blandy

pissweasel.

He had a seagull on his head when I saw him last year.

He was contributing much more to the team. Perhaps that's why?

[A pedant writes] I wouldn't be. Half of their 57 points would mean relegation .

I missed that by the way - when did they do that? Genuine question

The innate contradiction is in your post, several times. "Labour's policy is to negotiate a deal [to leave]" - that makes their policy a Leave one. Re pay rises, if my Union negotiates for a pay rise deal - that makes my union a "payrise" union. Many Labour MPs being in leave seats - that's why they are (wrongly IMO) doing all this Leave policy business. They're, presumably on internal polling and their own wishes, deciding that they will lose voters in those seats if they plump for remain. But I think that's counter intuitive to an extent, in many cases. If the tory or Brexit voters in those seats (and those are both leave parties) stick with their choice of Tory/Brexit party, and why wouldn't they - they're already Brexity toryish leavers, then Labour is going "leave" to try and pick up a few votes and also lose those remain Labour voters there. Polling they have may say that's the smart calculation, but it's not principled, it's not protecting workers rights and the NHS and all the core Labour values. It's cynical opportunism at best. Labour's memebers are overwhelmingly remain. Contradictions and mess everywhere with them, IMO.

As much as anyone can quite determine what Labour policy is, Labour is a self proclaimed Leave party. Labour wants to negotiate it's own leave deal with the EU, - which is a bit of a clue. And then Labour wants to do a special conference to decide whether the leave deal they'll have just spent 6 or 7 months negotiating and got is something Labour wants or not! (people might then ask - well if they didn't want it, what were they doing stopping negotiations before it was acceptable, or ask - were they even trying?, why negotiate to leave if you don't want to leave? ).... And then once they've decided whether they like what they've gone and negotiated , they're then going to ask everyone else if we like what they've done via another referendum. It's mental. Anyone wanting to remain, and going on policy would be better off avoiding that car crash of a party.

It isn't though, is it? Even now, for example, the polls n'that are saying 30-36 odd percent Tory support. So most of England is ABT

Where's the Kenneth gif folks? There's a post here needs one urgently. Oh, I'll do it myself

'kin hippie, Scott

Me too, once he gave me 10p for the phone and once in the pub. Just a lovely and normal bloke with a talent.

And soon to be Ex PM I hope But yeah, that's all credible I guess what he's aiming for, really. The flip side is that thing won't go as he hopes - I mean there's a bit of history of that already, and something completely different might happen.

Of course it is possible - and there are and were many different ways of getting such training and education. Unless anyone think we don't need or shouldn't have a military, then IMO that military should be able to recruit and train volunteers, (whether 16 with parental permission, or 18 and older). Also as an added bonus, my military training put me off (not that I was ever that keen on) guns and doing shooting n'that. I still like planes though.

And as an aside, being in the RAF as a younger person led me to my kind of disliking the tories and Thatcher. At the time there were (as there are now) various voices and people saying "the country needs them to sort out the mess, Unions, whatever" and others saying "what they're doing is nigh on evil - destroying communities etc." But what influenced me down my path was my first pay rise under Thatcher ended up as a pay cut - they put up wages by whatever 2% or something, about a 70p a week, probably, and then put up accomodation charges by a pound a week because it has been "upgraded" - they painted the walls. It's minor, but when you earn next to nowt, getting made poorer was not a good move and it led me to sympathy for hating them.

I suppose by replying I'm proving you right that "there's a debate to be had", but I don't think there is, tbh. Because the engineering or organisational skills are not really debatable - they're there, it's (in my experience) fact. Ditto the health resource - because the military has it's own medics and hospital facilities etc. but these are also available to the general population if needed - not just here, but abroad or on ships etc. too. Contradictions I the system - yes, totally I share the view you and others have put, that 16 year olds should be able to vote, as should IMO anyone granted residency.

Won't it (in its current form) die if there's an election and a new parliament? And have to start again - so there's no guarantee it'll ever come back? It's surely a big gamble by Johnson - this election could kill Brexit - lead to it's end.??

It's OT, but I joined the military as an apprentice, during Thatchers time - there weren't many good jobs around in the West Midlands back then, Uni was a thing where you needed a degree of wealth behind you from your family so there weren't gazillions of options. But anyway of those that joined up with me a few left of their own volition quite early on, a few were kicked out, but the majority went on to have valued and valuable careers of various lengths in the RAF. It gave us training at least as good if not better than continued education would, it also taught us a trade (engineering) and let us see the world. I'm perhaps unsurprisingly in favour of it, because of what it offers being better than many alternatives. And you're right, under 16 you are not legally allowed to go to war, so even though the Falklands war kicked off, we were not ever going to get sent there.

We will. Trying to look at it objectively, I think that generally those most enthusiastic about the whole Corbyn thing would share your view, though not unanimously so, whereas there is a very significant part of the voting population which is entirely focused on Brexit - either "just get it done" frustration, or "kill it". I'm sure that events will come to highlight various stuff that isn't Brexit - maybe a terrorism or NHS or Industrial thing, but I'm also sure that aspects of Brexit will also come into more focus - Scottish Independence, companies quitting the UK or whatever. I guess if the election is about key labour issues, then they'll do better/less badly and if it's about Brexit, then they'll get hammered (unless they somehow come up with a coherent policy that's more easily digested by people in the interim). As you say, we'll see.

Yeah, in the past. This GE (if it happens) will likely be about Brexit, to a large if not completely dominant extent.

Agreed on the first point. What about the local and Euro election results from last time - where LDs and Brexit parties won big style? Given the Brexit factor is a massive thing, I think it further underlines how the old "well, last GE this or that happened" is no kind of guide to now-times.

Because Brexit and maths. I don't know whether you meant 80% of all seats (=530 ish), or 80% of currently tory held seats (about, what, 250 ish), but whichever, "the best chance to beat the Tories *is* voting Labour" claim can at best be based on what happened last time there was an election - so if you're using, say in 250 of the 300 odd Tory held seats, labour came second last time, it absolutelty doesn't follow that right now the best plan in those seats is to vote Labour. If it is a remainy seat, or studently seat, then it's highly probably that in that location the LDs are now the front runner and voting Labour would actually increase the chance of a Tory win. Or it night be that Labour is still best placed, in that seat. Or it might be that the Brexit party is, in some leave areas - but my point is threefold - past election results can't be used to say if people vote for who came second in a seat last time, that's the best chance to beat the incumbent this time. And more so when there's a massive elephant in the room, such as Brexit. Also that unless there is actual reliable local polling, no-one knows what will will happen, and finally that events over the election period can massively alter the prognosis for parties. I would strongly wager that because of Brexit, than in more than 130 seats (20% of the total, from your 80% ) that either the BNXP, SNP, Plaid, DUP, SInn Fein, Independents, Lib Dems or Green are now likely to be best placed to beat the tories, and if we're just talking Tory held seats, then it's probaly half or more, now.

That may have used to be the case. It isn't so now.

The government just lost their vote on having a 12 Dec GE.

Agreed. A lot of our game seems to revolve around putting balls in from out wide, but again, neither Wes nor Kienan has looked like finishing from those chances.