mormont

Cleverly being knocked out after leading is hilarious stuff. Top trolling from Tory MPs there.

It is almost banal to say it, but this election does seem mostly to hinge on enthusiasm and turnout. Getting voters to switch, or even trying to win over undecided voters, is an uphill task: the polls haven't really moved in any significant way despite what would, even a few elections ago, be considered enormously significant political events. Turning out the vote is what will decide it.

Agreed. But she also used maternity pay in general (regardless of the level) as an example of needless regulation. She's now trying to walk that back. But it's a rather weak attempt at damage limitation.

So you would agree with Badenoch that maternity pay is needless regulation?

[mod] Relic is correct: the general discussion about colonialism has been sufficient for this thread and is now a derail. No more, please. [/mod]

Never, is when it’ll happen.

[mod] Civility, people, please. You don't have to mean it in your heart of hearts. But you do have to display it on this board. If you feel unable to, type it out and delete it before posting, or go do something else for a bit. [/mod]

Manchin wants money, yes, but presumably also wants his ego stroked on the regular, which he will get as the token Dem on the Republican talk shows and dinner speech circuit. Everyone at these events will tell him how uniquely moderate, sensible and reasonable he is, as they all discuss how the poors should just shut up and die.

Seriously, how dare Joe Manchin call shame on anyone. He should have perished on the spot from abject, unmitigated mortification years ago.

I mean, you're laughing at it (and rightly), but this message is critical for Farage, and it's aimed squarely at people who did vote for him. What he's saying is 'you, my supporters, are absolutely not bigots. Anyone who says you are, is wrong. You have license to believe what you like, say what you like, and support my policies, secure in the belief that you are not bigots and will never be bigots, because I said in public that Reform doesn't welcome bigots. You're the silent, decent majority. You're not silent, or decent, and you're certainly not a majority, but you would never believe anything else about yourself, and now I'm affirming it for you.' Standard right wing blazer-racist stuff, but it has power.

OK, let's be clear. Nobody is going to be allowed on this board to advocate for ethnic cleansing of either Jews in Israel or Palestinians in Gaza and the North Bank. You are advocating for the latter. Stop. Now. No more warnings.

This discussion is ignoring the elephant in the room. Israeli strategy at this time is not being driven by long term national self interest. It's being driven by a combination of radical right wing ideology and the selfish personal considerations of Benjamin Netanyahu. Both of these combine to favour actions that prolong and extend the conflict, and ignore - or are actively hostile to - international law. Rationalising this in terms of the 'other side' and justifying bad behaviour as a response to their ruthlessness, as if international politics was a Liam Neeson movie, is giving Netanyahu a pass for all the lives lost and torn apart on both sides because he wants to avoid accountability.

Any attack where innocents have been injured is surely one to which one can have a moral objection.

This looks great! But.. they're dumping it in January? Guys, you realise Boon Jung Ho won an Oscar?

I’m waiting to see if this is serious or just another day in the USA. There’s a briefing due.

Someone reportedly shooting near Trump, again.

We will settle this on the field, sir. Name your second.

Arcanine or Houndoom, surely.

The first two sequel films are, by a looooooooooooooooooooooong distance, much more entertaining than any of the three prequel films. IMO anyway. The prequel revisionism is misguided: they're still terrible. I go back and forth on whether Rise of Skywalker is worse than Revenge of the Sith - it probably is, but both are really, really bad films. I'll never watch either of them again, so it's hard to be sure. But Rise of Skywalker was a bigger mess. Nothing in it works at all.

I'm really sorry to hear this, Scot. You'll have a hard time adjusting and some difficult times ahead, I'm sure. I do want to bring a perspective on not telling your daughter. Professionally, I've seen this situation a fair number of times over the years, where college age children's parents divorce but try to keep it from them in order to not disrupt their studies. Quite apart from whether those students would have preferred to know (they would all have preferred to know), I've never once seen a case where that worked out well. Either they know something's up, in which case they're distracted from their studies by worry over what is going on, or they find out and are devastated not only that this is happening but that they've been kept in the dark. In the nature of what I do, I'm less likely, I suppose, to see situations where this worked out well. And I've also seen a lot of cases where people did tell their student child and handled it badly, with negative consequences. But the idea of keeping it from her for her own good is... well-intentioned, but often works out to be something folks regret.

Abolish the House of Lords, problem solved. The government picks and chooses when to listen to it anyway, and it serves no useful constitutional function except to pretend that it has a useful constitutional function.

The word 'relatively' is doing a lot of work there. He's still talking about 'reforming' the ECHR and leaving it if it doesn't change, capping immigration at 100,000 per year, etc.

I respect the Tory party's commitment to the bit. They're giving us a whole series of laugh-out-loud moments over the next few weeks, where we get to see their truly appallingly unqualified and unpopular leadership campaigners crash out of the contest one by one (or withdraw, presumably). Priti Patel is the first to be voted off the show. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d7y92n31zo

'Conflicts' might be the wrong word, in the sense that it's obviously not impossible to do both. But the sense that writers are being given requirements and told they must hit targets that aren't the actual metrics they're going to be judged on is inescapable. If the situation is that you need to be a hit out of the gate or get cancelled, then the studio should be making that clear and supporting the showrunner to hit that target. If the studio want a longer plan, then they should support the showrunner to hit that target. It's just bad management to ask showrunners to set up a long, slow burn story that's also an instant ratings hit, use that as the standard instead of a rare flash of luck, and drop the axe when that doesn't happen. (I'd certainly argue The Acolyte, while not perfect, did the job of providing a good season arc - it sets out to investigate the mystery of what happened on Brendok and resolves it. The lack of an arc was not the problem.)