darrenm

Carbon capture of 2 billion trees : Impossible! Where are the 700 people to plant the trees going to come from? Vanity project railway that won't help climate change a lot : 34,000 jobs, 16,000 already employed, massive amounts of land force purchased through compulsory purchase orders I get the feeling that some people aren't very serious about the climate emergency. https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/jobs-skills/

2b by 2040 was always the promise. It really wouldn't be difficult to find and train up 1000 people across the UK to plant them. Good job that Labour were promising either BRINO or no brexit through a 2nd ref and we've have plenty of EU workers then.

Sorry mate, I'm going to break one of my rules and outright say you're wrong this one https://medium.com/uk-politics-today/can-labour-really-plant-2-billion-trees-by-2040-dc08c20425f

I broadly agree. Just a couple of things. I haven't seen any abuse to Sharon Graham from the left. I saw plenty of people saying she should stand down for Steve Turner when Howard Beckett did. It was through a very real danger of splitting the left vote. Good for her she didn't, lots of egg on faces. I don't think (yes, Twitter is cesspit at all times, football Twitter is the absolute worst) there was anything beyond 'it looks like Turner has the best chance, please don't split the vote' which isn't misogynistic or abusive. And the pie in the sky stuff is pie in the sky for some people, absolutely desperately needed for others. Climate change - most people might think carbon neutral by 2050 is credible, 2030 isn't. The reality is it's already too late and the crazy weather is only going to get crazier. Wealth gaps are growing at an alarming rate, housing crisis only getting worse all the time. What might be seen as radical is usually not enough. How does Joe Public know what's realistic or not? They have clueless political commentators telling them it isn't, exhibit a: 2 billion trees was perfectly reasonable and would have massively helped get us carbon neutral by 2030. 50,000 nurses was proven utter nonsense. People like Maitlis saying the 2 were comparable which means she thinks 2 billion trees was nonsense too is why people only look for 'credible' promises that the existing groupthink allows to be credible. 'Don't say what needs to be said, they won't vote for you' only leads to the world continuing to burn, the emperor continuing to think he's wearing clothes and the elephant continuing to stand there.

Yep, you're right that he has been lower and recovered but the trend is still "falling lower and lower" https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/keir-starmer-approval-rating

That's where I think Labour's strategy is old fashioned, over simplistic and doesn't account for modern populism. People who've been in politics before the 21st century would say that yes, of course you have to try and encourage voters to vote for you by giving them what they want. I'd counter that people like that aren't saying what they want. They're saying stuff they don't really believe because they think it's what everyone else believes. Ask them if we should take in more refugees and they'll say no. Drive them to the south coast and get them to turn a dinghy around and they'll have a sudden change of heart. So you shouldn't pander to views that aren't for the betterment of the country or the world even. You should never encourage 'legitimate concerns'. You shouldn't say 'a bit of racism is OK if it gets us elected'. So, yes, ignore that type of person as a lost cause. Because while you try to chase them, they always will be. When you have a strong, positive message of change and hope, they'll come to you.

It's a meme. Here's roughly how it came about: Labour have been on a downward trend since the 1950s, bucked massively by Blair in 1997 and less so by Corbyn in 2017. Every election since 1997 had them losing vote share until losing the elections in 2010 and 2015. Corbyn got the party back to parity in 2017 (around 40/40 with the Tories) and then inevitably slid back away when not in an election campaign. Lots of people who are hailed as being political experts then realigned their expectations of where Labour had recently been and where they should be. According to them, 2017's hung parliament happened because there's 2 big parties who should be neck and neck, ignoring the entire last decade of Labour being behind the Tories almost all of the time. People like James O'Brien, Ian Dunt, Dan Hodges, all of the journalists and political commentators whose entire career is knowing how politics works were still convinced that Corbyn was the problem and that Labour would be wiping the floor with the Tories if they changed the leader. Some of them forcefully proclaimed: https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/passionate-listener-denies-labour-antisemitism/ https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/george-osborne-labour-would-be-20-points-ahead-of-the-tories-if-jeremy-corbyn-wasnt-leader https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-41952976 (coincidentally, Labour were 6 points ahead when Tony made that 'rare' intervention above) While all of these political heavyweights were saying this, lots of other people were saying 'hold on, it's not that simple. Labour's problems are decades in the making and the problem isn't the leader' but they were rebuffed. Even a lot of the left who were happy with Corbyn (myself included although I consider myself centrist) believed that with another leader with fewer targets on their back from their history of taking questionable sides, then Labour could pull ahead if they kept the right policies. Starmer could only have won the leadership election with the left believing this and voting for him with his 10 pledges/jokes. Now that Starmer just keeps falling lower and lower in the popularity ratings (yes, nowhere near the previous leader yet but that's not the point) and the party is no better off in the polls, it turns out that the Twittersphere bubble shitposters had better insight than Tony Blair, George Osborne and James O'Brien and all of the others who said similar things about the previous leader being the problem. There's quite a bit of frustration at being ignored, then being proven right and then still being ignored. Hence the meme 'any other leader would be 20 points ahead'.

With any other leader Labour would be 20 points ahead

This ref is awful. Not every challenge has to result in a free kick one way or the other.

Barrow are towards the bottom of the 2nd div (4th tier). Not quite as good as Walsall. Our u23s should destroy them. A mix of kids and 2nd string squad members should win at a canter.

Dunno, all I was doing was clarifying what was said. The claim was "calling for the UK to pay the Taliban damages" which isn't correct.

Just for the sake of accuracy, no-one called for the Taliban to be paid damages. Burgon (who I assume you're referring to) said we need to make sure reparations go directly to the Afghan people (i.e. making sure it doesn't go to the Taliban) You can listen for yourself here When things get misrepresented in the media, it's important to set the record straight. Otherwise, no-one is ever able to make a nuanced point without it being easily distorted and then repeated by those who accept it without question.

It's a chop. It says Happy Toast on the shelf.

Everyone I know who applied got some. I applied for 4 different events and ticked the auto upgrade if not available and got none. I emailed them to ask why I didn't get any even though I ticked the 'whip me' option and they gave a stock response of sorry you've been unsuccessful.

It is your opinion obviously but I completely disagree. I don't see any moral ambiguity whatsoever.

Is it? You said Socialist Appeal are basically a front for a political organisation pretending to be a newspaper. So is The Times but at the opposite end with far more power and blood on their hands.

The Times = News Corp. Owned by the Murdochs including Rupert Murdoch, one of the most effective forces for bad and ruiner of social cohesion in the 20th and 21st century. News Corp hacked dead children's voicemail along with many other people in the public eye. The current CEO is Rebekah Brooks, a core figure during the phone hacking scandal. News Corp newspapers regularly demonise minorities and use any kind of hate device they can to create conflict and culture wars. They're a racism factory pretending to be a media conglomerate. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-interview-prime-minister-boris-johnson-8qgxhq9pb I'd hate to be Keir Starmer when Keir Starmer discovers the background of The Times.

Just started watching Game of Thrones again so I know what's going on this time. Episode 1 is just pure exposition. Even then it's not enough.

Wow. If the Corbynite policies were the starting point and the scale of the challenge is now even greater then I'm really excited to see the proper radical stuff he'll be coming up with. Abolish capitalism? UBI? Everything government or public procured to be state owned? That's the only way it can go, from his own words. Whatever Claire Ainsley says the homogeneous group called 'The Working Class' wants this week. Last week it was some bloke shouting "why won't you all just work together?!" in the Question Time audience so naturally that's what The Working Class wants.

Have Brentford got anybody dangerous or are they relegation fodder? I'm going (yay). Taking the train for the first time ever. Where's good to drink from Aston station to the ground?

Matt Hancock even admitted that seeing the ending of that film and how the nation's fought over vaccine supplies panicked him into the huge order and partnership with AstraZeneca. I completely believe it happened like that.

Few thoughts about that. He's still being expelled by attending a meeting before the group was proscribed. Quite a few antisemites? Who? Charged by the police and convicted of a hate crime? Not sure what's wrong with suggesting an alternative Conference. You already have parallel events and surely there's nothing wrong with discussing how to reform or evolve the party? I don't think it really matters how the screenshot was obtained, the facts are still correct. This person was auto expelled by being on a zoom call with a group that was proscribed after the call.

It's all getting a bit silly isn't it?

I think Dean is one of the best English managers around and I think when Southgate is replaced, the FA will have Dean near the top of their list. My only minor criticisms are (and there's nothing to say I'm right, just a difference of opinion of approach): He seems to favour keeping the same shape and personnel every game over countering the threat of the opposition. Other managers seem to counter our threats while Dean seems to hope or expect that them having to worry more about our threats will give us the edge. Like today, I think it's worth sacrificing a midfielder just to sit on Newcastle's only threat: ASM. Teams did it with us and Grealish and it worked. Today I think ASM will have too much freedom and cause problems where instead we could shut him down and play 10v10 instead. The other one is that he's not defensive enough when needed. Which sounds mad I know but sometimes, like with Watford, we needed to sit back and draw them out, then hit them on the break. Teams know they can get behind us because we'll always attack and leave space behind the midfield. If we kept compact, we stop those holes appearing and then can break at speed. It doesn't work against every team because they all have different approaches but the gung-ho, fast and physical teams like Leeds and Watford will always cause us problems by breaking quickly if we don't keep compact and soak them up. If we did the same to them, they'd have no answer. It's all a game of chess though and I think you can get too bogged down in details of a French Defence when the best approach can just be to get your queen out taking pieces.

Now it looks to be pissing it down all day, definitely get El Ghazi to shoot on sight.