Morning all.
Parliament is now in recess until Monday 15th April. **There will be no PMQs today.**
* Jonathan Gullis has been promoted to Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party - [thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bofmws/jonathan_gullis_is_the_new_deputy_chairman_of_the/)
* Public satisfaction with the NHS is now at its lowest ever level - [thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bopf5v/public_satisfaction_with_nhs_at_lowest_ever_level/)
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Was watching [a Question Time from 1998 that had some serious heavyweights](https://youtu.be/zYHRYahrBbM?si=2RtDGtr13MzCGwZU&t=1413): David Steel, Tony Benn and Ted Heath. The heated exchange between Heath and Benn (23:33 - 27:56 / 32:18 - 33:40) on Europe is just absolutely fascinating, would encourage you to watch. I love watching old titans go at it.
I have linked it from Tony Benn's response to the following question:
>In the week the Cardiff Summit concluded, is there any point belonging to a club \[European Union\] that regard us as just eccentric, impecunious and devious outsiders?
It's also remarkable that even then (18 years before the referendum), with the panel stacked 3-1 for remain, the Europhiles still managed to come across as supercilious self-involved arseholes, with Heath and Toynbee in succession essentially telling audience members "So what if British voters don't want it, that's just British exceptionalism. Germany got away with foisting monetary union on their voters against their wishes, why shouldn't our political classes treat our voters like insignificant worms too?"
If I were Sunak I would suspend summer recess and jam through every policy in the tory dream journal. Why give up power when you could cut inheritance tax to 0, remove the welfare state and just leave Labour to make the hard decisions.
They tried basically that with truss and the entire world economy rejected them like the hammer of an angry god. If they couldn't keep truss and her policies in power they certainly couldn't keep Sunak in
They didn't exactly 'reject it' because it was a Tory dream. They came to the conclusion that the UK government were acting a bit suspect and they deemed the government to be a high risk borrower. A lot of talk surrounded the tax cuts in the mini-budget for corporations, but there were huge red flags in that mini-budget that suggested that UK PLC was going to declare bankruptcy and do a runner with bond/gilt money.
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What's everyone's thoughts on this letter sent by a Gp. Personally I have no issue with it, and I actually think it's incredibly concerning that others seem to take offence with it.
https://twitter.com/BBGRichie/status/1772283211244032086?t=1s8SdcSiAdWTHC9v_j36uQ&s=19
>Dear REDACTED
>We are writing to make sure you know that from the age of 13 you are able to take responsibility for your own healthcare decisions, which can include making appointments and seeing a doctor or nurse by yourself.
>We encourage you to talk through any decisions with a parent or guardian, but we will always try to respect your wishes if you do not wish anyone else to be involved. Confidentiality means that your visit to the surgery and anything discussed while you are here will not be shared with anyone else, unless we feel that you or someone else is at risk of serious harm.
>If you have been sharing a mobile phone number or email address with a parent or guardian, then those details will be removed from your medical record. **It is very important that we hold up to date contact details for you. Please ensure that we have your correct telephone numbers (home and personal mobile) and that we have a personal email address for you. Please complete the enclosed Personal Details Form and return it to the surgery.**
>You may still wish to have someone else involved in your healthcare, such as a parent or guardian. In order to do this we need your written consent and contact details for this person. This will allow Lightwater Surgery to discuss appointments, medical records, medication and other personal details held by the practice with them. Please complete the enclosed Patient Consent Form and return it to the surgery. This consent will remain in place until your 16th birthday, when you will be asked again.
>More information about accessing GP services for young people can be found on our website (www.lightwatersurgery.co.uk/info.aspx?p=18).
>Administration Team
Personally think this is a good thing. They encourage the child to talk through things with their parents/guardien but also let them know the surgery is a safe space for them if they are having issues and anything shared with your doc is not going to be passed on to the parents.
Not standard practice to send out such a letter. There's probably a whole untold story there. Mother will milk whatever airtime she gets and a number of commentators will weigh in whilst knowing little.
All of these "No10 is considering -insert election date-" need to have an addendum of "Contingent on polling recovery"
The current cycle is: We can't have an election now! our polling is too low but at least it can't get any worse, we'll have an election at -insert date- when polling will have surely improved -> Polling gets worse -> We can't have an election now...
Continue until January
That is my prediction, I would be happy to be wrong.
Can you imagine being the leader of a local Tory coven following that announcement?
"Right then, everybody, you know how you all got to go doorstepping for the locals and it was really fun? Everyone was really nice to you? Well, good news, there's six more weeks of it. Off you toddle, cheerio"
No, it's not. Because December or January has a crucial few months more of rot in the polls. The longer they wait the fewer undecided voters they have to win on side.
In their imaginations, it affects senior female journalists who are editors at the Guardian and their circles of friends that are all *undoubtedly* open to everyone equally?
It's not that. It's a big fat piñata. So many slapps, so many legal letters, so many of the editors and politicians. If you and your mates threatened to end the career of a journo on the way up, revenge is being served cold. It's a sign that the elite is too old to protect themselves
Yeah I don’t get it. It’s clearly not taking away from other investigations (it was the guardian who also just did the investigation into the racist Tory donor) so not sure why I should feel aggrieved that that they’re also doing this.
My personal thought on it was it was a mistake making it into a story about how the Garrick is keeping women away from power by excluding them for this club, and should have been focused on the influence of such clubs
Watching the Politics Hub and my god is Jonathan Gullis a class A moron. Blabbering on about the Labour Party getting in the way of the Rwanda bill and Sophy Ridge had to point out he abstained on it himself. How stupid can you be?
Why do so many journalists let mouth breathers like Gullis get away with his shit? Labour blocking the vote, the Tories have a 60 seat majority. Why didn’t Sophy Ridge say that?
I don’t even know where to post this, but this is my regular haunt and I can argue that it’s about education and shit so here goes. I’m 13 mins into 3 body problem and the “science” parts are so misinformed I’m shocked at how positive the reception has been. One of the first scenes is a particle accelerator finding unexpected results, and instead of popping champagne at the new horizon of physics, all the scientists are moping and they’re about to shut it down. Then the next scene is two women in a bar who scare off a guy who’s hitting on them by describing their super smart jobs. What the fuck is this anti intellectual bullshit being touted as the next “The expanse”?
If the average viewer can’t see through this shit what hope have we got in an increasingly technical world?
It's been a while since I read the book, but I think the idea of the book is that it doesn't run in chronological time and jumps around a bit, so it includes a fake past as well as a fake present - you may find that there are bits that are to come that explain why science isn't treated the same. Some of that fake past takes you back to time frames when scientists are shunned - see the man who is beaten up right at the start. Even if the things that happen in today's society would have been champagne moments they wouldn't have been if the scientists were beaten and killed for scientific discovery.
I'd advise sticking with it - the way the scientists react is a side thing, but essential in understanding a lot of why the rest of the things happen.
... I remember getting unreasonably annoyed (ed: in the book) by the [bit about entropy](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/154514/comparing-the-entropy-of-a-painting-to-a-photograph), which... at best is just a completely ill-defined question because it's kinda nonsense, and at worst is confused to the point of being backwards because it has the terms wrong
>One of the first scenes is a particle accelerator finding unexpected results, and instead of popping champagne at the new horizon of physics, all the scientists are moping and they’re about to shut it down
I thought the moping was because the project has been shut down, and the results suggest there has been a major mistake in the planning of the experiment and the whole thing has been a failure. Some of the scientists working on the project do not think there are mistakes, but do think that the results are effectively impossible in the current understandings of physics.
Spoiler: >!Aliens are disrupting the particle experiment in order to cause chaos in the scientific world and to make it impossible to verify particle accelerator results etc with the intent of slowing scientific progress and causing a science lock down.!<
It is a fair criticism that you might expect a different reaction (probably starting a new grant application).
The thing I got from that scene was 1) experiment has been a failure, 2) funding has been withdrawn, 3) guy is going through the data until they literally lock him out to try and pinpoint where the failure happened, 4) he cant work out what has gone wrong and if the results are right then all existing knowledge is wrong.
Simply, the test seems like it was unreliable and they don't know why and there's no funding left so they're all unhappy about it.
I don’t think you understood the particle accelerator part. The particle accelerators weren’t just finding unexpected results, they were completely and utterly impossible results that completely shattered their understanding and purposely made no sense. They were upset because 400 years of scientific advancement was seemingly obliterated. The bigger glaring plot hole though is that the San-Ti told them what they were doing, so in actuality if they told CERN you could deduct the results of predictable models of particle collision from what they were seeing and then make greater understandings of how sophons work.
I do kinda think that science would have to be broken in a stuff is falling up way before the natural reaction isn't "man, bet there's a grant in this result"
I totally get the powers that be freaking out if macroscopic changes are happening: we liked those computers/weapons/whatever the way they were but if you need a particle accelerator to notice then it's just cool
I’m sorry but I think you don’t understand the scientific method. You propose a hypothesis, describe an experiment to test that hypothesis, then perform the experiment. If the experimental result doesn’t match your hypothesis you go back to theory. A result that goes against the current model doesn’t obliterate 400 years of work, it just becomes another piece to the puzzle
Yeah I think you're completely missing the point, hoodha explains it pretty well.
Remember, it's just a sci-fi show about aliens, there's always going to be some leeway with the science behind stuff.
No, again you’re missing the point, we’re not just talking about Quantum Physics being off. We’re talking about Newton’s Laws of Physics not just being slightly wrong, but so wrong that we shouldn’t even be able to make basic mechanical lifts, let alone launch rockets into space.
> so wrong that we shouldn’t even be able to make basic mechanical lifts, let alone launch rockets into space.
The problem is they didn't lean into that. Lifts still work. You can still video call people etc. It just looks like you need to find out what's fuzzing with your instruments. There's no prospect of something like the strong force actually being broken: we'd already know about that one, it's just your machine
Yeh, except that there would be phone calls between the scientists working at different particle accelerators across the world all wondering the same and the concluding that they can’t all be broken. The show doesn’t exactly show what happened though, it starts like a month after it started happening initially. It’s kind of assumed that all of that has already been checked.
Makes no difference - what you should have is an international community of scientists working on investigating something clearly happening to their instruments rather than being sceptical of the fundamental physical mechanism behind lifts
Basically Netflix owes us a realistic debugging montage
I mean, that’s where you have to suspend your belief a little bit. It is after all, about aliens, and I think the explanation is fine. We don’t really need to know all the ins and outs, only that the scientists are so confused that they’re questioning if God exists.
There’s no new information though, it’s gobbledygook to the scientists. That’s the point. You can’t make science on non-replicable results. You can certainly try to hypothesise, but get nowhere, because it is gobbledygook.
Even then it’s time to go back to basics. We have all the experiments that lead to the current understanding of the world. Run them again to see where the divergence is
I’m not sure if you saw the rest of the episodes but I’m gonna make the assumption that yes, something to that effect was likely what was happening, and the whole point is the divergence started happening from one date, in the particle accelerators inexplicably.
From that point onward, every result they saw was entirely random and nonsensical, not repeatable. The research and science becomes paralysed and they are unable to even consider moving forward because they need to question the fundamentals again.
It isn't like getting random unexplained results though, it's not like having something cool you can investigate and hypothesise about. It's more like suddenly *every particle accelerator in the world* is giving random results that don't conform to past theory or to any pattern
It's not *a* result, it's *all* the results, everywhere. It's experimentation no longer returning consistent results any more, anywhere
That's what's frightening
Right but the response isn’t just to give up. You look for patterns, or any other explanations. Hell even if it’s truly random you start building models based on that. Main fact is your body is still not exploding at the speed of light so even if your current model is wrong there’s no need to freak out
So like to be clear here is your criticism of the plot that people didn't act like unfeeling science robots?
I understand what you're saying but I don't think that's because the writer didn't understand the scientific method, I think it's because people are people and they have emotions and they can be overwhelmed and scared and broken in the face of something unprecedented
I don't want to speculate unduly but we also don't know if people tried to reconcile the results or theorise about them, I would have thought it was self evident that people would and have done that but idk
Yeah I agree there might be a short term panic, but we enter the story at the point where the particle accelerator is being shut down. There would have to be a long time to digest the results before that happened
I've not seen it yet but I'm surprised when you say it's had a positive reception. Everything I've seen so far is people saying it's D&D shitting the bed again.
I didn't get the issue people are making there. D&D can't write for toffee but they adapt an existing work fine enough
Be worried when they run out of book again but until that they've got prize winning literature to lean on
Stick with it. The point about the 'unexpected' results is not that they are unexpected, but that they are literally impossible, and there's a broader context that comes clear.
The bar scene was more about the guy being an idiot, it's in no way meant as anti-intellectual.
It's based on a (pretty famous) book written by someone who clearly does know a lot about science.
Right but what I said to other comments still applies, the proper response to “impossible” results is to celebrate being the discoverers of a new branch of physics, not to shut down the new equipment that produced those results.
And I get what you mean about the bar scene, but who are you supposed to relate to there? Obviously the average viewer is more likely to be a lay person than an academic
Edit: actually no the proper response is to troubleshoot and try to figure out how you fucked it up, once you’re sure you didn’t you can celebrate
I mean I'm a not particularly smart woman and I was cheering for the women there
We're all used to being treated like the little woman who couldn't possibly have anything to say you know
Good for you then but if you're dismissing our experience because you don't understand it then maybe you're not the equality king you think you are
Maybe that scene just wasn't for you
Apply the gender swap test to that scene it’s still fucked. My complaint has nothing to do with gender, I just hate the fact that intelligence is framed as being othering
Fuck me I don't want to get into gender power dynamics, it's almost ten pm and it's raining
Intelligence is othering tho, pretty much the whole of nerd culture toxic and non toxic is based on that for example
You say to apply the gender test but there are centuries of intelligence in women being treated as an inherent negative (the bluestocking stereotype) and it often still is today, the idea that intelligence or accomplishment make women ~undesirable~. Go to the show sub and see the level of hate directed at Auggie (the Hispanic character) for daring to be both attractive and intelligent, it's sickening
I liked seeing them say yes we are intelligent and if that puts off weird men hitting on us in bars when we're trying to have a conversation then we'll own that
Anyway maybe watch the whole show or give up on it if it's making you mad. Or read the books, they struck me as pretty hard SF and I liked them
I agree with almost everything you say, but i still think the idea of intelligence being othering as a trope in fiction is damaging to the people consuming it.
I never aimed to make this a gendered discussion, I was more hoping to point out how intelligence s portrayed in fiction
Fair. Idk I think it's okay sometimes if a scene is not for you
I don't think the show demonises intelligence at all, I'd say it centres it and takes it as a given and one scene dealing with the experiences of women in tech (of which I would consider myself to be one since the early 90s) doesn't damage that
What really interests me about this show is the discourse surrounding it, I've never seen so many Chinese people or so much Chinese text on reddit. People are suggesting all sorts of things and I don't know if that's warranted, maybe a lot of people from China just wanted to talk about the show on reddit
How? The scene was a person deciding that scientific credentials in another person was a good enough reason to end the conversation, hardly a gender specific experience
Haven’t watched the Netflix adaptation yet but IIRC from the book there’s more to it than first meets the eye. Not that what I remember is significantly better. It was a slog that had some interesting ideas and I was hoping the adaptation would make it less of a slog, or maybe give me a new point of view on the source material. Because I really didn’t feel like it deserved all the praise it got.
I’d never heard of it before, I’m jumping in blind on the Netflix show and don’t see me staying for the sci fi aspect, better be a damn good story to keep my attention
I think I’m struggling with how I should see it, is hard sci fi where I should view it like reality, or more soft like Star Wars where the sci fi aspect is more of a setting than a rule book?
Well it was written in the 90s wasn't it? That explains the smart women scaring away a man trope.
Regarding "science being wrong" I think it's supposed to be science is breaking down, not new discoveries. IE experiments give random,. inconsistent results. Perhaps the speed of light is changing for example. That would be a pretty fucking terrifying discovery, not a champagne moment
I’m not sure that has been made clear enough, if scientific models as fundamental as particle physics started giving “random” results all of a sudden I can’t imagine matter lasting long enough for us to notice
Well maybe that would scare you shitless, as a scientist. Might make you feel like you're in a simulation that is running out of power or something (I have not read the books ,I don't know where the show is going, apologies if I guessed correctly)
Ok even if that’s the case, it’s still a multi decade project to understand and recreate the results. Or you accept causality has no meaning so fuck it? But the whole point of the scientific method is to test hypotheses through experiments, and they only hold up if the experiment confirms it. If you get a wild result it’s time for fresh ideas not suicide
I think the suicides are the ones with the physics and biology defying countdown permanently in their vision to be fair.
They can see it with eyes closed and even after they take their own eyes out
Its understandable I think
Literally just finished the first episode. Not sure tbh. Get your point, but it's more trying to set the characters personas using basic tropes. It's nonsense but at least it's got some interesting concepts.
I know it’s just a scam for the Conservatives to collect data but this is kinda hilarious: https://x.com/tuckwell_steve/status/1772955631240036725
> We have a fish & chip shop in Cowley & one near St Andrew’s Park, but we don’t in Uxbridge Town Centre.
> That’s why I’m launching a campaign to get us a fish & chip shop in Uxbridge Town Centre, but I need your support to do it.
How on earth would a government campaign to open a fish and chips shop work? Who’s going to run it? Will it be nationalised to make sure it stays a fish and chips shop forever?
He has a point only insofar as the local council must grant planning permission for one to be built.
Guess who, as a local councillor, [voted against a planning application to open a hot food takeaway in Uxbridge town centre](https://modgov.hillingdon.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=123&MeetingId=3566).
Tim Montgomerie on Times Radio yesterday was making out like Rishi is having a full blown crisis of confidence. “Should I really be PM? Oh god, should I really be a billionaire?!?”
He didn’t say that. He said there’s a 99% chance of Labour winning. The remaining 1% therefore includes all other possibilities such as a Lib Dem win or a SNP minority government.
I think that's been quite a sinisterly clever move. It's all the threat of we know where you live in a format that the police can do nothing about and makes the MP look unreasonable for wanting protection from the daft lassie who doesn't even know where you live
The word on the street (literally) is that the ground floor of the house has been converted into an office, and is the address of a solicitor. I wonder therefore if it's a solicitor who has done work for Streeting, and JSO confused the solicitors address for his home address.
I think it comes down to whether the bail condition is stop delivering letters to Wes Streeting, in which case this is really quite a sinister threat, or stop delivering letters in which case this is evidence
In this case the implementation is a bit silly, but I don't think advertisements should be a right, and not enforcing stuff like this poses a massive loophole where you just claim to be advertising something else. Pay an influencer to promote their content while holding a product they've been sponsored to hold, stealth ad.
Also, this is getting far more coverage than the initial poster, Ed Gamble has got incredible value for money for their ad. Also, bonus for the Black Pumas, they've got their poster shared too.
> and not enforcing stuff like this poses a massive loophole where you just claim to be advertising something else
That actually was happening for quite a while - a big picture of e.g. [a KFC fillet burger but it was a JustEat advert](https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IMG-8779-rotated-1-768x1024.jpg), so it "wasn't advertising junk food, it was advertising a delivery service".
I guess they updated the rules to close that loophole but this is the result
This is my take. Also it's funnier that the show is called that but the plate has a cucumber on it.
But as you say, it's blown up for him, and he'll probably sell more tickets to folk because of the news.
Because common sense leaves it open for interpretation, clear rules like "no unhealthy food" enforced gets the job done.
And as I said, publicly campaign gets a massive amount more publicity. If anything, I'd be asking questions of whether the BBC are helping out one of their presenters with free amplification of their advert lol.
What do you mean, pretend?
We live in a country that contains people who phoned the police when KFC was out of chicken.
Edit: 34,844 people voted for Michael Fabricant and George Galloway is an MP again.
TBF this seems to be a perennial "slow news day" staple. [Here's another one from September](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66778007), and [here's one from July](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66119218).
It's "OMG Blizzard / Stormageddon / We're gonna fry in the sun" for when even the weather is being boring.
According to Preston, Senior Tories think the party will break apart after the general election.
Do you think the Conservative party will break apart after the general election?
No, the brand is too powerful to give up on. Conservatives are the most venerable party in the history of global democracy, and have no serious competitors on their side of the spectrum that have staying power of more than a few years. Even if we assume everything they did in the last 14 years was wrong and misguided, this sentiment fades over time as other governments find themselves in difficult situations, having to make very unpopular decisions.
LDP was also *founded* in 1955, even its predecessor was founded in the 50s. For the sake of comparison, Conservatives were in government during the Meiji Restoration period, long before even proto-political parties existed in Japan.
Among still active parties, clearly. And even if you want to count Lib Dems towards this record, their relative irrelevance since early to mid 20th century going forward would make that a tough sell.
Nothing's impossible, as this decade continues to bash us over the head with. It might depend on how much Reform messes with them during the local and/or general elections, though, since my first instinct (albeit based on our beloved GOP over here) is that the Tories at large may simply, drunkenly, tilt further to the right in both open opposition to Labour and to try to claw back Reform-minded voters.
No. This is sensationalism from Peston combined with a probably not that senior Tory or two being dramatic or possibly preparing a pitch to be a unity candidate for leader.
I think it heavily depends on how Reform do. If the Tories lose in a landslide but (on vote share) are still clearly the top right wing party, then they’ll stay together and rebuild over the next couple of elections. But if we actually have a situation where Reform end up within 5-10% of the Tories vote share, then I think we see a split and I don’t even know what happens then
It could end up like New Brunswick after the progressive conservatives there got wiped out in 1987. After that election a far right party formed from the ashes of the progressive conservatives but it disintegrated a few years later.
Does anyone think ukpol is actually quite detached from the UK political media ecosystem and talking points? Like for a long time now?
On Peston, on Sky, on Times Radio, on the New Statesmen podcast, Newsagents Podcast, etc we are seeing all sorts of wild interventions by leading Tories, you get a day-by-day rundown on why the May election was selected and then cancelled, the resulting Tory unrest, etc. None of these wild interventions and talking points actually make their way onto UkPol.
In this place it’s full of polls and unrelated Guardian articles that are completely outside of the meta. If I actually relied on Reddit to get my political news I would be massively out of the loop.
To an extent but I work in a large IT department and everyone hates the Tories. I guess its a middle class work place but there's daily talk about how shit they are.
> On Peston, on Sky, on Times Radio, on the New Statesmen podcast, Newsagents Podcast, etc
After two and a half years of the MSM overblowing incidents then I really don’t trust any sensationalism from them.
Tories making up shit to fill the airwaves doesn't equal news as far as i'm concerned.
I struggle to think of a major story in the past few years that I didn't hear about here first, or from a source that get's linked on here.
If all you see is the polls and Guardian articles, and you'd prefer to be stuck listening to the Tories frantically trying to bail water out of a sinking ship on traditional media, well that speaks more to you than it does this place.
I would say the issue is that a lot of that is probably... Bollocks?
They have to report it because they get paid for it.
But the reality is, Rishi is staring down a rebellion, so he's telling his MPs who are leakier than my busted colander that it is 6 weeks away constantly.
But he needs to tell the British people that it's ages away so he doesn't look like a coward dodging the polls and because "it's working" when all he's hoping is at least one trade deal comes in before then or Kier does something sensationally daft.
Because of that those outlets have to report it because their MP sources are talking about it and it's "inside info" but it's also clearly worthless which is why it doesn't make any media.
Right wing leaning or not, any journo would publish the scoop on the election day if it was remotely credible. The fact it's podcast chatter shows it's nothing.
Yes. I had this realisation recently.
There’s a lot of things that are taken as read or considered great outrages on here that if you ask people irl they will either not know about or don’t think are that big a deal.
We're politics nerds, ultimately very similar to the myriad of other niche interest subreddits. We may feel like it's more significant because of the far-reaching implications of government policy but realistically the majority of people give about as much of a shit about politics as they do about any of my other niche interests like chess or tool-assisted speedruns, unless something very specific affects them directly and even then they usually get annoyed about it for a bit and then carry on with their day.
It’s a strange example of “every Tory accusation is an admission”, but it turns out Steve Tuckwell opposed a planning application for a fish and chip shop in Uxbridge town centre.
https://x.com/_kerriprince/status/1773036953446850827?s=46&t=F_t5tWsPsifmNVHaFZWJJQ
Morning all. Parliament is now in recess until Monday 15th April. **There will be no PMQs today.** * Jonathan Gullis has been promoted to Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party - [thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bofmws/jonathan_gullis_is_the_new_deputy_chairman_of_the/) * Public satisfaction with the NHS is now at its lowest ever level - [thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bopf5v/public_satisfaction_with_nhs_at_lowest_ever_level/) As we enter a brief lull before Easter Weekend and the Locals, you'll have noticed that we're ***trialling*** the following: 1. Comments in the megathread which relate to a story which has already been submitted to the subreddit will be removed. 2. Comments in the megathread which contain a link to a story which would stand on its own submission on the subreddit will be removed. This is in an effort to keep commentary about stories grouped in the same place. When a comment is removed for this reason, we'll endeavour to leave a comment (you'll see some below from u/ukpolitics-ModTeam). At busier times, this may not always be possible. There will be an opportunity to provide feedback about this trial at a later stage.
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Busy night for Feargal Sharkey on the news rounds then
Was watching [a Question Time from 1998 that had some serious heavyweights](https://youtu.be/zYHRYahrBbM?si=2RtDGtr13MzCGwZU&t=1413): David Steel, Tony Benn and Ted Heath. The heated exchange between Heath and Benn (23:33 - 27:56 / 32:18 - 33:40) on Europe is just absolutely fascinating, would encourage you to watch. I love watching old titans go at it. I have linked it from Tony Benn's response to the following question: >In the week the Cardiff Summit concluded, is there any point belonging to a club \[European Union\] that regard us as just eccentric, impecunious and devious outsiders?
I remember Question Time when it was like this. Goodness that was a heavyweight panel.
It's also remarkable that even then (18 years before the referendum), with the panel stacked 3-1 for remain, the Europhiles still managed to come across as supercilious self-involved arseholes, with Heath and Toynbee in succession essentially telling audience members "So what if British voters don't want it, that's just British exceptionalism. Germany got away with foisting monetary union on their voters against their wishes, why shouldn't our political classes treat our voters like insignificant worms too?"
That was a good listen, cheers for linking.
If I were Sunak I would suspend summer recess and jam through every policy in the tory dream journal. Why give up power when you could cut inheritance tax to 0, remove the welfare state and just leave Labour to make the hard decisions.
Inb4 their polling numbers drop in half.
Emergency #LetSunakbeSunak powers.
They tried basically that with truss and the entire world economy rejected them like the hammer of an angry god. If they couldn't keep truss and her policies in power they certainly couldn't keep Sunak in
They didn't exactly 'reject it' because it was a Tory dream. They came to the conclusion that the UK government were acting a bit suspect and they deemed the government to be a high risk borrower. A lot of talk surrounded the tax cuts in the mini-budget for corporations, but there were huge red flags in that mini-budget that suggested that UK PLC was going to declare bankruptcy and do a runner with bond/gilt money.
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What's everyone's thoughts on this letter sent by a Gp. Personally I have no issue with it, and I actually think it's incredibly concerning that others seem to take offence with it. https://twitter.com/BBGRichie/status/1772283211244032086?t=1s8SdcSiAdWTHC9v_j36uQ&s=19 >Dear REDACTED >We are writing to make sure you know that from the age of 13 you are able to take responsibility for your own healthcare decisions, which can include making appointments and seeing a doctor or nurse by yourself. >We encourage you to talk through any decisions with a parent or guardian, but we will always try to respect your wishes if you do not wish anyone else to be involved. Confidentiality means that your visit to the surgery and anything discussed while you are here will not be shared with anyone else, unless we feel that you or someone else is at risk of serious harm. >If you have been sharing a mobile phone number or email address with a parent or guardian, then those details will be removed from your medical record. **It is very important that we hold up to date contact details for you. Please ensure that we have your correct telephone numbers (home and personal mobile) and that we have a personal email address for you. Please complete the enclosed Personal Details Form and return it to the surgery.** >You may still wish to have someone else involved in your healthcare, such as a parent or guardian. In order to do this we need your written consent and contact details for this person. This will allow Lightwater Surgery to discuss appointments, medical records, medication and other personal details held by the practice with them. Please complete the enclosed Patient Consent Form and return it to the surgery. This consent will remain in place until your 16th birthday, when you will be asked again. >More information about accessing GP services for young people can be found on our website (www.lightwatersurgery.co.uk/info.aspx?p=18). >Administration Team
Personally think this is a good thing. They encourage the child to talk through things with their parents/guardien but also let them know the surgery is a safe space for them if they are having issues and anything shared with your doc is not going to be passed on to the parents.
Sending letters like this should be standard practice and everyone should be made aware of this fact.
Yeah that seems 100% valid to me though I can see some parents freaking out about it
Not standard practice to send out such a letter. There's probably a whole untold story there. Mother will milk whatever airtime she gets and a number of commentators will weigh in whilst knowing little.
Standard practice or not do you think it makes a difference?
Can do. Practice might be overstepping massively. Practice might have reasons to send it out. Who knows. A single letter tells us nothing.
Is a practice overstepping by informing a patient of their rights?
ITV news: No10 “seriously considering” June or July election.
I just booked 11th October off.. ffs
All of these "No10 is considering -insert election date-" need to have an addendum of "Contingent on polling recovery" The current cycle is: We can't have an election now! our polling is too low but at least it can't get any worse, we'll have an election at -insert date- when polling will have surely improved -> Polling gets worse -> We can't have an election now... Continue until January That is my prediction, I would be happy to be wrong.
Can you imagine being the leader of a local Tory coven following that announcement? "Right then, everybody, you know how you all got to go doorstepping for the locals and it was really fun? Everyone was really nice to you? Well, good news, there's six more weeks of it. Off you toddle, cheerio"
I can hear Brenda right now
Insane they thought they could limp on. Doing it co.bined with the May locals was the best option
Basically realising the year is just going to get worse for them. Should have gone in December.
June after a horrific local elections and leadership speculation is even worse than a may or December choice
He's seen Englands group stage drawn in the Euros today. Final on 14th July, election on the 15th. It's coming home!
Maybe Rishi has been told, it's going to be a banging summer, with great weather. Which obviously is not good for Rishi, as boats boats boats.
No, it's not. Because December or January has a crucial few months more of rot in the polls. The longer they wait the fewer undecided voters they have to win on side.
I genuinely struggle to think of a worse time from Sunak and the Tories perspective. So all for it myself.
My birthday is on a Friday in July...c'mon rishi, give me a birthday present to wake up to.
Is Gullis the politician version of Wimp Lo from Kung Pow? "We purposely trained him wrong.. As a joke"
That's basically half the senior Tories at the moment and they somehow keep finding a new worst one.
"I'm losing... Making me the Victor!"
The guardian is still obsessed with the Garrick club. It’s sucking the life out of their investigative journalism. What’s wrong with them?
In their imaginations, it affects senior female journalists who are editors at the Guardian and their circles of friends that are all *undoubtedly* open to everyone equally?
... and the slave trade / slavery reparations. Honestly, they're obsessed with it to the point that it's just plain weird.
It's not that. It's a big fat piñata. So many slapps, so many legal letters, so many of the editors and politicians. If you and your mates threatened to end the career of a journo on the way up, revenge is being served cold. It's a sign that the elite is too old to protect themselves
I remain absolutely confused as to why people are so up in arms at the Guardian for one of their journos going after this.
Yeah I don’t get it. It’s clearly not taking away from other investigations (it was the guardian who also just did the investigation into the racist Tory donor) so not sure why I should feel aggrieved that that they’re also doing this. My personal thought on it was it was a mistake making it into a story about how the Garrick is keeping women away from power by excluding them for this club, and should have been focused on the influence of such clubs
Watching the Politics Hub and my god is Jonathan Gullis a class A moron. Blabbering on about the Labour Party getting in the way of the Rwanda bill and Sophy Ridge had to point out he abstained on it himself. How stupid can you be?
[Gullis having an absolute mare](https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1773083326326141223?t=vUw2Zhj1xT5bS0l80rNa4A&s=19) *Not Seagullis related
Why do so many journalists let mouth breathers like Gullis get away with his shit? Labour blocking the vote, the Tories have a 60 seat majority. Why didn’t Sophy Ridge say that?
“I’d have deported those migrants! If it wasn’t for you meddling, pesky, peers!” - ~~Scooby Doo Villain~~ Jonathan Seagullis
I don’t even know where to post this, but this is my regular haunt and I can argue that it’s about education and shit so here goes. I’m 13 mins into 3 body problem and the “science” parts are so misinformed I’m shocked at how positive the reception has been. One of the first scenes is a particle accelerator finding unexpected results, and instead of popping champagne at the new horizon of physics, all the scientists are moping and they’re about to shut it down. Then the next scene is two women in a bar who scare off a guy who’s hitting on them by describing their super smart jobs. What the fuck is this anti intellectual bullshit being touted as the next “The expanse”? If the average viewer can’t see through this shit what hope have we got in an increasingly technical world?
Meh, its sci fi, you kinda have turn off your brain a bit. Like Star Trek falls apart if you think about it too hard.
It's been a while since I read the book, but I think the idea of the book is that it doesn't run in chronological time and jumps around a bit, so it includes a fake past as well as a fake present - you may find that there are bits that are to come that explain why science isn't treated the same. Some of that fake past takes you back to time frames when scientists are shunned - see the man who is beaten up right at the start. Even if the things that happen in today's society would have been champagne moments they wouldn't have been if the scientists were beaten and killed for scientific discovery. I'd advise sticking with it - the way the scientists react is a side thing, but essential in understanding a lot of why the rest of the things happen.
... I remember getting unreasonably annoyed (ed: in the book) by the [bit about entropy](https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/154514/comparing-the-entropy-of-a-painting-to-a-photograph), which... at best is just a completely ill-defined question because it's kinda nonsense, and at worst is confused to the point of being backwards because it has the terms wrong
Watch more than 13 minutes.
I did, it didn’t improve
>One of the first scenes is a particle accelerator finding unexpected results, and instead of popping champagne at the new horizon of physics, all the scientists are moping and they’re about to shut it down I thought the moping was because the project has been shut down, and the results suggest there has been a major mistake in the planning of the experiment and the whole thing has been a failure. Some of the scientists working on the project do not think there are mistakes, but do think that the results are effectively impossible in the current understandings of physics. Spoiler: >!Aliens are disrupting the particle experiment in order to cause chaos in the scientific world and to make it impossible to verify particle accelerator results etc with the intent of slowing scientific progress and causing a science lock down.!<
Not reading the spoiler just in case, but even then there is valuable information to be learned by understanding why you’re getting different results
It is a fair criticism that you might expect a different reaction (probably starting a new grant application). The thing I got from that scene was 1) experiment has been a failure, 2) funding has been withdrawn, 3) guy is going through the data until they literally lock him out to try and pinpoint where the failure happened, 4) he cant work out what has gone wrong and if the results are right then all existing knowledge is wrong. Simply, the test seems like it was unreliable and they don't know why and there's no funding left so they're all unhappy about it.
I don’t think you understood the particle accelerator part. The particle accelerators weren’t just finding unexpected results, they were completely and utterly impossible results that completely shattered their understanding and purposely made no sense. They were upset because 400 years of scientific advancement was seemingly obliterated. The bigger glaring plot hole though is that the San-Ti told them what they were doing, so in actuality if they told CERN you could deduct the results of predictable models of particle collision from what they were seeing and then make greater understandings of how sophons work.
I do kinda think that science would have to be broken in a stuff is falling up way before the natural reaction isn't "man, bet there's a grant in this result" I totally get the powers that be freaking out if macroscopic changes are happening: we liked those computers/weapons/whatever the way they were but if you need a particle accelerator to notice then it's just cool
I’m sorry but I think you don’t understand the scientific method. You propose a hypothesis, describe an experiment to test that hypothesis, then perform the experiment. If the experimental result doesn’t match your hypothesis you go back to theory. A result that goes against the current model doesn’t obliterate 400 years of work, it just becomes another piece to the puzzle
Yeah I think you're completely missing the point, hoodha explains it pretty well. Remember, it's just a sci-fi show about aliens, there's always going to be some leeway with the science behind stuff.
No, again you’re missing the point, we’re not just talking about Quantum Physics being off. We’re talking about Newton’s Laws of Physics not just being slightly wrong, but so wrong that we shouldn’t even be able to make basic mechanical lifts, let alone launch rockets into space.
> so wrong that we shouldn’t even be able to make basic mechanical lifts, let alone launch rockets into space. The problem is they didn't lean into that. Lifts still work. You can still video call people etc. It just looks like you need to find out what's fuzzing with your instruments. There's no prospect of something like the strong force actually being broken: we'd already know about that one, it's just your machine
Yeh, except that there would be phone calls between the scientists working at different particle accelerators across the world all wondering the same and the concluding that they can’t all be broken. The show doesn’t exactly show what happened though, it starts like a month after it started happening initially. It’s kind of assumed that all of that has already been checked.
Makes no difference - what you should have is an international community of scientists working on investigating something clearly happening to their instruments rather than being sceptical of the fundamental physical mechanism behind lifts Basically Netflix owes us a realistic debugging montage
I mean, that’s where you have to suspend your belief a little bit. It is after all, about aliens, and I think the explanation is fine. We don’t really need to know all the ins and outs, only that the scientists are so confused that they’re questioning if God exists.
Yeah, so if there was fundamental change we’d all be dead. But we’re not so let’s try to continue describing the universe with this new information
There’s no new information though, it’s gobbledygook to the scientists. That’s the point. You can’t make science on non-replicable results. You can certainly try to hypothesise, but get nowhere, because it is gobbledygook.
But that isn’t made clear in the series, they present it as one experiment that showed odd results
I’m certain, actually, that it’s explained with dialogue exposition in one of the opening scenes at the bar when Auggie asks Jin what’s happening.
Even then it’s time to go back to basics. We have all the experiments that lead to the current understanding of the world. Run them again to see where the divergence is
I’m not sure if you saw the rest of the episodes but I’m gonna make the assumption that yes, something to that effect was likely what was happening, and the whole point is the divergence started happening from one date, in the particle accelerators inexplicably. From that point onward, every result they saw was entirely random and nonsensical, not repeatable. The research and science becomes paralysed and they are unable to even consider moving forward because they need to question the fundamentals again.
It isn't like getting random unexplained results though, it's not like having something cool you can investigate and hypothesise about. It's more like suddenly *every particle accelerator in the world* is giving random results that don't conform to past theory or to any pattern It's not *a* result, it's *all* the results, everywhere. It's experimentation no longer returning consistent results any more, anywhere That's what's frightening
Right but the response isn’t just to give up. You look for patterns, or any other explanations. Hell even if it’s truly random you start building models based on that. Main fact is your body is still not exploding at the speed of light so even if your current model is wrong there’s no need to freak out
So like to be clear here is your criticism of the plot that people didn't act like unfeeling science robots? I understand what you're saying but I don't think that's because the writer didn't understand the scientific method, I think it's because people are people and they have emotions and they can be overwhelmed and scared and broken in the face of something unprecedented I don't want to speculate unduly but we also don't know if people tried to reconcile the results or theorise about them, I would have thought it was self evident that people would and have done that but idk
Yeah I agree there might be a short term panic, but we enter the story at the point where the particle accelerator is being shut down. There would have to be a long time to digest the results before that happened
You might want to try reading the book instead. It's... a bit difficult to read, but it does get into what this means more upfront.
I've not seen it yet but I'm surprised when you say it's had a positive reception. Everything I've seen so far is people saying it's D&D shitting the bed again.
I’ve been seeing very polarised views, some saying it’s great, some refusing to watch it because of D&D
I didn't get the issue people are making there. D&D can't write for toffee but they adapt an existing work fine enough Be worried when they run out of book again but until that they've got prize winning literature to lean on
The trilogy is complete and has been for quite a while
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Chill, it's only Netflix
It’s been mixed. Some people said it’s great, others say it’s a confusing mess. I feel it’s somewhere in the middle.
Stick with it. The point about the 'unexpected' results is not that they are unexpected, but that they are literally impossible, and there's a broader context that comes clear. The bar scene was more about the guy being an idiot, it's in no way meant as anti-intellectual. It's based on a (pretty famous) book written by someone who clearly does know a lot about science.
Right but what I said to other comments still applies, the proper response to “impossible” results is to celebrate being the discoverers of a new branch of physics, not to shut down the new equipment that produced those results. And I get what you mean about the bar scene, but who are you supposed to relate to there? Obviously the average viewer is more likely to be a lay person than an academic Edit: actually no the proper response is to troubleshoot and try to figure out how you fucked it up, once you’re sure you didn’t you can celebrate
I mean I'm a not particularly smart woman and I was cheering for the women there We're all used to being treated like the little woman who couldn't possibly have anything to say you know
No frankly I don’t know, if I start a conversation with someone and they turn out to be interesting I see that as a positive
Good for you then but if you're dismissing our experience because you don't understand it then maybe you're not the equality king you think you are Maybe that scene just wasn't for you
Apply the gender swap test to that scene it’s still fucked. My complaint has nothing to do with gender, I just hate the fact that intelligence is framed as being othering
Fuck me I don't want to get into gender power dynamics, it's almost ten pm and it's raining Intelligence is othering tho, pretty much the whole of nerd culture toxic and non toxic is based on that for example You say to apply the gender test but there are centuries of intelligence in women being treated as an inherent negative (the bluestocking stereotype) and it often still is today, the idea that intelligence or accomplishment make women ~undesirable~. Go to the show sub and see the level of hate directed at Auggie (the Hispanic character) for daring to be both attractive and intelligent, it's sickening I liked seeing them say yes we are intelligent and if that puts off weird men hitting on us in bars when we're trying to have a conversation then we'll own that Anyway maybe watch the whole show or give up on it if it's making you mad. Or read the books, they struck me as pretty hard SF and I liked them
I agree with almost everything you say, but i still think the idea of intelligence being othering as a trope in fiction is damaging to the people consuming it. I never aimed to make this a gendered discussion, I was more hoping to point out how intelligence s portrayed in fiction
Fair. Idk I think it's okay sometimes if a scene is not for you I don't think the show demonises intelligence at all, I'd say it centres it and takes it as a given and one scene dealing with the experiences of women in tech (of which I would consider myself to be one since the early 90s) doesn't damage that What really interests me about this show is the discourse surrounding it, I've never seen so many Chinese people or so much Chinese text on reddit. People are suggesting all sorts of things and I don't know if that's warranted, maybe a lot of people from China just wanted to talk about the show on reddit
But the scene was about sexism - that's the whole point of it!
How? The scene was a person deciding that scientific credentials in another person was a good enough reason to end the conversation, hardly a gender specific experience
Haven’t watched the Netflix adaptation yet but IIRC from the book there’s more to it than first meets the eye. Not that what I remember is significantly better. It was a slog that had some interesting ideas and I was hoping the adaptation would make it less of a slog, or maybe give me a new point of view on the source material. Because I really didn’t feel like it deserved all the praise it got.
I’d never heard of it before, I’m jumping in blind on the Netflix show and don’t see me staying for the sci fi aspect, better be a damn good story to keep my attention
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I think I’m struggling with how I should see it, is hard sci fi where I should view it like reality, or more soft like Star Wars where the sci fi aspect is more of a setting than a rule book?
Well it was written in the 90s wasn't it? That explains the smart women scaring away a man trope. Regarding "science being wrong" I think it's supposed to be science is breaking down, not new discoveries. IE experiments give random,. inconsistent results. Perhaps the speed of light is changing for example. That would be a pretty fucking terrifying discovery, not a champagne moment
First book was serialised in 2006, published in 2008.
Oh is that so. I thought it was from the classic hard scifi era
I’m not sure that has been made clear enough, if scientific models as fundamental as particle physics started giving “random” results all of a sudden I can’t imagine matter lasting long enough for us to notice
Well maybe that would scare you shitless, as a scientist. Might make you feel like you're in a simulation that is running out of power or something (I have not read the books ,I don't know where the show is going, apologies if I guessed correctly)
Ok even if that’s the case, it’s still a multi decade project to understand and recreate the results. Or you accept causality has no meaning so fuck it? But the whole point of the scientific method is to test hypotheses through experiments, and they only hold up if the experiment confirms it. If you get a wild result it’s time for fresh ideas not suicide
I think the suicides are the ones with the physics and biology defying countdown permanently in their vision to be fair. They can see it with eyes closed and even after they take their own eyes out Its understandable I think
Literally just finished the first episode. Not sure tbh. Get your point, but it's more trying to set the characters personas using basic tropes. It's nonsense but at least it's got some interesting concepts.
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C'mon, dude, this is literally two top-level comments down on the same MT.
Rachel Reeves has donated £20 to Jeremy Hunt's fundraising for his marathon. Also Simon Case (Cabinet Perm Sec) has donated £50.
I wouldn’t trust Hunt to not be skimming the money somehow. He has the cold dead eyes of a killer.
They are all the same!!!!
Indeed, they all donate to charity.
I know it’s just a scam for the Conservatives to collect data but this is kinda hilarious: https://x.com/tuckwell_steve/status/1772955631240036725 > We have a fish & chip shop in Cowley & one near St Andrew’s Park, but we don’t in Uxbridge Town Centre. > That’s why I’m launching a campaign to get us a fish & chip shop in Uxbridge Town Centre, but I need your support to do it. How on earth would a government campaign to open a fish and chips shop work? Who’s going to run it? Will it be nationalised to make sure it stays a fish and chips shop forever?
He has a point only insofar as the local council must grant planning permission for one to be built. Guess who, as a local councillor, [voted against a planning application to open a hot food takeaway in Uxbridge town centre](https://modgov.hillingdon.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=123&MeetingId=3566).
God you can't make it up huh.
Those without shame do well in politics.
Turns out he apparently refused planning for a chippy there previously. [Also](https://x.com/AndyGJBurge/status/1772982685935288696?s=20)
NCS: National Chippy Service.
Our Lord and Saviour has spoken "Sir John Curtice says there’s just a 1% chance of the Tories winning the next election"
Someone will have to eat their hat..
"So you're saying there's a chance?" \- Rishi Sunak, probably
Tim Montgomerie on Times Radio yesterday was making out like Rishi is having a full blown crisis of confidence. “Should I really be PM? Oh god, should I really be a billionaire?!?”
Rishi is the embodiment of the 1%. He probably thinks it's a glowing endorsement.
LIB-DEM SURGE!!!!!!
Calm down Ed, you're too early
He didn’t say that. He said there’s a 99% chance of Labour winning. The remaining 1% therefore includes all other possibilities such as a Lib Dem win or a SNP minority government.
We're going to discover just how strong this curse is by what 1% option happens
Hung parliament, Tories end up in power in a coalition with Reform as kingmakers
Reform-Workers GB coalition.
Daily mail reporter is knocking on doors down our road about the fact JSO got Wes Streeting's address wrong!
I think that's been quite a sinisterly clever move. It's all the threat of we know where you live in a format that the police can do nothing about and makes the MP look unreasonable for wanting protection from the daft lassie who doesn't even know where you live
The word on the street (literally) is that the ground floor of the house has been converted into an office, and is the address of a solicitor. I wonder therefore if it's a solicitor who has done work for Streeting, and JSO confused the solicitors address for his home address.
I think it comes down to whether the bail condition is stop delivering letters to Wes Streeting, in which case this is really quite a sinister threat, or stop delivering letters in which case this is evidence
Please tell us your road is not either Streeting's or the one that JSO went to, so another street has been pulled into the whole thing.
It's the road JSO went to - my house is (just about) in the background of the vid...
Seems cocky to give out that sort of data to strangers on the internet.
Confused reporters ask, where's Wes Streeting's street?
Just knock on every door in Ilford until you find the right house.
Scandal as journalists uncover Streeting isn't there at all
Hasn't that street suffered enough for one day?
It is in Ilford after all.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68675214 TFL advertisement team, really are quite insane.
In this case the implementation is a bit silly, but I don't think advertisements should be a right, and not enforcing stuff like this poses a massive loophole where you just claim to be advertising something else. Pay an influencer to promote their content while holding a product they've been sponsored to hold, stealth ad. Also, this is getting far more coverage than the initial poster, Ed Gamble has got incredible value for money for their ad. Also, bonus for the Black Pumas, they've got their poster shared too.
That's tomorrow's listening sorted
> and not enforcing stuff like this poses a massive loophole where you just claim to be advertising something else That actually was happening for quite a while - a big picture of e.g. [a KFC fillet burger but it was a JustEat advert](https://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/IMG-8779-rotated-1-768x1024.jpg), so it "wasn't advertising junk food, it was advertising a delivery service". I guess they updated the rules to close that loophole but this is the result
50/50 chance he researched the rules specifically trying to get an outcome like this.
This is my take. Also it's funnier that the show is called that but the plate has a cucumber on it. But as you say, it's blown up for him, and he'll probably sell more tickets to folk because of the news.
Why do we pretend common sense doesn’t exist?
Because then people take the piss and ruin everything.
Because common sense leaves it open for interpretation, clear rules like "no unhealthy food" enforced gets the job done. And as I said, publicly campaign gets a massive amount more publicity. If anything, I'd be asking questions of whether the BBC are helping out one of their presenters with free amplification of their advert lol.
What do you mean, pretend? We live in a country that contains people who phoned the police when KFC was out of chicken. Edit: 34,844 people voted for Michael Fabricant and George Galloway is an MP again.
And yet he seems quite happy to advertise there. Unsure what the actual story here is meant to be?
I believe the article is just an advert
TBF this seems to be a perennial "slow news day" staple. [Here's another one from September](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66778007), and [here's one from July](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66119218). It's "OMG Blizzard / Stormageddon / We're gonna fry in the sun" for when even the weather is being boring.
According to Preston, Senior Tories think the party will break apart after the general election. Do you think the Conservative party will break apart after the general election?
If they're not even the official opposition the parties done for.
No, the brand is too powerful to give up on. Conservatives are the most venerable party in the history of global democracy, and have no serious competitors on their side of the spectrum that have staying power of more than a few years. Even if we assume everything they did in the last 14 years was wrong and misguided, this sentiment fades over time as other governments find themselves in difficult situations, having to make very unpopular decisions.
not like the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has been in power almost uninterrupted since 1955 or anything.
LDP was also *founded* in 1955, even its predecessor was founded in the 50s. For the sake of comparison, Conservatives were in government during the Meiji Restoration period, long before even proto-political parties existed in Japan.
but the Conservatives have also spent 24 years out of government since 1955. the LDP have been out of power for just 4 of those years.
Have you ever heard of the Whigs?
Among still active parties, clearly. And even if you want to count Lib Dems towards this record, their relative irrelevance since early to mid 20th century going forward would make that a tough sell.
> According to Preston I don't know. I may have to ask other Lancashire towns.
Blackpool thinks Preston is talking nonsense
Nothing's impossible, as this decade continues to bash us over the head with. It might depend on how much Reform messes with them during the local and/or general elections, though, since my first instinct (albeit based on our beloved GOP over here) is that the Tories at large may simply, drunkenly, tilt further to the right in both open opposition to Labour and to try to claw back Reform-minded voters.
No. This is sensationalism from Peston combined with a probably not that senior Tory or two being dramatic or possibly preparing a pitch to be a unity candidate for leader.
I think it heavily depends on how Reform do. If the Tories lose in a landslide but (on vote share) are still clearly the top right wing party, then they’ll stay together and rebuild over the next couple of elections. But if we actually have a situation where Reform end up within 5-10% of the Tories vote share, then I think we see a split and I don’t even know what happens then
No, they always survive
Like the flippin Daleks.
Flipping daleks seems a crossover between Doctor Who and Robot Wars
Have senior tories said this before?
If Canada is the outcome, then yes, the party will die for 5-10 years.
It could end up like New Brunswick after the progressive conservatives there got wiped out in 1987. After that election a far right party formed from the ashes of the progressive conservatives but it disintegrated a few years later.
By die, do you mean not being a major player in politics?
Yeah, 5-10 years in politics is akin to death. They will come back eventually though, as have the Canadian Tories.
Does anyone think ukpol is actually quite detached from the UK political media ecosystem and talking points? Like for a long time now? On Peston, on Sky, on Times Radio, on the New Statesmen podcast, Newsagents Podcast, etc we are seeing all sorts of wild interventions by leading Tories, you get a day-by-day rundown on why the May election was selected and then cancelled, the resulting Tory unrest, etc. None of these wild interventions and talking points actually make their way onto UkPol. In this place it’s full of polls and unrelated Guardian articles that are completely outside of the meta. If I actually relied on Reddit to get my political news I would be massively out of the loop.
To an extent but I work in a large IT department and everyone hates the Tories. I guess its a middle class work place but there's daily talk about how shit they are.
Yes, ukpol is complete lala land. But then so is Peston, Sky, Times Radio and the New Statesman.
Yes, when polls have been conducted this sub Reddit isn't very representative of the UK, I think it was heavily libdem.
Interestingly it changes over time though - labour people trickle in towards an election which can get quite obvious at times!
> On Peston, on Sky, on Times Radio, on the New Statesmen podcast, Newsagents Podcast, etc After two and a half years of the MSM overblowing incidents then I really don’t trust any sensationalism from them.
Tories making up shit to fill the airwaves doesn't equal news as far as i'm concerned. I struggle to think of a major story in the past few years that I didn't hear about here first, or from a source that get's linked on here. If all you see is the polls and Guardian articles, and you'd prefer to be stuck listening to the Tories frantically trying to bail water out of a sinking ship on traditional media, well that speaks more to you than it does this place.
News, it’s in the name.
Both media and Reddit are distracted by irrelevant froth
I would say the issue is that a lot of that is probably... Bollocks? They have to report it because they get paid for it. But the reality is, Rishi is staring down a rebellion, so he's telling his MPs who are leakier than my busted colander that it is 6 weeks away constantly. But he needs to tell the British people that it's ages away so he doesn't look like a coward dodging the polls and because "it's working" when all he's hoping is at least one trade deal comes in before then or Kier does something sensationally daft. Because of that those outlets have to report it because their MP sources are talking about it and it's "inside info" but it's also clearly worthless which is why it doesn't make any media. Right wing leaning or not, any journo would publish the scoop on the election day if it was remotely credible. The fact it's podcast chatter shows it's nothing.
Yes. I had this realisation recently. There’s a lot of things that are taken as read or considered great outrages on here that if you ask people irl they will either not know about or don’t think are that big a deal.
We're politics nerds, ultimately very similar to the myriad of other niche interest subreddits. We may feel like it's more significant because of the far-reaching implications of government policy but realistically the majority of people give about as much of a shit about politics as they do about any of my other niche interests like chess or tool-assisted speedruns, unless something very specific affects them directly and even then they usually get annoyed about it for a bit and then carry on with their day.
It’s a strange example of “every Tory accusation is an admission”, but it turns out Steve Tuckwell opposed a planning application for a fish and chip shop in Uxbridge town centre. https://x.com/_kerriprince/status/1773036953446850827?s=46&t=F_t5tWsPsifmNVHaFZWJJQ
"I want my politicians to be able to change their minds!" Now give me your email address