Reform UK support could plateau as it relies on socially conservative views, study finds
You know, as with Green Party support having an upper limit as there are only so many shrieking morons to be found in even in Britain?
But to turn away from truth telling and to whimsy. Support for a political party is limited by the number of supporters the political party might have? Rilly?
Why are oil traders stupid?
That’s the question.
I have said it before, and I will no doubt say it again, but these supposedly rational market players are demonstrating they are anything but that.
…
The current oil price is around $93 per barrel, which, as the chart shows, represents a marked decline from the peak seen in recent weeks. Yet again, it would seem that oil traders believe what Donald Trump has said. They seem to think that because he hinted that a deal on the Strait of Hormuz might now be available, everything will return to normal very soon.
So, obviously, Spud is going to long the market and be very, very, rich. Good Luck!
Of course, there is an alternative suggestion available. A retired accountant does not, in fact, know more about what the oil price should be than the participants in the $3 trillion a year or so physical oil market, the $8 trillion traded futures and $20 trillion OTC markets.
But, you know, get rich Spud.
A coalition of more than a hundred refugee children’s organisations has said controversial plans to use AI to assess the age of young asylum seekers could lead to more children wrongly ending up in adult prisons or detention centres.
To be able to stick more claimed kiddies into adult centres. Thus, presumably, the complaint is that it might work?
Espriella, who calls himself el Tigre (the Tiger), celebrated the result: “Compatriots, defenders of the homeland, more than 10 million Colombians placed their trust in el Tigre and joined the pack … In 21 days, we are going to change the history of Colombia forever,” he said in a video alongside his wife and children, all wearing shirts of the Colombian national football team.
Petro posted on X that “as president, I do not accept the preliminary results” released by the National Civil Registry, the independent public body responsible for organising Colombia’s elections.
Without showing any evidence, the president claimed the count included “800,000 additional people” and said he would only “consider and accept” the results of the official scrutiny process, during which the National Electoral Council reviews the physical tally sheets, a procedure that can take days or even weeks.
Nasty, horrible, right wing type comes first – but does not win, run off to come – an election. Left immediately comlpains about vote rigging.
Ho Well. Sometimes in foreign isn;t so different, eh?
And, well:
What are we losing in this fire? Writing is not just about rendering thoughts through words in a certain style: analysis, literary fiction, storytelling. It is about the particular alchemy of a single individual drawing on their own unique profile to construct an idea. It is about the way their brain works, the quirks they have picked up along the way, their politics, their history, their relationships, the very way they see the world.
Awww, Gawd. No, don’t lassie. Writin’ ’bout ‘ritin’ is very boring.
A Mumsnet report drawing on a decade of users’ posts from the site paints a picture of a system where women fail to get the healthcare they need, with symptoms “brushed aside, treated as psychological, or simply not believed”; in a survey published with the report, 64% said they had been explicitly told pain or symptoms were “normal” or “in their head”.
Nursing is 91% female, madwifery no doubt more than that, doctoring is majority female and ob/gyn I would assume much more than that.
So who is it ignoring the birds with their uteri hanging out? ‘S Not us men, is it?
Perhaps patriarchy is better than being ruled by the boss girls?
Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams was forced to sit in silence on stage at an event at Hay festival, after lawyers advised her not to speak because of ongoing legal action brought by Meta.
Wynn-Williams, whose bestselling memoir, Careless People, details her years working at Facebook, was due to appear in conversation with the investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.
Instead, Wynn-Williams sat on stage for the duration of the hour-long discussion between Cadwalladr and Wu, without speaking or responding. She was unable even to nod or shake her head.
Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”
Earned her speakers’ fee right there.
From there, it was just a step to consider how a politics of care might be very different from the stereotypical politics of the assumed “normal person”, which is common to all neoliberal political parties at present, including both Reform and Restore.
What we realised was that we had found the defining difference between those neoliberal politics of slightly varying hues and the politics of care. All neoliberalss, including those on the far-right, assume, paternalistically, that there is a “normal person” whose needs they must satisfy. The politics of care is fundamentally different. It presumes that the role of politics and of the state is to assist a person to fulfil their own purpose, which need not be normal at all, and around which diversity is permitted.
It was as if a canyon had opened, a rift had been discovered, or even a new paradigm had been noted. I confessed to some excitement as a consequence.
Having worked out that one size does not fit all the man still insists he’s against neoliberalism, classical liberalism, markets and choice and continues on with the asnwer of MOAR STATE and MOAR TAX.
Sigh.
The entire point – along this axis at least – of markets and liberalism, neo- or not is that folk vary, their desires, potentials and possibilities vary and so we need a system that leaves folk be to live their own life their own way. It’s the very point of liberty in fact. Sure, sure, a helping hand here and there but he’s doscovered the very point of the system he fulminates against.
Could these policies succeed where decades of orthodox economics have failed?
So, that’s the Spud rhetorical quesxtion of the day answered.
Been frightening the horses, see?
Gay people to be jailed in Ghana
Oh, oh, I see. You mean gay people who are in Ghana will be jailed, not that gay people will be……British equines not alleviated then.
Trump gains a stone but has ‘body of 65-year-old’
Which 65 year old has he nicked the body of?
How spiralling costs are cutting off expats from their families
As jet fuel prices soar, Britons abroad face tough choices
Ryanair (no picking and choosing, just two near random dates about 2 weeks ahead) wants to charge me all of £75 for a round trip Faro to Bristol.
If life has led to £75 being a spiralling cost then perhaps expattery isn’t, quite, something for you?
Or even not thinking about them enough? 30 years of talking to a sofa? Really?
So this little fledgling that turned up on the doorstep. As I’ve said, he hung around our front door for 5 hours after a nest got blown over – and there was an adult bird dead that we had to clean up. That he – and a sibling – hung around for 5 hours showed that there weren’t any worried parents.
So, into an outhouse w”em. One died, Jack was not eating. But, he survived two days, so, tough little bugger. At which point, into the cat box (no, we no longer have cats, but we do have lots of storage space, outbuildings, see?) and feeds of well soaked cat biscuits etc. Three pieces of kitty kibble every couple of hours. He’d gargle that amount and no more.
So, 7 days of this and this morning I moved him back to an outbuilding. So he can practice flying without wifey moaning about birdshit on the furniture. He could fly, but, well, bit variable.
This evening? Open the door to see if he’d been eating, mebbe feed him by hand? Whhhhr, Spitfire leaving France in 1940 just past my head and off. He got over the hedge and I went to see. From there, straight up onto the garage roof. Then off over to next door’s roof. OK, so he can fly, right proper, if he wants to.
Not sure he really knows how to eat, he was still gawping to be fed. But, well, he’ll find out and I won’t and there we are.
At a guess he’s 16 to 18 days, which is about the right time for this anyway.
Yes, obviously, he’s going to end up in the food chain. But then so does everything – us too. The interesting question is always how soon. I suspect it will be soon for Cap’n Jack but it’s at least a week later than it would have been. And who knows. Tough little bugger (and could be Jill, a buggerette, bird sexing is not my thing), can fly up onto a roof when he wants to. So, you know, good luck?
*What in buggery else are you going to call a sparrow?
Sir Tony Blair’s legacy is a country “run by HR” and governed by his worst ideas, Kemi Badenoch has said.
Works as a policy set to me.
Sturgeon: I’m the victim of my husband’s fraud
Nicola Sturgeon said she “should not be held responsible for the wrongdoing of men” after Peter Murrell, her estranged husband, admitted to embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the SNP this week.
The Big Boy did it and then he ran away.
Shabana Mahmood’s plan to house more asylum seekers in former army barracks is facing a major hurdle after the high court ruled that a policy change forcing torture victims to share rooms was unlawful.
According to a judgment seen by the Guardian, the government failed in its duties when it forced survivors of trafficking, torture and other serious forms of violence to share rooms with strangers.
This was done – obviously – on the public tenpence. Legal aid etc etc.
So, when do we get all Dick the Butcher on these people?
The EU is to release more than €16bn to Hungary that had been frozen under the rule of Viktor Orbán, with Ursula von der Leyen hailing the “winds of change” in the country since the election of Péter Magyar last month.
The decision, described as a “historic breakthrough” by the new prime minister, comes as police in Hungary have said they will allow next month’s Pride parade in Budapest to take place. Last year they sought to block the event on the orders of the government of the rightwing Orbán.
Ah, it isn’t.
So if some grubby little nationalist gets elected for 16 years then the multinational money don’t arrive. As soon as the gubby little nationalist is ejected then the cash does roll up. Isn’t that a nice and rules based impartiality?
As Spud tells us, Hormuz is closed, world’s running out, The Depression awaits:
Oil prices on track for steepest monthly fall since 2020
Brent crude futures down 19% since end of April
Oh. Now that is a tad inconvenient…..
American presidents don’t have a stellar record of transparency about their health problems.
After a polio diagnosis that caused paralysis of his lower body, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used a wheelchair to get around, but went to great lengths to conceal it from the public. John F Kennedy suffered debilitating back pain, but most Americans never had a clue, seeing only a vigorous and youthful politician.
And, more recently – and infamously – Joe Biden’s White House staff worked to conceal his age-related decline, until that was no longer possible. After a disastrous debate performance and belated press coverage, Biden called off his re-election bid in 2024.
But of course Trumpy is mad, senile and – ! – right wing. So, off w”im.
So transparent, eh?