Is the message here supposed to be, both men did photoshoots at potteries, therefore they are politically aligned? Because if so I think you need a few more steps to actually make this case.
That's about one tenth of the annual MP's salary. So, he has a far greater financial motive to remain an MP than he does to lose and collect the bet.
Even if his only incentives were financial, he will make more money by winning than by losing, because an MP's salary and expenses are pretty good. So, even taking into account the innumeracy of your average MP, he does not have a financial incentive to lose.
"In the 2005 election, I busted a gut to win. I expected to lose. I had a bet on myself to lose in the 2005 election, and my bet went down the pan."
He didn't throw the '05 election, even when he bet against himself.
Right, but they weren't doing that. There's no evidence they were and no motive for them to do so. The comparison with athletes is not apt. A pro footballer who bets on himself and manipulates the outcome is still a pro-footballer afterwards. A politician who bets on themselves and deliberately loses is not a politician afterwards. It does not make sense to do it.
In Britain, being nominated as a local election candidate simply involves signing some forms
They're not local election candidates.
It requires huge amounts of work to be a candidate. I know people who've run for parliament. One of them had previously run as a total no-hoper on multiple occasions, in order to prove he knew how to campaign well enough to get selected for a seat where he had a chance. He was so burned out by the selection process that having won the selection, he actually turned down the nomination, then quit politics altogether. The idea that he'd have deliberatey thrown any of those elections is ridiculous.
The idea that anyone would put in all the work to get selected as a candidate, then decide it was a smart move to place a bet against themselves and throw the election to make a quick buck is ridiculous. There's no way you could make enough money from the bet to make it worthwhile.
There is no indication that any of the politicians who bet against themselves intended to throw the election. Politics is not sport.
Neither Left nor Right can accept that Starmer’s impressive focus and strategic sense is responsible for transforming Labour’s prospects…
A slightly too wordy and too long article that I nonetheless basically agree with. Key paragraphs:
>Starmer’s strategic sense has been impressive, from opening his leadership consensually with qualified support for, and constructive criticism of, lockdown, to encouraging Boris Johnson to get his denials of Partygate on the record and leaving them there, to, most of all, his relentless focus on the voters he actually needs to win, rather than the ones who make the most noise.
>This, of course, is the source of the biggest criticisms of Starmer from the left: that he won the leadership by relentlessly focusing on the voters he needed to win within the Labour Party, and then pivoted towards the national electorate rather than sticking with a prospectus whose chief appeal was to people who had already been shown to be a minority of a minority. I am not wholly unsympathetic to this view: his ten pledges were mostly bad, and he shouldn’t have made them; but dropping bad policies is better than sticking to them, and winning is better than losing.
>After all, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t keep any of his promises, which may be why a recent election leaflet endorsing his bid to be the independent MP for Islington North gives so much prominence to his role in saving the Number 4 bus route.
This idiot might well be the difference between Sunak holding his seat and losing it.
See, I don't care about this at all. There's no suggestion he was going to deliberately throw the election. He didn't have any inside information. He's allowed to place bets!
Refreshing sanity from Conservative Home, of all places!
There's no equivalence between what Kevin Craig did (placed a bet on himself to lose) and what Craig Williams is accused of (using inside information to place a bet), and no need for a new law, given that what Williams is accused of is already illegal.
Takes a while before he gets to his actual suggestions, which are as stupid as you'd expect:
We know what a coherent right-wing agenda would look like: Net Zero immigration, energy sanity, a massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding. We also know how to get there: identify, train, and promote talented people, primarily from the private sector, and smash the barriers to governing.
- 'Net zero immigration' - dystopian, unworkable, self-destructive
- 'Energy sanity' - meaningless, nobody thinks of themselves as proposing energy insanity, do they? I assume what he means is 'Keep exploiting fossil fuels even though revenues are falling, prices are rising, there are obvious alternatives and climate change is accelerating', which doesn't strike me as 'sane'. In any case, Labour's plans are sane: accelerate the transition to the cheapest, cleanest forms of energy and keep using fossil fuels to keep the lights on while we're managing the transition
- 'massive programme of planning reform, and housebuilding' - exactly what the Tories have failed to deliver and what Labour are proposing, which he assumes they'll fail at for no discernible reason
And his plans for how to get there are just as asinine:
- 'identify, train, and promote talented people' - again, meaningless. Who could oppose this?
- 'primarily from the private sector' - why? Because. Sunak is 'from the private sector'. So was Boris Johnson. How's that worked out? And notice the weaselly 'primarily', too. Is that most? Some? All?
- 'smash the barriers to governing' - again, just meaningless waffle, something the Tories have continuously promised and found themselves unable to deliver. Brexit was meant to do this. It didn't. Is this because, perhaps, the main 'barriers to governing' are that the Tories are totally detached from reality?
If you're worried about this, the best way to prevent it is to donate to and volunteer with the Labour party. Yes, there's a few places where voting for a different party is the better anti-Tory tactic if that is your priority, BUT:
- it's hard to know for sure who the best vote is because the various tactical tools, polls, etc., often don't agree
- very nearly everywhere Labour is your best bet anyway
It's certainly possible that sayings of other people were later attributed to him, but to really make this case you'd need to have quotations that were attributed to multiple sources, including him, if you see what I mean. Absent that, it could be true, but there's no particular reason to believe it.
There are enough specific biographical details about Jesus of Nazareth to make it likely that there's a specific, real central figure. For example, the fact that he was from Nazareth was a problem for his early followers (it didn't match the Messianic prophecies), which is why they invented the odd story of the census, so that they could claim he'd been born in Bethlehem, the hometown of King David, from whom Jesus was supposedly descended. That seems unlikely to have happened if there hadn't been a real, central historical figure.
Also, none of the early non-Christian sources claim he wasn't real or that he was a composite, which they surely would have done if there was any doubt on the matter.
I agree with you that Jesus wasn't God, who doesn't exist, and that there were no miracles, which are impossible. However, this is not the same thing as saying that there's no evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Jewish apocalyptic preacher.
The earliest documents about Jesus, such as the Pauline Epistles, were written by people who knew people who knew him. In a mostly illiterate society 2,000 years ago, this is about as good as evidence gets. It's also the exact same kind of evidence as a journalist or researcher writing an account based on interviews with people. This was how, e.g, Herodotus wrote his histories. When Herodotus says 'A guy rode a dolphin once' we dismiss that. But we don't say 'The people in the Histories didn't exist, except those for whom there's physical evidence, which is about three of them, not including the author'. We do much the same with Jesus and the miracles.
If the Apostles had wanted, for some reason, to make up a guy, that would have been risky. Other people would have just said, 'That guy didn't exist'. If they had anyway decided to make up a guy, they'd have invented someone who actually fulfilled the Jewish propehcies of the Messiah, instead of inventing Jesus, who obviously didn't. This suggests they didn't invent him, which strengthens the plausibility of the evidence we do have.
A third way of looking at this is to ask if there are any comparable figures, religious founders from the historic era, who we now think were wholly made up in the way you're suggesting. But there aren't. The Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Zoroaster - they all certainly existed. Indeed, I can't think of any figures form the time period who were actually imaginary.
A great example of someone who seemingly logged into Twitter one day and said, It'd be neat if I let this website drive me completely insane.
The Tories want people to assume the outcome is decided but the only way to remove this government is to vote them out, says Labour’s national campaign coordinator
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has promised the party will scrap no-fault evictions immediately if they win the general election.
‘Tory big beasts’ like Liz Truss and Jeremy Hunt could be for chop as well as once-safe seats like Maidenhead, formerly held by Theresa May
This is according to research by Get Voting. Seems worth sharing just to potentially have Liz Truss lose her seat!
Labour may currently have a commanding lead, but a second lacklustre half to the campaign could lead some voters to stay at home, writes political scientist Robert Ford
This is what's keeping me up at night, and also exactly why I think all the predictions of four or five hundred seats for Labour are overblown.
In office, something very different will be required, but steady caution has brought Labour to the brink of power, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
>The left is only able to demand that an apparently imminent Labour government be bolder in office because Starmer has got the party to the brink of victory – and has done it by doing the very things they opposed.
Never have I 'this'ed so hard.
Labour Party Manifesto 2024: At this election we can change Britain. We can stop the chaos, turn the page, and start to rebuild our country.
The 2024 Labour Manifesto is now online!
I am genuinely excited by loads of it, especially the green policies and the expansion of workers' rights, but probably the most important part of it is the stuff aimed at economic growth.
What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Inspired to volunteer? Some more sensible, moderate emotion?
Hartlepool is on track to lurch back to Labour in the election. Reform UK is in second spot
... But great news for Britain!
>Hartlepool is on track to lurch back to Labour in the election. Reform UK is in second spot
Came across this via LabourList, so giving them a shout, too.
HOW IS HE SO BAD AT THIS?
He should've said, 'Look, I was very fortunate growing up, there's no point denying that. What I want is for every child to have the opportunities I had, that's why our policy is to blah, blah first-time buyers blah tax, etc., unlike Labour who want blah VAT on private schools, blah'.
Instead, he gets immediately rattled and starts gibbering at the first follow-up question. He is just the worst.
By the way, this is the interview he thought was so important he had to run away from Normandy to do it. Apparently, it wasn't important enough for him to do any prep.
Conservative manifesto expected to announce cut in national insurance and measures to help people buy homes
Harper said the vote was:
>a now-or-never opportunity to remove the Tories from power. Only Labour is able to do this across the UK and only Labour has a plan to halt environmental destruction.
I couldn't have put it better.
The US atmospheric chemist on why she doesn’t share the pessimism of most climate scientists, fixing the ozone layer, and why Jacques Cousteau is her hero
Sharing this here as I feel it's relevant to the GE campaign.
The evidence suggests that in about three weeks, we're going to give a landslide to the party promising the most radical green policies in this country's history. Environmentalism is just about to win the argument in Britain, as long as we vote for it on the 4th of July. Don't give in to cynicism and despair!
On the TV debate and its aftermath, and how the Tories managed to turn a row about £2,000 into a row about their own integrity
I was pretty furious about Sunak lying, and I still am, but it's interesting and a little bit reassuring to hear a perspective suggesting it will only hurt his campaign.
Jeremy Corbyn drew fresh-faced crowds at Glastonbury and beyond. But his successor has younger fans too – sort of
Found this kind of interesting. I remember during the Corbyn era a lot of people saying it was actually better for politicians not to have devoted 'fans' of the kind Corbyn did. I'm inclined to agree.
Are NHS waiting lists falling, would family taxes be up by £2,000 a year under Labour – what is the truth amid the claims and counter-claims?
Summary:
>Would every family’s taxes go up by £2,000 under Labour?
No.
>Are NHS England waiting lists going down?
It depends how you measure it, but mostly no.
>Have the Conservatives abolished non-dom status?
Not yet; they're phasing it out.
>Will the UK be less energy-secure if it stops new North Sea drilling?
No.
So, that's four claims made by Sunak, none of them clearly true, two of them clearly false.
Not surprising, really. He has no positive legacy so he has to make things up. And this is, after all, a man who was fined for partying in Downing Street while the rest of us were in lockdown.
Labour and the Conservatives want to reduce national debt, but Resolution Foundation says promises ‘detached from reality’
I am both glad this nonsense is over and still annoyed it ever happened.
Labour quietly released its finalised employment reforms on May 24th – although some parts of it, for instance a single status of worker and sectoral…
>It makes labour a more secure commodity, removes legal prohibitions on trade union activity, and provides unions with more rights.
>Trade union pragmatism means that while the New Deal is far from perfect, the affiliated unions will now back it to the hilt, as they recognise how, if combined with effective and strategic action on their part, it has the potential to be transformative for their movement and reverse decades of decline. Within the comforting confines of labourism, all else is secondary.
Exclusive: Labour’s deputy leader talks openly about the impact on her of the Tory-led controversy about her past living arrangements
From Beergate to Angela Rayner’s tax affairs, politicians are using the police for electoral ends
Odd to say 'politicians' in the headline when what is meant is 'Conservatives'.
