread struggle to do so now.
Jezza was not the horned demon that the papers made out, bble.
A good summary of how many supporters view him. It is just a pity that he is also a narrow minded idealogue who verges on being a fanatic. Many have projected qualities on to him that he does not possess and which are also contradictory. Many so want to believe so his unlikely coalition may persist but I think a big collapse in support wil happen at some stage, probably before the next GE.
I think Jezza wrong about many things, and he has a Thatcher like rigidity of opinion, that is similtaneously a strength and also an Achilles heel. What he has done for Labour most of all is to give them back their Mojo. For too long there have been grey party leaders without a vision, and when someone comes along with one, the world beats a path to their door.
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, but they will need to maintain the same level of passion. Parties change tack surprisingly quickly. 10 years after Foot, Blair was in post and 10 years after Blair, Corbyn was. The common factor of all of these was their ability to inspire. Labour Moderates should take comfort from this, but also work on why they should have support. What can they offer the country?
I agree , they do like a good tubthumper , Corbyn came to York and spoke in the main square.In contrast May came to York and went to the Barbican centre to speak to invited conservatives.
The Corbyn event generated a lot of local media coverage.It also imo produced a good result in York Central which spread to York Outer.
The only Tory who can attract a crowd like Corbyn is Boris which is why he is still the most likely candidate to succeed May in my view
Yes I agree, when Boris came to York during the referendum campaign he generated lots of publicity and a good crowd.
He reaches far beyond the conservative base , that is why Brexit needed him .
Still astonishing that Jez came within a few thousand votes of becoming Prime Minister last year.
There are at least two regular pb'ers on here who nearly gave me a heart-attack over that.
I did the same to Matthew Parker Street with this thread.
Was before any Scottish results and reliable sources saying Canterbury and Shipley were lost, oh and the Tooting result had just come in.
They remembered I called Tory Majority and a Leave victory before the networks did.
Curtice never had the Conservatives on fewer than 311 seats, so I never thought Corbyn would be in a position to govern. I was still shocked by the exit poll, though.
I just read that thread and thought they actually had lost Shipley - didnt remember that!
I heard the rumour, but disbelieved it.
I heard it from two reliable sources.
One of whom also said Canterbury was gone.
I struggled to process it.
GIven Canterbury was won by 187 votes at 10:43 AM there is no way anyone could have known it was gone before about 6 AM.
You can tell by looking at the piles of votes and teller returns from the day.
And for betting at 25/1 you do not need to be sure. Just knowing things are too close to call in a constituency accustomed to weighing the vote is enough to get your betting boots on.
Oh for sure you can tell it is TCTC but it could have just as easily ended up in the pile of this lot..
bigjohnowls Posts: 9,489 June 2017 Amber Rudd is officially an ex MP
Its going to be 330. I told you 4.5 hours ago now.
Paristonda said: Hahaha Philip Davies gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Best result so far.
Not my finest hour. I was assuming that we would have a repeat of 2015 where the number of Tory seats edged up over the night into a modest majority. If anything in 2017 the Tories went backwards with unexpected losses and only Scotland saving them from a completely ungovernable disaster.
I still have the text from No.10 at 9.40pm saying they expected a 40-70 seat majority.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Nah. It was Boris and the FCO saying Porton Down had confirmed it was Russia now they are deleting all evidence of them saying that.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
Blair and Campbell would have sent out a D-Notice.
Certain sections of the media are being useful idiots to the Kremlin agenda here.
The Russians doing their usual thing of lying 100% of the time, and taking advantage of everyone else when they tell the truth, messy as it usually is.
And, that's enough. There are enough people out there willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, who like to think they're savvy because they distrust Western officialdom.
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
So British is he that he seems to hate everything about Britain. Sure he makes jam and has an allotment and is probably fun to chat to in the pub. My son has met him and had a selfie with him and said he was pleasant and polite. But so what? What he gets inspiration from - the Far Left - has caused misery to millions everywhere it has been tried. He is good at whipping up a crowd and is inspirational. Lots of good leaders are like that. Lots of bad ones too. It doesn't tell you anything about the quality of what he says.
He has not shown much emotional intelligence in the way he has dealt with his Jewish MPs and the Jewish community more widely. Perhaps that is his one blind spot. But it is one he has in relation to attacks against women in his party as well. It's a pretty large blind spot and suggests that his arc of sympathy and empathy is pretty limited to those who agree with him. In that, he is not that unusual but it is at odds with how he is presented by his supporters which is getting so untethered from the facts about him that it's beginning to resemble that house in Up, attached to balloons and floating well away from Planet Earth.
I don't think he does hate everything about Britain. On the contrary he speaks from an ancient streak of British radical thought, from the Diggers, to the Trade Union movement, to the Chartists, to the CND marchers, from the writers like Paine to Foot and Benn. The Tory party do not have a monopoly on Britishness, nor does the Daily Mail.
So we have a nerve agent which is a part of a family of nerve agents developed in Russia which, to our knowledge, no one else has, used in an English street on a Russian double agent when with his Russian daughter and it is a story that Porton Down could not identify the origin of the actual molecules?
I mean, really? That's a story? When Porton Down did its job and identified this as Novichok the finger was pointed squarely at Russia. It still is. Absolutely nothing has changed other than some fairly incriminating statements about how residing in the UK is not particularly good for Russian's health.
Did the man from DSTI say anything at all in public?
He basically said to Sky that Dstl analysed the agent but couldn't prove it came from Russia. That's a completely fair scientific answer. But he also said that "other inputs" such as intelligence may enable the origin to be identified.
Dstl can tell you what it is, but it would take intelligence from MI6 and GCHQ to say where it was made. Some of those may be scientific and techincal, but it's not even inconceivable that we have communications intercepts that with hindsight pin it right on the Russian state.
No jury is going to convict if the story is even half true. Nonetheless, I can see why the Police have to take a fatal stabbing so seriously, Albeit one rather different to the usual teenage gangsters.
It’s one of those occasionally crappy cases which come up. There’s a dead man who has a family, and whatever the circumstances the police are bound to investigate what appears to be a homicide.
If the facts are as described, he’ll be charged with manslaughter and the Crown in an ideal world will send a lawyer to the Magistrate and tell him they intend to offer no evidence, so he’ll be found not guilty the same day. There’s no way anyone would want to put the case in front of a jury.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Nah. It was Boris and the FCO saying Porton Down had confirmed it was Russia now they are deleting all evidence of them saying that.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
As effective as that? Quite a step up.
But it is still the case that Porton Down identified the poison as a) a novichok nerve agent that b) required a degree of manufacturing complexity that only a state player could devise. Over to you MI6 - any body else making novichoks?
The Russians doing their usual thing of lying 100% of the time, and taking advantage of everyone else when they tell the truth, messy as it usually is.
And, that's enough. There are enough people out there willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, who like to think they're savvy because they distrust Western officialdom.
Well if we want to get really stupid about it it's only a matter of time before a journalist will say "can you 100% prove it?" And a scientist will of course say no.
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
So British is he that he seems to hate everything about Britain. Sure he makes jam and has an allotment and is probably fun to chat to in the pub. My son has met him and had a selfie with him and said he was pleasant and polite. But so what? What he gets inspiration from - the Far Left - has caused misery to millions everywhere it has been tried. He is good at whipping up a crowd and is inspirational. Lots of good leaders are like that. Lots of bad ones too. It doesn't tell you anything about the quality of what he says.
He has not shown much emotional intelligence in the way he has dealt with his Jewish MPs and the Jewish community more widely. Perhaps that is his one blind spot. But it is one he has in relation to attacks against women in his party as well. It's a pretty large blind spot and suggests that his arc of sympathy and empathy is pretty limited to those who agree with him. In that, he is not that unusual but it is at odds with how he is presented by his supporters which is getting so untethered from the facts about him that it's beginning to resemble that house in Up, attached to balloons and floating well away from Planet Earth.
I don't think he does hate everything about Britain. On the contrary he speaks from an ancient streak of British radical thought, from the Diggers, to the Trade Union movement, to the Chartists, to the CND marchers, from the writers like Paine to Foot and Benn. The Tory party do not have a monopoly on Britishness, nor does the Daily Mail.
There is a difference between being a radical and a different view on how we should be as a nation and supporting murderers of British citizens in the IRA, terrorists in Hamas and Hezbollah, instinctively being reluctant to criticise Russia for attempting murder on our streets and turning a blind eye to the vicious cruelty of any number of regimes provided that they are hostile to the West in general and the US and UK in particular. Much of this is just stupidity but I don't think that this gets him off the hook completely.
To win 56/59 seats was an astonishing achievement. Scottish Labour had been a tottering edifice for years hollowed out, unloved and neglected but the extent of its demolition was incredible. The Scottish Liberal Democrats were in a similar position. Of course only FPTP could really deliver a result like that in a true democracy. I don't think we will see the like again.
Did you see the article from Pete Wishart?
He seems to be suggesting Indyref2 will require another SNP majority at Holyrood...
You mean like the majority for independence they have at present.
My take on the US/China trade war is that the US is trying to get China to negotiate because any resolution will see China make more concessions than the US. China is upping the ante in the hope of neither side moving so they don't need to negotatiate. My 2 cents.
Sorry to go off topic so soon but in response to this comment by Mr Meeks on the previous thread -
“This morning has consisted largely of Leavers choosing to ignore an inconvenient poll finding. Roughly a quarter of the population believe that the referendum was won by cheating. That has big implications for the democratic process.”
I agree. But what to do?
Very little. It's the fate of being on the losing side, unexpectedly, in a close referendum that provides much of the ammunition for that.
It would be interesting, as well, to break down how much of that perception of "cheating" is down to perceived financial advantage, versus perceived unfair campaigning techniques, such as the £350m bus.
I think the former is a red herring, whereas I do think the £350m for the NHS bus had an impact even though I'd never call it cheating myself.
The £350m certainly won't be cheating if that is somewhere near where the number ends up by 2022....
It woul certainly be one way to unravel the Remainers' cry of "cheats!!".
We don't send £350 million per week to the EU and never have. That's a pure and simple fact. I find it strange that anyone still tries to say we do.
If we find £350 million per week extra for the NHS, a big chunk of it was money we were always going to have to send however we wanted.
The correct number was £288 million a week. Such a large number that I always wondered why Leave chose to go with the £350 million. They could have gone with the real number and it would still have had the same impact without any of the consequences of being labelled dishonest
@Cyclefree...come on..you sound like a parody of seanT by saying Corbyn hates everything about Britain.....
The left has as much claim on patriotism as the right...it's just expressed in a different way...and granted, both at their extremes can be quite ugly.
Corbyn is obviously on the spectrum, and you are right about his lack of emotional intelligence.. His fascination in trains and drain covers kind of exposes that.
But if he ever got to Govt...there are checks and balances, and constraints and compromises that he would have to make. Since, even at his most extreme, he is only really advocating for a policy shift to the kind of centric, Christian/ Social Democratic consensus they have in Germany. we will not become Venuzuala...
To win 56/59 seats was an astonishing achievement. Scottish Labour had been a tottering edifice for years hollowed out, unloved and neglected but the extent of its demolition was incredible. The Scottish Liberal Democrats were in a similar position. Of course only FPTP could really deliver a result like that in a true democracy. I don't think we will see the like again.
Did you see the article from Pete Wishart?
He seems to be suggesting Indyref2 will require another SNP majority at Holyrood...
No, but I think that is right (if you include their Green lackeys). And I think that unlikely for the foreseeable future. The Salmond majority at Holyrood was another incredible achievement in a system designed to prevent it. Don't think Nicola is in that class. Largest party but well short of a majority would be my guess this far out.
still nearly 3 years to go David, lot of water to go under the bridge before then.
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
Journalists don't seem to (want to!) understand how science works, and vice versa. Molecules don't have "MADE IN RUSSIA" stamped on their covalent bonds, and the Porton Down guy hasn't been given any training on how to communicate a slightly complicated message.
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
Nah. It was Boris and the FCO saying Porton Down had confirmed it was Russia now they are deleting all evidence of them saying that.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
As effective as that? Quite a step up.
But it is still the case that Porton Down identified the poison as a) a novichok nerve agent that b) required a degree of manufacturing complexity that only a state player could devise. Over to you MI6 - any body else making novichoks?
Boris and the FCO have given succour to Russia, Putin, and the Corbynites, Lord Carrington resigned over less.
The Russians doing their usual thing of lying 100% of the time, and taking advantage of everyone else when they tell the truth, messy as it usually is.
And, that's enough. There are enough people out there willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, who like to think they're savvy because they distrust Western officialdom.
If Russia was in the dock, then the burden of proof is beyond all reasonable doubt. That there are Useful Idiots saying we have to prove beyond all unreasonable doubt is being exploited by the people who did this.
If Russia was in the dock, there would undoubtedly be a conviction - unless the CPS was unfortunate enough to have Corbyn and TSE on the jury. In which case, the judge would get a majority verdict.
(As an aside, had lunch on Monday with somebody who is, let us say, part of the Serrated Edge of the Establishment. He was in absolutely no doubt. None at all. It was Russia.)
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
So British is he that he seems to hate everything about Britain. Sure he makes jam and has an allotment and is probably fun to chat to in the pub. My son has met him and had a selfie with him and said he was pleasant and polite. But so what? What he gets inspiration from - the Far Left - has caused misery to millions everywhere it has been tried. He is good at whipping up a crowd and is inspirational. Lots of good leaders are like that. Lots of bad ones too. It doesn't tell you anything about the quality of what he says.
He has not shown much emotional intelligence in the way he has dealt with his Jewish MPs and the Jewish community more widely. Perhaps that is his one blind spot. But it is one he has in relation to attacks against women in his party as well. It's a pretty large blind spot and suggests that his arc of sympathy and empathy is pretty limited to those who agree with him. In that, he is not that unusual but it is at odds with how he is presented by his supporters which is getting so untethered from the facts about him that it's beginning to resemble that house in Up, attached to balloons and floating well away from Planet Earth.
I don't think he does hate everything about Britain. On the contrary he speaks from an ancient streak of British radical thought, from the Diggers, to the Trade Union movement, to the Chartists, to the CND marchers, from the writers like Paine to Foot and Benn. The Tory party do not have a monopoly on Britishness, nor does the Daily Mail.
I wholeheartedly agree with the last line.
I'm not sure I do agree about the rest. He seems to have little in common with people like Foot and Paine and the Methodism which was behind much of the radical movement of the 19th century. That is an honourable tradition. Corbyn seems to me to be much more aligned with a Marxist and far left view which those traditions did so much to keep at bay in Britain. It was, it seems to me, because we had those alternative left traditions that the revolutionary absolutist and ultimately violent leftist strand did not find much purchase in this country.
I think Corbyn gets a lot of support from people who are in and like those radical traditions you describe but I wonder whether they really understand what Corbyn and people like him are really about.
Corbyn is quintessentially and eccentrically English.
So is the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Doesn't give them a case to provide our PM though....
We do like our leaders to be very British...shopkkeepers daughter...anyone? Vicar's daughter? Public school boys. Methodist Scot. And now we have the eccentric Corbyn, slightly on the spectrum, who likes trains.
So British is he that he seems to hate everything about Britain. Sure he makes jam and has an allotment and is probably fun to chat to in the pub. My son has met him and had a selfie with him and said he was pleasant and polite. But so what? What he gets inspiration from - the Far Left - has caused misery to millions everywhere it has been tried. He is good at whipping up a crowd and is inspirational. Lots of good leaders are like that. Lots of bad ones too. It doesn't tell you anything about the quality of what he says.
He has not shown much emotional intelligence in the way he has dealt with his Jewish MPs and the Jewish community more widely. Perhaps that is his one blind spot. But it is one he has in relation to attacks against women in his party as well. It's a pretty large blind spot and suggests that his arc of sympathy and empathy is pretty limited to those who agree with him. In that, he is not that unusual but it is at odds with how he is presented by his supporters which is getting so untethered from the facts about him that it's beginning to resemble that house in Up, attached to balloons and floating well away from Planet Earth.
I don't think he does hate everything about Britain. On the contrary he speaks from an ancient streak of British radical thought, from the Diggers, to the Trade Union movement, to the Chartists, to the CND marchers, from the writers like Paine to Foot and Benn. The Tory party do not have a monopoly on Britishness, nor does the Daily Mail.
Absolutely. It is quite possible to admire Corbyn as an eccentric Brit, and welcome the way he has shifted the debate on a number of issues, as well as re-energising the labour party and including and involving hundreds of thousands of young people in politics. And at the same time voting conservative (holding your nose) for the first time in your life because you know he would be a disaster as prime minister.
Sorry to go off topic so soon but in response to this comment by Mr Meeks on the previous thread -
“This morning has consisted largely of Leavers choosing to ignore an inconvenient poll finding. Roughly a quarter of the population believe that the referendum was won by cheating. That has big implications for the democratic process.”
I agree. But what to do?
Very little. It's the fate of being on the losing side, unexpectedly, in a close referendum that provides much of the ammunition for that.
It would be interesting, as well, to break down how much of that perception of "cheating" is down to perceived financial advantage, versus perceived unfair campaigning techniques, such as the £350m bus.
I think the former is a red herring, whereas I do think the £350m for the NHS bus had an impact even though I'd never call it cheating myself.
The £350m certainly won't be cheating if that is somewhere near where the number ends up by 2022....
It woul certainly be one way to unravel the Remainers' cry of "cheats!!".
We don't send £350 million per week to the EU and never have. That's a pure and simple fact. I find it strange that anyone still tries to say we do.
If we find £350 million per week extra for the NHS, a big chunk of it was money we were always going to have to send however we wanted.
The correct number was £288 million a week. Such a large number that I always wondered why Leave chose to go with the £350 million. They could have gone with the real number and it would still have had the same impact without any of the consequences of being labelled dishonest
But the ensuing media storm kept the story in the news for a week during the campaign, with the Remain side saying it was only really £288m a week we were handing to the organisation that hadn’t had its accounts signed off for two decades.
No jury is going to convict if the story is even half true. Nonetheless, I can see why the Police have to take a fatal stabbing so seriously, Albeit one rather different to the usual teenage gangsters.
It’s one of those occasionally crappy cases which come up. There’s a dead man who has a family, and whatever the circumstances the police are bound to investigate what appears to be a homicide.
If the facts are as described, he’ll be charged with manslaughter and the Crown in an ideal world will send a lawyer to the Magistrate and tell him they intend to offer no evidence, so he’ll be found not guilty the same day. There’s no way anyone would want to put the case in front of a jury.
Comments
JC is no anti semite....that is stating the bleeding obvious....
It still amazes me that May and her team obiviously ignored all the clear political risks, especially after what happened to Gordon Brown so early in his premiership when he allowed speculation of an early snap GE to get out of hand before bottling it when the polls became less favourable. I thought that they had when May initially shut down similar speculation. And as with Corbyn and the Labour party, the threat of that unnecessary snap Autumn GE back in 2007 galvanised Cameron and the Conservative party rather than sending them into dissarray.
Recognising my own bias, I still reckon than Corbyn is past peak appeal with little chance of doing anything but slow down a relentless decline. Happy birthday Jeremy.
Lots of the naive (of whom there are many) will have voted for Corbyn.
He’s a grumpy old idealogue, a boring and repetitive speaker, and not a strong leader in any sense.
At least Sanders, for example, is a fiery rhetorician.
The fact that I don’t get Corbyn at all tells me I’m getting old and there is now an unbridgeable gulf between me and “the kids”.
With STV 34 seats, and with list PR 30 seats.
https://twitter.com/tseofpb/status/691055087377059840?s=21
However my brother originally very anti Corbyn person.Now states to everyone who will listen he supports him after the last GE, but he will not become PM , as they will do him in, one way or another.He does go in for a lot of Conspiracy theories though.Nevertheless you do get the feeling , the full force of the establishment is against him.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43639183
https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/981486325743476736?s=21
https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/981489358732701697?s=21
https://twitter.com/russianembassy/status/981480974637821952?s=21
But apparently I don’t understand how the world works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Commonwealth_Games
So the elderly man, attacked by two intruders, is the one arrested?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-43639183
His idols that have destroyed their nations economy and impoverished their people weren't horned demons either.
Ruining Mrs May’s case
https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/981490042265833472?s=21
I don't think the Labour selectorate is particularly hard left, but they do feel a sense of mission. Corbyn showed this in his first hustings. The crowd loves a good tubthumper.
I don't expect the next Labour leader to be cut from the same part of the party, but they will need to maintain the same level of passion. Parties change tack surprisingly quickly. 10 years after Foot, Blair was in post and 10 years after Blair, Corbyn was. The common factor of all of these was their ability to inspire. Labour Moderates should take comfort from this, but also work on why they should have support. What can they offer the country?
Yesterday on Twitter was profoundly depressing. As ever
The common factor is that both Foot and Corbyn failed to win an election. Despite all the rhetoric and 'inspiration'.
This is the sort of behaviour you’d expect from Blair and Campbell.
https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/981492124117028864?s=21
I can't see anything wrong with Nick's analysis. Jezza aint going anywhere soon.
An ex-Russian spy has been killed using chemical weaponry in Salisbury. Following on from the Litvinenko case, you'd have to be crackers to think the UK, US, France or any comparable power was to blame.
So it was inevitable that people would ask why that wasn’t mention in the PD report.
The Corbyn event generated a lot of local media coverage.It also imo produced a good result in York Central which spread to York Outer.
....... this was a Novichok military-grade nerve agent produced in Russia.
Versus
....... this was a Novichok military-grade nerve agent. Novichok military-grade nerve agent was produced in Russia.
Does the Foreign Office no longer recruit those with English GCSE?
I don't expect any UK chemical forensics capability, or UK intelligence on Russian WMD programmes, that would definitively point the finger, to be disclosed to the public.
I really hope these charges are dropped and the guy in question gets a community award!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/04/suspected-burglar-dies-tussle-pensioner-78/
https://mobile.twitter.com/Jacob_Rees_Mogg/status/981488221426278400
No surprise that the media don't want to know about nuance in both situations.
Mr. Eagles, almost as if Boris isn't fit to be Foreign Secretary. It doesn't alter the facts of the case, though.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/the-dutch-village-where-everyone-has-dementia/382195/
Ever considered such an option here? I am sure that there would be a market for it in Norfolk. A dementia village with pub, footy, dogs and betting shops might not be so bad.
Boris must take responsibilty for Foreign Office mistakes. Resign!
This is all embarrassing, but doesn't ultimately matter unless it turns out that it wasn't Russia at all. The countries who have pitched in on our side know that Boris is an arsehole, and have their own scientists who will have spoken direct to PD. So if they think it was Russia, it probably was.
Depends on the care home, the best ones provide all round care with a range of social activities, reasonable food and entertainments
Hyfud....even the "best" ones are staffed by people paid a pittance, with incredibly high staff turnover, and where old people are left languishing with other old people at the end of their lives....
whichever spin you put on it, and how much money you throw at a home...the concept is fundamentally wrong....
I've put a mother in a home, a father in law in a home, and now we are angling for a mother in law....there are no alternatives....but every relative who has this agonising decision to make has one thing in common..they are happy when they can make their excuse to bring any one visit at any one time to an end and leave said care home. And the vast majority are riddled with guilt about leaving them there. And that guilt never really goes away.
I do a spot of volunteering walking dogs for the elderly..it enables them to keep pets at home. It's a start. We just need to be a whole lot more imaginative about this population...in time with robots, greater professionalism and pay within care staff, unlocking some of the housing problem by mixed communities with young people, pets, students and families living amongst ailing old people..we'll find much better solutions than we have now.
The amount of polonium used, its short half-life, and the processing to produce a soluble compound all point to the Russian state producing it.
The trail of radiation which tied up with flights, CCTV, hotel reservations, witnesses, and phone records, pointed to Lugovoi as the assassin.
The only two people present a both of the poisoning attemps were Lugovoi and Litvinenko, so Litvinenko was the target.
Lugovoi's spurious business dealings in London also suggest assassination was the true purpose of his visit, and he wasn't an unwilling mule.
And nothing that Russia has done since then suggests anything other than the guilt of the Russian state.
He has not shown much emotional intelligence in the way he has dealt with his Jewish MPs and the Jewish community more widely. Perhaps that is his one blind spot. But it is one he has in relation to attacks against women in his party as well. It's a pretty large blind spot and suggests that his arc of sympathy and empathy is pretty limited to those who agree with him. In that, he is not that unusual but it is at odds with how he is presented by his supporters which is getting so untethered from the facts about him that it's beginning to resemble that house in Up, attached to balloons and floating well away from Planet Earth.
The fact that so much of the support for Remain was qualified just goes to show what a poor product the EU was and is.
He reaches far beyond the conservative base , that is why Brexit needed him .
Certain sections of the media are being useful idiots to the Kremlin agenda here.
I mean, really? That's a story? When Porton Down did its job and identified this as Novichok the finger was pointed squarely at Russia. It still is. Absolutely nothing has changed other than some fairly incriminating statements about how residing in the UK is not particularly good for Russian's health.
Dstl can tell you what it is, but it would take intelligence from MI6 and GCHQ to say where it was made. Some of those may be scientific and techincal, but it's not even inconceivable that we have communications intercepts that with hindsight pin it right on the Russian state.
It's an own goal.
If the facts are as described, he’ll be charged with manslaughter and the Crown in an ideal world will send a lawyer to the Magistrate and tell him they intend to offer no evidence, so he’ll be found not guilty the same day. There’s no way anyone would want to put the case in front of a jury.
But it is still the case that Porton Down identified the poison as a) a novichok nerve agent that b) required a degree of manufacturing complexity that only a state player could devise. Over to you MI6 - any body else making novichoks?
The left has as much claim on patriotism as the right...it's just expressed in a different way...and granted, both at their extremes can be quite ugly.
Corbyn is obviously on the spectrum, and you are right about his lack of emotional intelligence.. His fascination in trains and drain covers kind of exposes that.
But if he ever got to Govt...there are checks and balances, and constraints and compromises that he would have to make. Since, even at his most extreme, he is only really advocating for a policy shift to the kind of centric, Christian/ Social Democratic consensus they have in Germany. we will not become Venuzuala...
If Russia was in the dock, there would undoubtedly be a conviction - unless the CPS was unfortunate enough to have Corbyn and TSE on the jury. In which case, the judge would get a majority verdict.
(As an aside, had lunch on Monday with somebody who is, let us say, part of the Serrated Edge of the Establishment. He was in absolutely no doubt. None at all. It was Russia.)
I'm not sure I do agree about the rest. He seems to have little in common with people like Foot and Paine and the Methodism which was behind much of the radical movement of the 19th century. That is an honourable tradition. Corbyn seems to me to be much more aligned with a Marxist and far left view which those traditions did so much to keep at bay in Britain. It was, it seems to me, because we had those alternative left traditions that the revolutionary absolutist and ultimately violent leftist strand did not find much purchase in this country.
I think Corbyn gets a lot of support from people who are in and like those radical traditions you describe but I wonder whether they really understand what Corbyn and people like him are really about.