NPR

We have had one leaflet thus far, from our incumbent MP, for whom I will be voting.

On the drive home from work, the farmer who owns the fields next to the dual carriageway has his usual "Vote for the chimp in the blue rosette" posters up.

Given that they feature Grant Shapps, draw your own conclusions.

What is it with farmers? They've been repeatedly fucked by the tories but they're still supporting them, fuckwits!

Paddington Bear wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 1:30 pmMost of the politicians who we now feel ooze gravitas and common sense were derided at the time. Major and Brown both good examples of this

Yep, it's ridiculous how poor the current crop is, regardless of party

epwc wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 2:02 pm What is it with farmers? They've been repeatedly fucked by the tories but they're still supporting them, fuckwits!

They're just about the only group I can think of who have a practical use for manure.

Hal Jordan wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 1:41 pm We have had one leaflet thus far, from our incumbent MP, for whom I will be voting.

On the drive home from work, the farmer who owns the fields next to the dual carriageway has his usual "Vote for the chimp in the blue rosette" posters up.

Given that they feature Grant Shapps, draw your own conclusions.

Aaaah you're in my neck of the woods, though I'm in the constituency to the North of Welwyn and Hatfield
I drove over to Welwyn GC across country the other day. The only Vote Grant Shapps poster I saw was in the garden of a house in millionaires row in Harmer Green. It had been neatly edited to read "Fuck Grant Shapps!"
Driving to the rugby club on Saturday I was very surprised just how many Vote Labour posters have appeared, particularly on the West side of town.

Electoral Calculus has him with only a 16% chance of holding the seat
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/f ... =AL8+6HX

62% chance of Tories winning in my constituency, disenfranchised again!!! FPTP is complete bollocks

Says 65% Tory, 35% Labour for mine, but in the detail gives many wards to Labour that were strongly Green and LibDem in last year's local council elections. So seems rather iffy to me, but depends of course how many "floating voters" really think Labour is the best chance of ousting the Tories even though 2nd place in 2019 was extremely close between Lab and LD; and how many Tories go to Reform.

If it were just between Tory, Reform and 1 other then the 1 other might have a realistic chance.

Last voter intention poll for my new constituency was 30% Lib Dem, 29% Tory, 20% Labour. Hopefully some of those Labour voters think tactically come polling day and go Lib Dem.

Predicted winner here;
62% Green
38% Lab
Then there’s a laughing emoji beside the Tories and Reform


Edit, the constituency I’m moving to soon after the election is 94% Lab, 5% SNP, 1% Tory

I've only had one leaflet so far, from the Reform Party. The candidate has promised that if he gets elected he'll give his MP's salary to local charities. I'd suggest that's a very easy promise to make when you've got absolutely no chance of getting in.

The last Blue seat in Merseyside looks to be going red.

Thank fuck, hopefully Margin and Sefton will be happy.

C69 wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:42 pm The last Blue seat in Merseyside looks to be going red.

Thank fuck, hopefully Margin and Sefton will be happy.

Wife and I will be Team Red. They'll piss it.

Margin__Walker wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:59 pm

C69 wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:42 pm The last Blue seat in Merseyside looks to be going red.

Thank fuck, hopefully Margin and Sefton will be happy.

Wife and I will be Team Red. They'll piss it.

Been here nearly 30 years. Palpable hatred of ftheTories.
Not seen a Tory poster in any window or garden.
Few Lib Dems but mostly Labour. Our town has gone to shit in the last 10 years.
The NHS locally is terrible and it's a dentist desert.
That said it's a great place to live.

Oxbow wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 4:14 pm I've only had one leaflet so far, from the Reform Party. The candidate has promised that if he gets elected he'll give his MP's salary to local charities. I'd suggest that's a very easy promise to make when you've got absolutely no chance of getting in.

We’ve had an avalanche of leaflets from Tories, Libs and Greens. The only Labour around here is mum’s pushing out babies.

With the way the head boys campaign geniuses are planning his photo ops, is it wrong of me to expect him to go to Ukraine in the last couple of days of the campaign, so that he can pose for photos in front of Chernobyl, so that on the 5th every newspaper headline writer can take the day off, & everyone just goes with a picture of the dipshit with the headline "Meltdown !, as Tories reduced to xx MPs", & variations thereof ?

C69 wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 7:27 pm

Margin__Walker wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:59 pm

C69 wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 6:42 pm The last Blue seat in Merseyside looks to be going red.

Thank fuck, hopefully Margin and Sefton will be happy.

Wife and I will be Team Red. They'll piss it.

Been here nearly 30 years. Palpable hatred of ftheTories.
Not seen a Tory poster in any window or garden.
Few Lib Dems but mostly Labour. Our town has gone to shit in the last 10 years.
The NHS locally is terrible and it's a dentist desert.
That said it's a great place to live.

I'm yet to see a Tory placard in town. No leaflet through the door.

Shows what an absurd election it's gearing up to be. Despite being the incumbents, they just aren't bothering. Can't say I blame them too much. Canvassing for the Tories here sounds like a really shit gig in 2024. You'll be copping vitriol from every side, with very few friendly faces on the doorstep.

But yeah, cracking place to live.

epwc wrote: Wed Jun 19, 2024 2:02 pm What is it with farmers? They've been repeatedly fucked by the tories but they're still supporting them, fuckwits!

Farmers like any group is a broad church. But there's plenty of standalone spirit which identifies with the Tories, and plenty who think it's an outrage they have to spend really anything above 30% on tax, and if you cut if to 30% that would be the new outrage, and there was for many a lot of anti-EU sentiment so getting Brexit done is very important, then maybe there's still a pro hunting voting body, perhaps too pro guns but that can't be a big vote earner. And one goes from hill farmers who if they have anything have debt to those who think the have yachts are brassic.

Please, please, please, please, please, please; if the head boy loses his seat, let it be because his Imperial Binface has gotten more votes than the margin of victory !



I don't think we'll get as many Portillo moments as we deserve, because the cowardly shits are all just standing down, but this might just make up for it.

Another day another Tory election betting scandal.
Second candidate being investigated and also a Police officer.
What a shit show

Insane_Homer wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 6:23 am IMG_20240620_072243_017.jpg

That took me longer than it probably should have.

Paddington Bear wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2024 2:25 pm

_Os_ wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2024 1:08 pm

Paddington Bear wrote: Tue Jun 18, 2024 11:41 am

When polled, every single demographic believes immigration is too high

Too low resolution and the sort of question someone that's a really good operator would reject (Mandelson). Because the next question is what immigration don't you want? And it turns out there's support for almost every category, there's recent polling on different professions only bankers don't get support. The same 20% that's always there are the only group against when it's broken down into actual examples:
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/attitudes-towards ... cial-need/

This becomes a bit of a problem when you attempt to say no more immigrants, and the interviewer then asks "even NHS workers? How will you clear the backlog in two years as your manifesto promises?", as Farage was asked on Newsnight last night. Because of course the same person against immigration generally, is pro the foriegn NHS nurse almost overwhelmingly so.

‘When I ask loaded questions I get the answers I want’


It’s pointless asking what professions people want to give visas too when the vast majority of people getting a visa aren’t working! As for other targeted questions that elicit reactions, see audience reactions when they’re made aware of the scale.

Nope, polling done properly is scientific.

If the polling is showing it's quite a complex topic, the same person can be against immigration but pro the immigrant nurses looking after them, then a simple solution isn't going to work. The people who were pro-Rwanda Scheme became a lot less pro once the reality of it became more clear. The Rwanda Scheme is something non-Tories can openly attack in election debates, because the only people who support it now are locked in for the Tories or Reform, it's a vote loser with everyone else (which is why non-Tories make sure to mention it, even Farage attacks it).

We've been over the immigration numbers and I linked to the ONS data. It's 40% students and 33% work (hard to know if they're all on visas, because quite oddly the ONS counts British nationals in the immigration numbers, there's normally 100k British national immigrants per year). The majority of non-student immigrants were workers in the year to June 2023, it's usually about half. Students have no settlement rights and are on a time limited visa. Saying "the vast majority of people getting a visa aren’t working" leaves a lot unsaid and allows people to imagine things which aren't true, which is exactly what people saying that want to achieve ... they want people to imagine there's a vast immigrant army living on benefits. The reality is there's foreign students paying in shit loads, workers, the dependents of the workers (children etc) who will become workers if they stay long enough, and asylum seekers who will become workers if the asylum system ever works again and they're granted refugee status.

The problem with ignoring the detail as a political proposition, is it produces poor outcomes. The Tories have tried to reduced numbers for a decade and a half and failed. That doesn't mean numbers can't be cut, it means the Tory way of obsessively focusing on immigration numbers and not what is happening in the economy will not work. Their failure to understand this will be core to the loss they're about to suffer.

The audience reaction to the scale is interesting, because they always think it's a lower number than it is. Was true under Labour last time too. But if they're guessing a low number (someone in that Ashfield vid I posted said roughly "there's a lot of immigrants here ... 100 I would say"), then what does that say about how they perceive immigration? Their lived reality is that it's smaller than it is, could it be because circa 10% of the immigration number is British nationals and 40% is students who leave and are replaced by more students? It's a mystery.

The sooner the Tories (which means their leader) condemns this party as dangerous loons and racists, as Cameron did in the 00s, the sooner the Tories will be able to rebuild.

Fresh from discovering Hitler wasn't to blame for WW2, we discover the UK is to blame for the Falklands War. Galloway is more sane than this and he's barking.

_Os_ wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 6:36 am

The audience reaction to the scale is interesting, because they always think it's a lower number than it is. Was true under Labour last time too. But if they're guessing a low number (someone in that Ashfield vid I posted said roughly "there's a lot of immigrants here ... 100 I would say"), then what does that say about how they perceive immigration? Their lived reality is that it's smaller than it is, could it be because circa 10% of the immigration number is British nationals and 40% is students who leave and are replaced by more students? It's a mystery.

This!

The bare number may be shocking to some, but the reality of how that translates into the day to day is much less so.

and to re-state the bleeding obvious, it's not immigration that puts a strain on resources or services, take five million off the population and the NHS would still be staggering from crisis to crisis due to lack of investment, NHS dentistry isn't suddenly going to leap off the mortuary slab. It's not going to create tens of thousands of careers or build houses or create energy stability. It's not going to get the turds out of our rivers, it's not going to recreate the trade we had with Europe, it's not going to reestablish our town centres.

etc etc

I missed this one a couple of days ago. Nice people...but regarding the candidate vetting. Reform paid a Tory donor owned company to vet the candidates and they are now suing that company for not doing so.
So it's not the calibre of candidates they attract but the vetting

A Reform UK candidate tweeted derogatory comments about the IQ of ethnic minorities, it has emerged.

Edward Oakenfull, Reform UK's candidate for Derbyshire Dales, made the offensive posts on X last year, referring to the IQ of sub-Saharan Africans.

The Conservative Party said he posted a "number of Islamophobic and racist comments".

Mr Oakenfull has told the BBC his comments were "taken out of context", adding he has since deleted his X account because it was being used by others to carry out a political "hit job".

The Reform UK website says Mr Oakenfull is a 56-year-old property developer and investor who lives in Denby, near Belper, Derbyshire.

On the website, he said he had "been despairing at how our country has been run for decades and, for the love of my community and country, decided that I needed to make a stand".

He tweeted the comments about sub-Saharan Africans "diluting" the UK's IQ in July last year.

Then in November, he tweeted: "Nothing good will come from importing yet more Muslims", and the following month, said the BBC chairman's ethnicity was "another reason to cancel" the licence fee.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgxxjzn738go

.................and another one at it!!!!

The BBC can reveal this morning that the Conservative candidate being looked into by the Gambling Commission over a bet relating to the timing of the general election is married to the party’s Director of Campaigns.

Laura Saunders, the party’s candidate in Bristol North West, has worked for the Tories since 2015.

It is not known when the bet was placed or for how much money.

She is married to Tony Lee, who is the Conservative Party’s Director of Campaigns.

And the campaign has been going so well

Tory party = thieves in ill-fitting suits

In some ways I'm gobsmacked about the latest betting revelations and the Tory Director of Campaigning taking leave of absence but in another way I am not! This is bang on Tory mentality and a real metaphor for everything the Tories have done whilst in power. Trying to make a quick and easy buck with insider info is just bang on form for the crooked twats, even whilst in their death throes they are still trying to rip someone off. All involved need arresting and charged.

At this point, it would appear Sunak's betting tip to his fellow Tories was part of their Manifesto.

So that's 3 now, right? 2 candidates and one of Sunak's police protection detail.

Rancid self-interest is at the core of the Tory party.

Insane_Homer wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:29 am At this point, it would appear Sunak's betting tip to his fellow Tories was part of their Manifesto.

The leaders debate tonight may go slightly awry for Rishi.
Utterly corrupt bastards

Tichtheid wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 7:05 am

_Os_ wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 6:36 am

The audience reaction to the scale is interesting, because they always think it's a lower number than it is. Was true under Labour last time too. But if they're guessing a low number (someone in that Ashfield vid I posted said roughly "there's a lot of immigrants here ... 100 I would say"), then what does that say about how they perceive immigration? Their lived reality is that it's smaller than it is, could it be because circa 10% of the immigration number is British nationals and 40% is students who leave and are replaced by more students? It's a mystery.

This!

The bare number may be shocking to some, but the reality of how that translates into the day to day is much less so.

and to re-state the bleeding obvious, it's not immigration that puts a strain on resources or services, take five million off the population and the NHS would still be staggering from crisis to crisis due to lack of investment, NHS dentistry isn't suddenly going to leap off the mortuary slab. It's not going to create tens of thousands of careers or build houses or create energy stability. It's not going to get the turds out of our rivers, it's not going to recreate the trade we had with Europe, it's not going to reestablish our town centres.

etc etc

This!

If immigration stopped then the NHS would collapse! Health and social care accounts for a large chunk of Skilled Workers Entry Visas awarded. Without the highly skilled and usually over qualified immigrants our NHS and social care would be in real trouble. A significant number of medical students/junior docs come into our NHS from overseas to get study/train and gain experience and we encourage many to stay once fully qualified to fill our consultant vacancies. 35% of the current NHS Consultant workforce is 'non British' by nationality. It is interesting that I don't hear anything but praise about the immigrants who patients and carers come into contact with in our NHS and social care - it is almost like they were somehow 'different' to other immigrants coming into the UK. Ive never heard of anyone refusing complex cardiothoracic surgery from the 'immigrant' surgeon. Mine was a wonderful Mr Zamvar who came to UK in 1991 from India, a highly skilled and compassionate man.

C69 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:50 am

Insane_Homer wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:29 am At this point, it would appear Sunak's betting tip to his fellow Tories was part of their Manifesto.

The leaders debate tonight may go slightly awry for Rishi.
Utterly corrupt bastards

He just wants it to be over so he can fuck off to America and hang with the fashy tech bros.

sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:32 am So that's 3 now, right? 2 candidates and one of Sunak's police protection detail.

Rancid self-interest is at the core of the Tory party.

3 as a minimum - no-one is confirming exact numbers so could be even more involved!

I've never seen an implosion of this magnitude in such a public and demeaning manner. Sunak showing all the political nous and leadership capability of a brain damaged woodworm. It is now getting really exciting to try and guess what else could possibly go wrong for the Tories - I never had trying to defraud William Hills of a few grand on my bingo card. I thought National Service was a wild card but I've still got money on the death penalty making a comeback.

Labour/Starmer strategy of stand back, say as little as possible and let the Tories self immolate has been bang on!

There's also a rumour that they are looking into a bet Jacob Rees-Mogg made on when Disraeli would call an election

But seriously, you wonder who else they tipped the wink to. Not like there isn't a history of insider trading...

sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:32 am So that's 3 now, right? 2 candidates and one of Sunak's police protection detail.

Rancid self-interest is at the core of the Tory party.

4 now. The Gambling Commission are also investigating the Tory's director of campaigning Tony Lee, who is married Laura Saunders, the other candidate under investigation. Probably explains why Lee took a leave of absence from the Tory's yesterday.

So that's 2 candidates, the Tory's campaigns director and one of Sunak's police protection officers.

But this still up...

Lobby wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 11:27 am

sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:32 am So that's 3 now, right? 2 candidates and one of Sunak's police protection detail.

Rancid self-interest is at the core of the Tory party.

4 now. The Gambling Commission are also investigating the Tory's director of campaigning Tony Lee, who is married Laura Saunders, the other candidate under investigation. Probably explains why Lee took a leave of absence from the Tory's yesterday.

So that's 2 candidates, the Tory's campaigns director and one of Sunak's police protection officers.

This really is corruption and incompetence on anm industrial scale. I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sunak looks to have lost control of everything.
Surely tonight he will be ripped apart over his in the Leaders debate.
Could it get any worse?

C69 wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 11:54 am

Lobby wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 11:27 am

sockwithaticket wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:32 am So that's 3 now, right? 2 candidates and one of Sunak's police protection detail.

Rancid self-interest is at the core of the Tory party.

4 now. The Gambling Commission are also investigating the Tory's director of campaigning Tony Lee, who is married Laura Saunders, the other candidate under investigation. Probably explains why Lee took a leave of absence from the Tory's yesterday.

So that's 2 candidates, the Tory's campaigns director and one of Sunak's police protection officers.

This really is corruption and incompetence on anm industrial scale. I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sunak looks to have lost control of everything.
Surely tonight he will be ripped apart over his in the Leaders debate.
Could it get any worse?

I suspect he might withdraw ... perhaps he will come down with cholera from drinking dodgy tap water?