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How many do you see?

Hovis making it explicit by labelling their colourful reimagining of a flag with a description of people who get angry about it:

Pretty sure that's the Angel Of The North.

I for one, was furious about this:

They'll change St George into a Turkish bloke next, just to satisfy the woke mob.

Remember how everyone lost their collective shit about this being the Team GB shirt at the 2012 Olympics with its colour-changed flag? Yeah, me neither.

Oh yes? Where is your "90% of fans" figure coming from? I'd bet that mos people couldn't care less, with a small number on either side of their culture war divide deciding that they have to be Very Angry about it.

I only raise this because you're normally right about most stuff on these threads, but this is a terrible, unworkable idea.

I would probably have just sent him this excellent SNL sketch on the topic from a few months back.

Even if Reform win a seat (and they'd be unlikely to even do that), the Lib Dems would become the opposition in the event of a Tory wipeout.

All going well.

I imagine if attacking midfield, cutting-in-from-the-left were a position that England were lacking in then Ramsey probably would have got a call-up. But last season the likes Rashford, Grealish and Foden were doing just fine. Likewise, if we had a young player who was excelling in a position where England's current choices are Jordan Henderson and Kalvin Phillips he might have been called up just like Mainoo has been.

I mean, if that's your own work then it's just outstanding.

(while I appreciate this isn't the point you're making, I'm merely segueing) Do people who have had significant stomach surgery comfortably saunter around a few weeks later while swinging apparently-heavy shopping bags that a husband or nearby servant could easily have taken from them?

I'd bet money that the variety of clubs that Southgate has picked players from is more diverse than any other England manager in decades. The current squad has fifteen different clubs represented. In the time he's been England manager he's picked five different players from Burnley, seven from Southampton, three from Bournemouth, two from West Brom (!) and six from Crystal Palace. He has plenty of failings, but selecting players from a wide range of clubs isn't one of them.

As others have said, he's not wanted to be selected since pulling out of the Qatar squad in November '22. So it's impossible for him to know how he would have been used in any of the squads since. When he pulled out (Kenneth.gif) he'd had a decent season at Brighton (finishing 16th) followed by a decent first season at Arsenal (finishing 5th). He then found himself shunted out to right-back at the start of the '22-'23 season to make room for Saliba and he'd been playing there for three months when the Qatar squad was announced. So given he wasn't playing at centre-back for his club, and he had Kyle Walker and Trent Alexander-Arnold also competing with him at right-back (a position he'd only just started playing for his club) I don't really see why he gets to dictate terms about his position in the team. Unless he wants to make the argument that his three months at right-back meant he should have been ahead of both of the two above, or he's so good at centre-back that he should be playing for England in a position his club don't consider him good enough at to play for them, then he was being used about as much as was appropriate. A very useful option to have covering two positions in the squad, but not in the team. It's not like Southgate's ignoring Kane or Bellingham here, he's treating the third or fourth best English right back as third or fourth choice right-back. If he's not bothered about playing for England, that's fair enough. Some players aren't fussed about having extra matches and it's not what he's paid to do. However if he does want to play for England and he's just in a strop about how he's being used, then he's a bell-end.

I think if you've got to the stage where you're banking on 14/1 Susan Hall to win in London as the thing to launch your latest reset, it's safe to say that things are pretty bad.

You're projecting a level of political engagement and interest amongst the wider population which just doesn't exist. At most recent polling around 10% of British adults didn't know who Rishi Sunak is and nearly a quarter didn't know who Keir Starmer is. The idea that there is a "silenced majority" who have "learned to keep their traps shut" makes the daft assumption that the average person is online following every twist and turn of culture war Twitter. I can promise you, they're not.

The one argument in their favour that I can think of for September is if you time it for the period when students are a bit in flux between being away / at home then you might wipe out a few tens of thousands of votes. But if they are losing a few thousand votes in University towns and cities, that's unlikely to be the difference between holding many of those seats or not.

But right after the height of the latest summer of small boats not being fixed, leading to more Tory --> Reform switchers. And not shortly after a local election bloodbath which gives a narrative of "Tories are being elecotrally smashed everywhere". May was probably his best opportunity.

About five weeks I think is the time needed.

I'm becoming more of the opinion that something snaps somewhere which stops it being completely in Sunak's control.

And another one.

"We want people to keep killing each other because it might make thing politically harder for our opponents"