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I'm willing to bet your experience of both politics and student politics is very, very limited and not recent. So yeah, they're similar. In fact they're very similar to council politics, and both of those are regarded as very good training grounds for things like being an MP. I'm not sure why you're so invested in me being wrong about an area I've been working in for two and a half decades and you've never worked in, to my knowledge. But let's leave it at this: 18 year olds are allowed to stand and voters are allowed to pick them.

There are rumours going around that Sadiq Khan might be in trouble in the London Mayoral elections. Susan Hall is said to be hoovering up ULEZ votes in the outer regions and there seems to be apathy and low turnout in general which might hurt Khan. Personally I am highly dubious of these rumours, even if it might not be a huge win for Khan. Susan Hall is just awful, and full scale moron, and as much as I also think Khan has just been a terrible mayor, there were zero credible candidates to challenge him. Having said that, the ULEZ thing really is a factor that has stirred a lot of ‘white van men’ into being political where they might totally uninterested in who is mayor. So who knows.

That wasn't the discussion though, as any adult would know. Better a competent adult with relevant experience and skills, than a competent youth without.

Jim Ratcliffe visited United’s facilities at Carrington recently and followed it up with an e-mail having a go at how untidy the IT department was and threatening to cancel staff Christmas parties. A friend of a friend worked for Ineos and he encountered Ratcliffe fairly frequently and apparently he’s a massive dick. He’s not taking long to show that at United.

In the important race (outside of London) 102 or 107 councils declared. Labour: 1,026 councillors Lib Dem: 500 councillors Conservative: 468 councillors Pseudo-officially the 3rd party now. Brilliant day for the Greens as well, going from 100 to 158 As for the recent discussion - better a competent youth than an incompetent adult. Oh, and choosing 3 illustrative examples doesn't mean that there are only 3 examples - as any adult should know

The Groomer people were idiots. I think it shows the way discourse can go, especially on the internet and absolutely highlights many of the bad faith individuals on one side. In terms of messaging, I think there might have been a conversation to be had about how appropriate or sexualised some content being put in front of kids was, but you can have that conversation without going around calling people groomers. I think actually putting it in those terms just revolted a lot of people and I remember quite a bit of backlash to it, even on the right.

I missed this notablog post with the blue rose. https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/03/11/words-of-wisdom-2/

Half that for a Star

Unfortunately revolutions tended to have the opposite effect

A Lewis Hamilton who has been driving since a child explains why he might be appropriate for doing that one specific thing when he gets older. Otherwise, it’s not like we are putting 18 year olds in charge of battalions ( unless things get really bad), we as a society frown on 18 years olds having kids themselves, and I sure as shit don’t want to get on a plane being flown by an 18 year old. Point being, we don’t actually put 18 year olds in positions of major responsibility for a reason.

Series 3 was the best. George clucking to avoid making it obvious he didn't know what a rotten borough is, was peak Hugh Laurie in the role.

Luckily Pitt the younger was captured in documentary footage of the time:

She hasn't even sat her a levels, she still lives at home with her parents. At least the ones mormont was talking about are at uni and have some life experience. The fact in human history you managed to think of about 3 people doesn't prove the point you think it does.

It is on Prime here in Canada. Maybe not so in the US? Anyway I enjoyed it although it did tail off a bit in the second half.

So...this is what like would be like if there were no libraries or bookstores?

Perhaps not as much as one might be inclined to believe. There’s been a gradual normalisation of ties between various Arab countries and Israel. That’s because many Arab governments want little to do with Palestinians, as a result of various actions committed in the past. -Jordan had its king assassinated - Lebanon was plunged into a civil war - Egypt wants to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has been a clerical theocracy, whose goal is to export its revolution to the Islamic world. This poses a direct threat to absolute monarchies like those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They see an alliance with Israel and by extension the West as strategic.

It's only a hipster game if it comes from Portland, otherwise it's sparkling pretentiousness.

Funny, I was listening to a podcast about the first film yesterday. The makeup was pretty wild, and there's a documentary just about it. They needed so many makeup artists that they basically emptied Hollywood and needed set up a makeup school to teach people off the street, pretty much. There was a period for a couple of decades where pretty much any film had a makeup artist who had worked on Planet on the Apes because of this.

It shouldn’t be an either/or prospect. Having more allies is beneficial to all parties involved. Building a strong foundation between Israel and SA helps mitigate Iran’s influence in the region.

... Long live the King.

I have a very hard time seeing this kind of tax go anywhere in a divided Congress. It would be nice to tax the billionaires somehow, but it's not clear how such a tax would work: would they have to sell some of their holdings (and therefore realize the gains and be subject to a different tax) or would the government take payment in kind?

Biden proposes a tax on unrealized gains affecting people making 100+ million a year. FOX, meanwhile, is blaming the expiration of the Trump tax cuts on Biden. Biden Proposes Twenty Five Percent Tax on Unrealized Gains (msn.com)

Partricularly coming from gay people. For years and years we were suspected of either molesting children or trying to make them gay, or sometimes both. I guess Gays Against Groomers never got that lesson in history class.