Gloucester Saint

Agree with much of that, although Reform have been declining from their peak ratings for quite a few months despite the May local election results which are of course impressive from such a low base. NHS will be very important as well, make progress on the waiting lists which they seem to be and Farage has struggled to get any consistent position on that. They’ll get hammered on TV debates if they don’t. Musk’s willingness to carry on throwing ££££ at Lowe is reckoned to potentially cost Reform 70-100 seats at least too. He has no shortage of it, Rupert’s an interesting side hustle for him, Tommy’s in that picture (Kleenex delivery for Romney Marsh) and Rupert hates Farage. There’s a contest on now. Starmer is toast, can’t believe he wants to fight on. What’s the point?

October’s election in Israel could be interesting, Trump will not be helping the two Ben’s a month of ahead of his own mid-terms and I’d imagine Kushner’s got less influence in the administration now.

One of our local MPs has been suspended after an arrest, for what it isn’t clear. FFS.

Like there wasn’t in Gorton and Denton not far away? They’ll win seats but they’ll face huge tactical voting and ‘anyone but Farage’ in so many others. His negative ratings are enormous despite a 20% or so core which is Trump-like in its dedication from ardent Brexiteers. And Musk will carry on funding Lowe who hates Farage and Tice with a passion to scale up nationally. Labour has a mountain to climb to say the least but if the war has properly ended, and Netanyahu is toast now even more so than Starmer, then the rest of the economic vital signs should more visibly pick up. Remember the expansion of the franchise by 2029, 16 and 17 year olds will on the whole won’t embrace racism and plenty of Reform supporters will have had their funerals. Very challenging times but a flicker of hope. Davey needs to go now as well if the Libs are going to kick on.

They drove the car faster towards Beachy Head but it was already well on the way there. Lowe wasted the first season down and parachutes with the SCW and Clifford experiments, we took a Hail Mary in 2006/7 and it nearly worked. Some of the spending was wild (no pun intended) and the lack of a decent centre back cost us, but that side should have been much higher than scraping into 6th.

We normally agree but I can’t on that. Reform’s % has been dipping for a while now, 32% into the low 20s. No-one in this fragmented new landscape is going to walk anything and 326 seats is a theoretical figure. Burnham’s job, assuming it’s him and not Streeting (their members I suspect will prefer Burnham) is to make Labour the largest party and that’s the battle with Reform. The Tory members are in love with Badenoch in the same way Labour left members were with Corbyn but at some point the penny has to drop that they’re performing miles below where he was, even taking into account the Truss and Boris baggage. They need to get Street and Davidson into Parliament asap and persuade a couple of their old fogeys in their few safe seats left to stand back and try life support as a centre right party again. Loads of councillors defecting back to them from Reform after seeing the sheer chaos and vileness inside Reform, but they need to oust Badenoch and the ERG in the next 3-6 months if they’re going to avoid 4th or 5th place https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-councillor-robbie-lammas-quits-conservatives-defection-b2996387.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwpwj2l0zvo

Oh I dunno, Duck got so excited he posted a double pony. They’re a collectors item you know. A bit like Paul Dacre’s infamous ‘double cuntings’ during editorial meetings at the Daily Mail.

Ah, it’s that Dutch striker again. Van Wanker isn’t it?

Certainly you’ll see some links at the US Open starting later today at Shinnecock Hills.

Love that. Great stuff.

Incredibly disrespectful towards Savile’s many victims, and this from a party who on the other hand want to save white girls from Muslim grooming gangs, when white groups of men commit 85% of such offences. Hypocrites. Not to mention astonishingly poor taste. I think Burnham will win today, and despite my reservations about him economically I hope that he does. I never want fascism to win. No surprises that this was endorsed by 30p Lee. If he’s a working class champion, it’s not the same working class I grew up in which fundraised for the miners as they were being brutalised by the police.

PS - put on ignore. Anyone who thinks the man who took Southampton FC from the PL to L1 on -10, nearly losing the club, is the answer to the country’s ills is quite unwell mentally. I’m wasting time providing facts and context when it is cut and paste coming back with zero context.

Again, it’s lack of context and objective evidence. We can all cherry pick and cut and paste quotes. DPP wasn’t getting proper cases from the police forces which they should have had. They have to make decisions on the strength of the case presenting and likelihood of prosecution should a case go to court. Court cases in these situations, rare as they are, are bloody expensive and doubly so if there’s say a 50% chance of acquitting, that’s a hell of a risk to take not to mention the social and cultural costs. This is from family who have been senior figures in the judicial system, not X. The figure for Starmer is meaningless without the context of what was presented to the DPP. Nazir’s account of finally being enabled to address the issue and force the hand of the police is more realistic. Khan I’m less comfortable about, I think it was quite complacent to assume it was a northern issue when you think about the size and complexity of London. But again, context. One random cut out from an entire report doesn’t make him an enabler.

Crap policing. They aren’t any better with white on white victims though, loads of harrowing accounts of mis-handling of cases. The whole two-tier construct is garbage.

Whilst the police didn’t do enough to investigate the cases of men of Pakistani heritage raping and abusing girls in the 2000s, a police task force report in 2024 found that 27% of investigations into child abuse involved family members, 22% other children and 19% criminal networks of offenders (Sidney Cooke type rings). The National Police Chiefs Council’s data (which has some variables but not on this scale) shows that circa 85% of group-based child abuse is perpetrated by white offenders alone. Funnily enough, the facts don’t sit with Musk’s misinformation. Furthermore, Nazir Afzal, a public prosecutor from Pakistan heritage himself, has said several times that Kier Starmer was instrumental in giving him the time, space and political clearance to finally investigate and prosecute where his predecessors and the police hadn’t. Starmer might be a wally and I’d never vote for him and Labour but this far right line of attack has no facts to back it up. Game. Set. Match. Don’t bother to reply.