Barbe bleu

Puvlic view? His recent comments about some of our players and Raheem Sterling form the basis of anti racism training that is doing the corporate rounds right now. Might be best for him to give it another go on the non WiFi slopes

Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure.

In the long run this is good news for people who like the centre ground, but I'm not sure it's good news for the labour party, and by extension its cheerleaders. A poor show in these elections might temper reform ambitions in the general election. It's overly simplistic but where they dont run a candidate they can't split the tory vote.

He's hard to like, but him not winning would be a major shock. I'm not buying it.

Why, what's he supposed to have done? That election is about as close as I am to getting hold of myleene klass

On reflection, that might work. If they come for the **** o' the North they'll be trouble. Brookmans Park is ripe for housing. Talk is the dutch nursery and Euro plants might be gone in five years, hopefully they won't get ideas on the pubs and restaurants too.

Hopefully the new lot will re open Gap and the pubs in Northaw

Has there been much of a rise though? I'd agree thst Labour isn't half as toxic as it was but I'm not sure how well that translates to votes. We'll have to wait and see but my prediction is that these results will be all over the place. Conservative losses will be a constant, but the gains will be shared and there will be many places where a third party was in the top two and where Labour lose seats, or fail to pick them up. I take your earlier point that 1997 and 2010 where very much end of the road polls (and would add that the system hasn't changed since) but the big parties didn't really have insurgent elements to deal with and certainly not insurgent elements that hold all the cards on the charisma front. And nor was social media really a thing in the same way.

I've not heard if that statistic before but it makes sense. My theory is that in the old days before modern humans, at about the time ipswich were last winning trophies, if one of your troop bolted up a tree everyone one else followed. The curious ones that wanted to know the facts before legging it ended up eaten and evolutionarily irrelevant.

I agree wholeheartedly with the 'vibes' comment. Generally people don't decide who to vote for because they saw a spreadsheet or a line graph. They don't really care about percentage points or GDP figures. They vote based on feelings and emotion. The current feeling is that we need change and that's going to be hard for the tories to displace, even if the graphs start looking better. The threat for Labour though is that although people want change they don't really buy into labour as a great alternative. It might take as little as a lot of exposure for Farage and Galloway over the course if a general election campaign to really change things up. Even the Liberal Democrats (remember them?) might start getting a look in.

I'm not seeing these reports, do you have links?. BBC reporting that the head of the electoral commission was happy. Seems the the only issue raised was with military veterans not being happy their veterans card was not accepted. That's highly likely to be symbolic complaint though as these people are almost certain to have a passport and/or driving licence, even if they have expired (it's a bit difficult to be in the armed forces and not be able to travel...).

I spent the 3 years up until I was 18 desperately trying to get ID. I dont suppose it will really hold back those that want to vote

I suspect the post was intended as "humour"

Sure you can. You just need a highly motivated, skilled and confident workforce that works to a clear direction. That's got very little to do with elected councillors though.

That must have left them very confused

The thing that's rarely said is that if you made it easy to claim asylum in Britain, ie set up 'safe and legal routes' there would possibly be millions of people who 'give it a go'. Of those who give it a go a large percentage would be granted asylum because they happen to live in one then world's very large number of active war zones or can claim some protected characteristic that isn't protected in their home nation.

Is this 'Cunk on football'?

I'm not sure i read it that way. I've not read any suggestion that the UK is transporting migrants to the Republic. The suggeation is that migrants that have made it to the UK are crossing the border into the Republic under their own steam because they fear being sent to Rwanda. The UK being unsafe thing is about the ability of the Republic to return migrants once they have made the crossing, not about stopping them from doing so in the first place.

That's half of my understanding. An Irish court ruled uk as unsafe due to possibility of being sent to Rwanda (UK Supreme Court found similar, Rwanda itaelf not unsafe but risk of being sent onwards was too high) Irish government looking to do exactly same as UK government in the same position, legislate to ignore the ruling. Difference seems to be that whereas the UK has a willing partner to receive the people back the Irish Republic does not. Unless that changes or there is some treaty obligation no one is talking about it seems to be an idea that goes nowhere (other than playing to Irish domestic audiences)

I've not read anything to suggest that Ireland has any more or any less right to send back to the UK than the UK has to do the same with France.

Or let Ireland go halves on charter aircraft to Central Africa?

Doesn't that only apply to citizens though? I looked up the CPA as advised but it doesn't seem to give any rights to non-itizens of the two nations. I'm not sure why Ireland would be treated differently to France. No idea, can you look it up and tell us? From what I have read though the Irish government is going to legislate to change their domestic law to allow the government to ignore their courts which ruled the UK an 'unsafe' place. I guess this will make them a 'far right' administration too.

Yea, it does seem a bit crazy. If Andy Street is the guy you want as mayor then maybe vote for him? Using the mayoral election as an opportunity to protest against different people in a different place does seem a bit silly to me.

We live in globalised times where what foreign superpowers and mega corporations do has far more impact on our lives that national governments. We also live in devolved times where local and 'regional' government and government agencies and a huge civil service look after a lot of the day to day jobs of government. For someone in no10 to make a real.impact on your life they have to pull hard on levers. Labour won't pull hard on levers, in fact they have spent two years sending out the message that these levers don't even exist. Over the next five years life will get a bit better for most of us as things inevitably pick up in the world. We'll be closer to climate catastrophe but we won't really feel the symptoms of that, or link them to our own actions. But mainly, short of WW3, things will change but what does change won't be the result of no10 being red rather than blue

Nothing will change