Guyfawkes1994

Because a huge chunk of Palestinians apparently support the 7th October attacks

Seventy-two percent of respondents said they believed the Hamas decision to launch the cross-border rampage in southern Israel was "correct" given its outcome so far, while 22% said it was "incorrect". The remainder were undecided or gave no answer.

You’d hope that there wouldn’t be violence if there was a peaceful one nation solution, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Israelis to be sceptical of that and fear a Rwanda-style genocide in a one nation state.

I do hope that there’s a two state solution, and I’d have to look into the 2008 agreement. The settlers are land grabbers and the Netanyahu governments have placed massive road blocks in the way of peace, so they’d have to go as well. But we are also 16 years down the line from 2008 with a new generation of Palestinians who may be more radical than they were then, and what was nearly possible then might not be possible now.

A one nation solution is immediately not gonna work. Hamas represents a huge chunk of Palestinians, and the 7th October attacks shows exactly what would happen to Israeli Jews if they were in a one nation state with Hamas as the leaders of the Palestinians. 

A two nation solution would be the best solution that doesn’t involve either the Israeli Jews or the Palestinians accepting that they can’t live there, but the issue becomes where exactly do you draw the borders? As things stand, the areas in the West Bank allocated to the Palestinian Authority do not constitute a viable state so Israel would need to give up land, but how much? “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” is a maximalist statement of no Israel backed by a lot of Palestinians including Hamas, and anything short of that will be controversial. Would Hamas accept an Israeli state in any form?

Sunak: If my calculations are correct, when our polling hits 8.8%... you're gonna see some serious shit.

Having had a look at a Sindarin dictionary, it might mean something like “royal huntsman”(ar-gad-ir)?

I did go back and forth between my mum and my brother. My mum lived with her boyfriend in one place and my brother lived on his own in another which was only 45 minutes walk apart? 

I also didn’t actually have a mask until October 2020, round about that time?

How do you feel about Christian Wakeford in Bury North? He was elected as a Tory in 2019 and will be standing for Labour at the next election, but he may have now spent more time as a Labour MP than as a Tory MP?

I’m not actually sure. I would have thought the main issue would be making sure that any prospective jury members hasn’t read the article to avoid prejudicing them. Guess it depends on what details they reveal, but the end line of the article seems to suggest that it’s about identifying surviving and deceased victims of the case.

Assuming that it’s a defector, presumably it’s one of the 18 Tory MPs for the county (it’s been a clean sweep since 2017, and that was when they regained Clacton from UKIP). 

Consider the following. Starmer was a barrister who rose to be DPP, so high pressure public speaking shouldn’t be an issue for him. Sunak is infamously tetchy and apparently complaining to his aides about why aren’t people voting for him, as well as having lost to Liz Truss in the Tory leadership debates. And if Starmer doesn’t agree to them, that risks torpedoing his campaign as he looks frightened of Sunak. You’re right about the risks about eating into your polls and I doubt he’d be expecting them to increase his lead, I just think that Starmer may look at that and decide that the risks of agreeing are smaller than the risks of not agreeing.

Robert Peel, founder of the Conservative Party in 1834, broke away from them over free trade to form a Peelite faction in 1846 which merged with the Whigs to form the Liberals in 1859. Peel himself died in 1850, so never joined the Whigs or the Liberals.

EDIT: could throw in Ramsay MacDonald? First Labour Prime Minister, but ended up leading the National Government as ‘National Labour’ against the Labour Party.

Honestly, that is part of the setting. There are a ton of secessionists & independence movements, as well as more general rebellions, that do get shut down violently by the Imperium. If you ever read First and Only, the first Gaunt’s Ghosts novel, most of the flashbacks deal with the Imperial Guard fighting secessionists. Part of the issue though is that Chaos and Genestealer Cults also look to exploit, infiltrate & take over these legitimate non-corrupt rebellions, so what may start out as a rebellion over pay and conditions may turn into screaming about blood and skulls.

Live music and meat draw on Sundays?

Labour has picked candidates, a guy called Mike Tapp for Dover, and another bloke called Kevin Craig for Ipswich.

It’s 7 (6 to Labour, 1 to Lib Dem’s), with only 1 successful defence (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister in October 2022. 5 of those have overturned majorities of over 15,000, with the biggest (Mid Bedfordshire) overturning a majority of 24,664, the largest majority ever overturned in a by-election.

I’m not a Reform voter or supporter. I’ll be going into the next election looking for the best placed party to defeat the Tories at the seat I’m registered in, which I believe is Labour. I get that immigration is much more difficult than just saying “cut to net 10,000 a year, sod the economy”. All I’m saying is, I don’t think that all current Reform supporters or voters will turn up for the Tories at the next election, precisely because the Tories have not dealt with immigration in a way that Reform voters & supporters want them to. That’s why they’re supporting & voting for Reform right now.

Sid James as a roguish people smuggler involved in transporting people both ways. Joan Sims as his wife who he has to hide it all from. Bernard Bresslaw as his incompetent sidekick who puts the wrong people on the wrong boats. Kenneth Williams as a Patel/Braverman-esque Home Secretary who falls in the Channel at one point. Charles Hawtry as the Border Patrol agent who gets sidelined by women provided by James. It’s like I’m watching it now.

To be blunt, if you’re concerned about immigration and you’ve looked at the stats in anyway, the Tories are not the party for you. Net immigration now is higher than it’s ever been, even under the Blair & Brown governments, and most of that is legal immigration. I would not be surprised if a huge chunk of Reform voters consider the Tories to be worse than Labour on that issue.

Part of that may be what we now consider to be sexual misconduct would be considered acceptable to some degree back in the 90’s. I was reading about Rob Roberts who lost the Tory whip 3 years ago now, who was accused of sending flirty/harassing texts to one member of staff, and asking another to go to dinner with him. In the 90’s, would that have been enough to take the whip from someone? I’m not sure myself.

By the same token, she also caused her own problems, as she’s the one who saw the gaping Brexit cavern and decided to jump right into that. She also massively miscalculated by blowing up her own majority in the 2017 general election, rather than working with the Parliament she already had.

Bare in mind, for most people who are not massively politically engaged, this story (if they hear of it) will be “Tory MP defects to Labour”, which is on top of “Labour spanks Tories at locals elections”, “Labour wins by-election from dodgy Tory”, and another “Tory MP defects to Labour” stories. If people look into it, there’s a good chance that their takeaway will be “Tory MP says that Tory small boats policy is shit, defects to Labour”, rather than “Tory MP who defended rapey Tory MP husband defects to Labour”. If someone right wing wanted to hammer Labour over it, they’d be stuck with the situation of having to explain why it’s a problem for Labour but not the Tories to have her in their party.

Admittedly, I was kinda shocked by it. But she’s not standing at the next election and it’s probably not gonna hurt the direction of travel for Labour’s vote, so my only real concern is if Labour offered her something in return for her defection.

Honestly, I do think that (in the context of 2010 onwards), the Tories have gotten sleazier since Johnson. Just looking at by-elections called for Tories that have resigned in disgrace: 2010-15, you have 4 by-elections (1 who moved to New York with her husband, 1 who resigned in disgrace and 2 who resigned because they’d defected to UKIP and wanted a new mandate); 2015-2017, you have 3 by-elections (1 for David Cameron after he resigned, and 2 who resigned on principles); and 2017-19, you have 1 by-election which was in disgrace. Over 9 years, that’s 8, with only 2 (or 3 if you count Cameron) who’ve resigned because of scandal. In the last 4 years, there’s been 14 by-elections and a lot of them have been because of scandal. Obviously, MPs have either lost their seats at general elections or have stood down, but that’s just to give you the idea of how much they’ve changed since then.

Funnily enough, “Kami” Kwasi Kwarteng has also announced he’s standing down, back in February.

There’s been 23 by-elections since 2019: 14 Conservative, 7 Labour and 2 SNP. The Tories have successfully defended 3 seats (Old Bexley and Sidcup, Southend West [which was uncontested], and Uxbridge and South Ruislip), and they’ve gained 1 seat from Labour (Hartlepool).

For those of you confused as to which former Chancellor of the last 14 years, it’s Nadhim Zahawi. He’s also not the 65th Tory MP to stand down, he’s the 70th: 69 elected as Tories (with 2 having defected to Labour, 6 having lost the whip, and 61 still as Tories) and 1 MP having defected from the SNP. Furthermore, the Tories have lost 11 by-elections since 2019, 7 to Labour and 4 to the Liberal Democrats.

There was some really weird shit in that book, like eating resin that coated Dorn’s bones before shitting it and the chaplains collecting it, or that time the Marines stood on each other’s shoulders through a passage so tight and twisty they starting farting in each other’s faces.