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Post by guymonde on May 24, 2024 0:31:04 GMT
Victoria Derbyshire interviewing Richard Holden on Newsnight over Govt Record on immigration, an absolute evisceration. Pointing out their failure to honour any Manifesto commitment on Immigration since 2010. When he brings up their focus on so called Illegal Immigration she responds that 30,000 crossed the Channel in small boats last year and your Govt issued 1.44 million visas in the same period. If that went up on Billboards in every Tory held seat they Probably wouldn't win any seats at the GE! When you watch Ms. Derbyshire you wonder how Ms. Kuenssberg has the brass neck to keep drawing her salary from the BBC. What made me gape today was Sunak saying nobody is going to Rwanda before the election but everything was in place for people to go immediately after (didn't mention how many) - escorts hired, prisoners moved etc. But he must know as well as me all the cost would be utterly wasted, together with the millions already spaffed at Rwanda. Deluded, perhaps cracking up as we watch. |
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Post by Deleted on May 24, 2024 0:32:59 GMT
The song, ('Singin' in the Rain'), was actually introduced earlier in the film by "Ukulele Ike", aka Cliff Edwards, who had quite a remarkable voice. A gambler and alcoholic, he died penniless in 1971, and was buried through charitable donations. But he did leave us this. youtu.be/pguMUFyJ3_U?feature=shared |
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pjw1961
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Post by pjw1961 on May 24, 2024 3:55:36 GMT
The result you have all been waiting for with bated breath:
MELTON Wymondham - Con hold
CHUBB, David Joseph (The Conservative Party Candidate) 233 65.6% (-6.1)
SEAWARD, Samantha (Independent) 122 34.4% (new)
No Labour as previously.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 5:10:39 GMT
“ The Tories would need the biggest turnaround in the polls in British general election history to pull off a shock victory, Britain’s two leading pollsters have warned.
Professor Sir John Curtice and Lord Robert Hayward have both noted that a party has never before come from so far behind in the polls to win a general election.
The biggest bounce so far was Labour under Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 which gained 10 points on Theresa May’s Conservatives but still came 55 seats behind in a hung parliament.
Sir John, who is expected to be a regular on people’s TV screens analysing polls during the election, agreed that there is no historic precedent for a party to come from so far behind.
Currently Labour enjoy a lead of between 18 and 24 points depending on which poll people look at. The Techne UK weekly tracker poll last week had it at 23 points.
Sir John said: “Turnaround in 2017 was 10 points though polls also overestimated the Conservative lead by around another five points.”
But he agreed that if Mr Sunak was to close the gap to get into hung parliament territory it “would dwarf” what happened in 2017.
Lord Hayward, who is a Tory peer, said that the gap is “similar if not worse” to what John Major faced in 1997 when he was defeated by Tony Blair.” www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/rishi-sunak-wales-football-barry-b2550303.htmlSurely a great example of spin. I saw Curtis talking the other day, where he said it would be a truly amazing feat if Sunak managed to pull back and win this election. Both statements seem to be true, that it would be absolutely extraodrdinary that Sunak and conservatives now win, and an unprecedented change of fortune should labour win. This comes about because con won well in 2019 because of extraodrdinary circumstances, but since then polling suggests (and all precedent says we should believe it) that support is already gone notwithstanding it has yet to be tested in an actual election. |
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steve
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Post by steve on May 24, 2024 5:13:37 GMT
"No idea what the cause was but it was both very painful and really exhausting."
Have there been any buglers seen in the area?
Best of luck
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 5:16:05 GMT
Victoria Derbyshire interviewing Richard Holden on Newsnight over Govt Record on immigration, an absolute evisceration. Pointing out their failure to honour any Manifesto commitment on Immigration since 2010. When he brings up their focus on so called Illegal Immigration she responds that 30,000 crossed the Channel in small boats last year and your Govt issued 1.44 million visas in the same period. If that went up on Billboards in every Tory held seat they Probably wouldn't win any seats at the GE! When you watch Ms. Derbyshire you wonder how Ms. Kuenssberg has the brass neck to keep drawing her salary from the BBC. I've wondered how much of what these interviewers say is semi-scripted - i.e. though they have to respond according to the answers they get, they will have a list of questions and attack lines pre-prepared. So perhaps differences are because of different scriptwriters? I wouldn't be at all surprised if the BBC had multiple teams of those guys. I remember from one (and probably all) recent US presidential elections the BBC actually had 5 different teams out there - BBC1, BBC2, Radio 4, Radio5 and another, maybe World Service? Anyway, a huge waste of money. They could have had one journalist and a cameraman and sound recordist and relayed the material to all the relevant stations. Typical waste of licence-payers money. It should be commercialised post-haste but of course Labour won't do that any more than the Tories did. You portray that as obvious redundant duplication. However, the US is a big place and I can imagine 5 teams of interviewers pretty small to cover events happening all over the nation? If they sent 5 teams each from different stations, that might just be where they found the staff to cover a big event. |
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Post by neilj on May 24, 2024 5:32:23 GMT
Paul Hope you're on the road to recovery Cheers Steve. Unfortunately I was violently sick over a period of about 12 hours yesterday from about 2pm until 2 am this morning. Still feeling very rough but hopefully over the worst. No idea what the cause was but it was both very painful and really exhausting. Sorry to hear, hope you get better soon |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 5:34:39 GMT
Any Labour partisans on here like to explain why having a Labour UKGov will reduce waiting times across the UK? I'm not a labour partisan. However experience of succesive governments suggest labour will prioritise improving the NHS a lot more than con would, therefore outcomes will be better. Con fundamentally do not believe in state provided services and have systematically attempted to dismantle them whenever they are in power. It seems likely the NHS has suffered greatly from this because of successive attempts to break it up and privatise it piecemeal. NHS reforms have not been directed at making it more cost effective, but more saleable. last night there were two TV programs about road potholes. Its a big current issue. The bottom line would seem to be the national interest is best served by government increasing taxes to fund proper repairs. This then cuts damage caused by potholes to vehicles and actually saves voters money overall. Its a big fallacy cutting taxes is good for your disposable income. Similarly ending government involvement in housebuilding and ownership has created a situation where homes have become massively more expensive, so ending council house building through taxation has massively cost everyone a fortune paying for private housing at inflated prices. Actually, its worse than that, because council house construction was pretty much self funding in the long run. So we abandoned a self funding system of high quality cheap housing which we replaced with hugely more expensive inferior specification privately supplied housing. It may indeed be the case that private sector innovation can create great advances, such as the development of the personal computer or mobile phone. But there is also a lot of evidence private industry always tends to create expensive alternatives to properly organised state services. Again a medical example, private companies love to develop new drugs with modest improvement on old ones in performance but big increases in price for patented drugs. But they couple this with closing manufacturing plant for the old drugs with much lower profit margins. |
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 24, 2024 5:37:25 GMT
Patrick Flynn Focal Data
'Average of most recent polls from each firm by adjustment for don't knows:
🔴 No adjustment: 24-point Labour lead
LAB 46 / CON 22
🟡 Squeeze question: 19-point Labour lead
LAB 43 / CON 24
🟢 Reassigns don't knows: 17-point Labour lead
LAB 43 / CON 26
Even the polls which assume current don’t knows will return to the fold would result in a catastrophic loss for the government if replicated at the election
The Conservatives can’t rely merely on undecided voters returning — they will have to win back people who have switched to other parties'
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 5:42:34 GMT
Interesting which bills are now to be hurried through parliament.
Reforms to short tenancies making life harder for landlords are scrapped. Cigarette sale bans scrapped. Compensation schemes for PO scandal and contaminated blood to proceed.
The curious thing about the last two is that they should have happened ten years ago...20 years ago. Con have resisted and resisted paying out compensation, but finally do so only at the point they are about to cease to be government and their successor will have to find the money for the payouts.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 5:47:31 GMT
Backlog in courts is growing, not shrinking as promised by government. Next government is going to have to sort out prisons full to more than capacity, people being untried for years, police instructed to stop arresting more because there is nowhere to put them.
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Post by crossbat11 on May 24, 2024 6:05:26 GMT
The result you have all been waiting for with bated breath: MELTON Wymondham - Con hold CHUBB, David Joseph (The Conservative Party Candidate) 233 65.6% (-6.1) SEAWARD, Samantha (Independent) 122 34.4% (new) No Labour as previously. I was at the count, as were most of the people who voted, and I can ensure you that it was much more dramatic than the picture you're painting The Returning Officer required a police escort as she left the building amidst shouts of "it's an outrageous fiddle" by all those who voted for the losing candidate, Ms Seaward. Ms Seaward, by the way, as her name suggests, is an expert on coastal erosion and her maritime expertise will now be denied the good citizens of Melton Mowbray, the landlocked Midlands town that specialises in the production of excellent pork pies. I called in to the count last night after stocking up on my supply of said pork pies. (Explanation for all those who wondered what the hell I was doing there last night.) |
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Post by davem on May 24, 2024 6:05:42 GMT
With a lot of talk about tactical voting playing a part in the election, this popped up on my twitter feed so I joined the chat. x.com/seaninsound/status/1793733886184464683?s=46It was interesting to hear how they are going about identifying the best seats for tactical voting and how they plan to use various routes to get the message out. It was also interesting to hear Carol Vordamsn tell here background story. They are having on line meetings every night at 9pm if anybody is interested. |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 6:07:34 GMT
Huw Merriman, MP for Bexhill and Battle has announced he will not stand again. Doesnt explain why he is departing, he's fairly young and has one of the safest seats in the country. This is the guy who was a remainer but turned his coat becoming a born again leaver so as to remain in parliament and become a minister. I imagine he thinks there isnt a hope in hell of conservatives winning this election, so no ministerial career and based on past performance 10-15 years in opposition. No point continuing.
Must increase the outside chance of con losing in the constituency.
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Post by alec on May 24, 2024 6:10:45 GMT
@fecklessmiser - hope you're feeling better. Don't like to say this, but you might want to consider a covid test (PCR one would be best). These days you're as likely to suffer gastric symptoms as respiratory impacts, and as you've just been in DMH, there's a reasonable chance you've been exposed. Having said that, your description sounds a lot like norovirus, which is currently running way above the pre-covid average. That's likely itself an artifact of covid, in part at least, as it's prevalence increases where the individual immune system is compromised.
Whatever, it sounds like you've been through the mill recently, but I hope things are on the up.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 6:14:01 GMT
SNP interviewee on R4 arguing having just got a new leader this might be good timing for the election, encouraging more to give the party benefit of the doubt and recover some (or all?) of their support lost in recent times. I do think SNP are much more likely to see a swingback to them as the election approaches than are the conservatives. Also, if the public consensus becomes that labour are definitaly going to win, scots may feel they are better off being represented by a faction not parroting the westminster government.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 6:22:38 GMT
That's likely itself an artifact of covid, in part at least, as it's prevalence increases where the individual immune system is compromised. In casualty last fortnight the guy was asking when I last had a tetanus shot, to which the answer was I have no specific recollection of ever having one, though probably did as a kid. But if stabbing myself on dirty rusty barbed wire was going to kill me, Id be long since dead. The human immune system works! But you are right, what people dying from covid most had in common was that they were old and therefore their immune systems packing up. So many died from covid probably because modern medicine had kept them alive already beyond a natural unassisted lifetime. |
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Post by crossbat11 on May 24, 2024 6:29:07 GMT
For those who read my torturous twaddle, often a mix of anodyne alliterative allusions, will know that I rarely comment on the standards of the BBC's political and current affairs coverage.
But a question occurs to me, now that the starting gun has been fired for the general election, and broadcasters are presumably all obliged to give political parties balanced coverage. Will last night's Question Time be the last one for a while where we see the usual skewed centre right tilt of the panel?
We were treated to an MP from each of the Tory, Labour and Lib Dem parties with the fourth panelist a Tory commentator. This is the standard QT panel composition these days. A couple of centre right panelists and then two made up of a Labour MP and a take your pick.
Tim Montgomerie by the way, the Tory commentator on the panel last night, started off in the guise of some vaguely non-aligned plague on all your houses type and then, as the programme progressed, he reverted to type and became overtly partisan, often attacking the Labour MP, Bridget Phillipson, directly.
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Post by alec on May 24, 2024 6:31:41 GMT
Danny - "In casualty last fortnight the guy was asking when I last had a tetanus shot, to which the answer was I have no specific recollection of ever having one, though probably did as a kid. But if stabbing myself on dirty rusty barbed wire was going to kill me, Id be long since dead. The human immune system works!" You are an utter fool at times. Yes, you *will* have been vaccinated for tetanus, more than once. The tetanus vaccine provide immunity for decades, in many cases probably for life, but it's always worth getting a booster every 10 years or so, just in case your individual response is a bit weaker. No, the human immune system doesn't work. That's why tetanus used to be such a big killer. It's an ever present environmental pathogen that humans have 'learned to live with' throughout all of our biological history, and we've *never* developed immunity to it. Willfully ignorant people like yourself probably don't even understand that while the tetanus vaccine is brilliant and can confer lifetime immunity, tetanus is one of the pathogens where naturally acquired infection provide *no* immunity against future infection. I find it genuinely hard to comprehend that someone can be so consistently wrong about a subject with such relentless monotony, without ever learning or even attempting to learn about the topic.
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steve
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Post by steve on May 24, 2024 6:33:45 GMT
Danny
Merriman is a corporate lawyer, he's minted but with three children from his marriage and another from his affair with his political aid he probably thinks he can earn a better wedge by abandoning his parliamentary side gig.
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Post by alec on May 24, 2024 6:35:22 GMT
A truly remarkably admission - www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/24/uks-environment-agency-chief-admits-regulator-buries-freedom-of-information-requests"The head of the Environment Agency has admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”. Philip Duffy, the body’s chief executive, told an audience at the UK River Summit in Morden, south London, this week that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” with regards to the state of the environment." This is the regulator charged with protecting the environment. They would prefer to bury the bad news, presumably because they fear being judged as failures? What an appalling state this country is in. |
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steve
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Post by steve on May 24, 2024 6:39:24 GMT
alecHaving been bitten by various unsavoury creatures, not all of them human, impaled by used needles and various other discarded garbage I've had several tetanus boosters, relying on a childhood tetanus vaccination ( which I assume I had) or the human immune system wouldn't seem optimal.
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steve
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Post by steve on May 24, 2024 6:41:21 GMT
" Don't like to say this, but you might want to consider a covid test "
Oh I think you do🤔
You're probably right.
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Post by davem on May 24, 2024 6:44:04 GMT
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neilj
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Post by neilj on May 24, 2024 6:49:01 GMT
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Post by crossbat11 on May 24, 2024 6:56:12 GMT
Redwood was a Giant.
(one for my arboreal friends.)
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Post by lefthanging on May 24, 2024 7:13:19 GMT
Another one bites the dust. Redwood not standing. Bit of a shame really. How are we supposed to enjoy our Portillo moments if they all decide to retire at the last minute? |
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Post by lululemonmustdobetter on May 24, 2024 7:16:48 GMT
Morning everyone. So while at risk of being accused of doing a hatchet job on Sunak, thought I'd give my assessment of him. On the positive side, he's clearly intelligent and hard working. Managerial comes to mind when thinking of his style. 'Dishy? Not to my taste.
Currently, 'hapless', seems the most applicable term. Looking like a drowned rat, asking the Welsh if they are looking forward to the footie! Perhaps similar to David Miliband?
Politically, I think he suffers from lacking any firm power base. Inheriting what he did, it would have taken a first rate politician to get the Tories back into contention. Alas, for him, he has risen above the level consummate to his skills.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 7:21:40 GMT
Yes, you *will* have been vaccinated for tetanus, more than once. The tetanus vaccine provide immunity for decades, in many cases probably for life, but it's always worth getting a booster every 10 years or so, just in case your individual response is a bit weaker. You are seriously now saying you know my medical history better than I do??? |
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Danny
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Post by Danny on May 24, 2024 7:25:48 GMT
Danny Merriman is a corporate lawyer, he's minted but with three children from his marriage and another from his affair with his political aid he probably thinks he can earn a better wedge by abandoning his parliamentary side gig. Aw, now you are disillusioning me. Whenever his name comes up I think of the jester in Gilbert and sullivan's Yeoman of the guard, I have a song to sing, O! Sing me your song, O! It is sung to the moon By a love-lorn loon, Who fled from the mocking throng, O! It’s a song of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, and whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye. Though actually... |
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