Do you think I will be seen quicker if i drop my trousers and go for a run around the unit?

Well, you’d certainly be noticed.

Going to go out on a limb here: there’s no chance Biden will beat Trump in November now.

At least this time i do not have to show my arse to everyone but its tempting to do it just for the hell of it

It’s remarkable how quickly you (one) get used to showing your bits to people in a medical setting!

Hang in there, TJ.

Biden resigning as Pres and having Harris take over as Pres doesn’t give her an unassailable advantage but it does reinforce the image of her as Biden’s stooge with no identity of her own. Her lack of profile to date means she doesn’t start with a platform – but she also doesn’t have a huge amount of baggage to weigh her down in this election.

I’d like to see a debate between Harris and Trump. I’d put money on an ex-lawyer against a racist, sexist grifter.

Starmer didn’t really do that well against Johnson.

You may have a pastry deficiency. One of your many politics-related bets needs to pay off! ;)

It wouldn’t cost them much to whack the job listing on the website, surely?

Isn’t the problem with driverless trains not that the technology doesn’t exist or isn’t any good, but that it costs a mindbending amount to retrofit all the necessary signalling gear? I am clueless on whether AI would fix that problem or not.

…and there was never an answer given!

On the far right chat-boards it looks like the old birther conspiracy has been resurrected.

Brilliant news. It was a total failure in stopping Obama getting elected so hopefully 16 years later (!) it will be just as effective.

It will pay back much of its cost in savings in other areas like health and education

Is there a source for this?

Living near a school is great. They’re only there for about 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 30 weeks a year. The noise is easy to ignore. Try living near a bar or a takeaway or a frozen foods warehouse!

he/she was pointing out that there are some right thick idiots in the USA.

14% of people that bothered to show up for UK elections voted for Nigel Farage’s party. The Brits are thick as mince.

If OP wants an innuendo, I’ll give ’em one

Cross stitch …be careful though as it’s the gateway drug to tapestries

My mate got addicted to tapestries. A year later – it was curtains for him.

it’s just how it is with the american electorate, they are not the brightest people.

Things that have been very popular in the UK in the last decade: Boris Johnson, Brexit, Mrs Brown’s Boys.

Trump’s a shoe-in.

This is a sentiment that has been expressed many times recently, and I think we will see it many times before November. Only time will tell whether the prediction is correct. But in these difficult times, I think it’s important for us all to agree on one thing despite our differences:

The expression is “shoo-in“.

The short timeframe could – will hopefully – be a big plus. The candidate won’t be tarnished by an endless campaign and Trump’s nicknames by that point. I really hope Biden will be able to distract Trump by saying “I’m too old – and so are you, you old dinosaur”. The more he can do that, the more Trump and Biden get paired as yesterday’s men together, and in contrast to whoever gets the D nomination.

I just wonder what his family were thinking. I wouldn’t want any of my family running for anything that stressful

His wife and son were – reportedly – the ones telling him to keep plugging away at it. His son is looking at the wrong end of a criminal conviction – having your father in position to commute your sentence (he already said he wouldn’t pardon him) would be mighty handy.

He is not working on child poverty.  He is sticking plasters on a gaping wound and of course the london one was a sanctioned photo op.  Otherwise it would not have been all over the news.

Sorry, TJ, are you talking about Gordon Brown? The guy that made sure SureStart was paid for when he was Chancellor? The guy that wanted to make eradicating child poverty was written into law when he was PM? The guy that’s been calling on Westminster and Holyrood to act on child poverty for years? The guy that said the two child cap should be abolished after Starmer said it shouldn’t? The guy that just published a white paper on how to reduce child poverty? The guy that – just to reiterate – got off his arse to help set up multibanks for poor children in Scotland and London?

That is the guy that you think isn’t working on child poverty, and who is controlled by Kier Starmer (who apparently also controls whether the media can control launch events), and the point is to distract the media from child poverty policy?

https://hellorayo.co.uk/clyde/local/news/child-poverty-creating-invisible-generation-says-gordon-brown/

https://www.scotsman.com/news/gordon-brown-slams-snp-record-on-child-poverty-1396268

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/gordon-brown-demands-two-child-32815904

https://gordonandsarahbrown.com/2024/05/partnership-to-end-poverty/

“presumably”  I have no idea actually – do you?

From memory Sunak had no opposition when piloted in to Richmond? Don’t think the locals had a choice?

Businessman Rishi Sunak has been selected as the Conservative candidate to vie for William Hague’s North Yorkshire seat at the general election…Around 200 party supporters chose Mr Sunak from a shortlist of four at a meeting in the constituency earlier.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-29674728.amp

As an aside, apparently the voters of Eastbourne are so elderly, racist and bigoted that they recently elected…a 31 year old gay, black British man to represent them in Parliament, while the combined Tory/Reform vote dropped by 10%! Stereotypes, eh, who’d have em?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastbourne_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

I will also point out that Brown does not live in London.  If he was doing this where he lived then maybe a pass – but doing this in London?  Its just a photo op to distract from labours lack of action

If you read the link, TJ, you’d notice the first one that Gordon Brown helped to set up was in his own back yard of Lochgelly, Fife.

Does that makes him a hypocritical bastard too – coming down here and working on child poverty when there’s so much more he could be doing north of the border?

You are not naive enough to not realise he is doing that as a senior labour figure with the blessing of the labour leadership.

“Kier Starmer secretly ordered Gordon Brown to help open a multibank to support poor kids because Labour doesn’t want to solve child poverty” is an absolute dog egg of a take.

Browns total hypocrisy

Brown is not PM or even an MP (NB also he is not a Lord even though he would have been offered a peerage).

It is not hypocrisy to help organisations that work on child poverty in Scotland or in England. We could do with a lot more “hypocrites” like him.

At the risk of highlighting my own hypocrisy – some of us keyboard warriors could do more to fix problems by helping food banks or multibanks like than by banging away arguing online.

If there is a white and a non white candidate goes to the membership then it will be the white person

Why does that only apply to the leadership selection and not selection at constituency level, then? Presumably all the BAME MPs in the Tory Party would have had plenty of white opponents for selection – and yet they won.

Gordon Brown might mean well and I don’t hate the guy but come on the solutions are well within Labour’s control.

1) child poverty is not going to be fixed by abolition of the second child benefit cap. If it were that simple, there would have been no need to set up the first multibank in Scotland, where the cap doesn’t exist.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/18/child-poverty-uk-scandal-britain-charities-families

2) child poverty in this country is a complex problem. It’s to do with wages, taxes, benefits, illness, housing, education, childcare and more. Fixing it is going to require a sustained, cross-government, practical programme – the kind of boring, responsible thing this country hasn’t done for 20+ years since SureStart. The child poverty task force is the first step in that.

3) it’s not gonna happen overnight. Until then, like Brown says, “As a new anti-poverty plan is being prepared, the multibanks still need to secure more supplies and more funds from generous donors so that, working with food banks, [they] can provide poverty relief.”

If its a contest that goers to the membership it will go to the whitest person in the contest no matter how useless- Like how Truss got the leadership rather than Sunak.

I think that’s a bit one-dimensional and short sighted. The “racist pensioners of Eastbourne” that vote for Tory leaders are the same ones that selected Badenoch, Patel, Sunak, Braverman etc to be candidates in their home constituencies, despite most of those places not being very diverse.

Richmond (Yorks) is 98% white. If I’m reading the figures properly and he lives in the town itself, then the Sunak nuclear family is 10% of the entire town’s Asian population and 66% of its Hindu population! Point being If the Tory constituency membership were so unabashedly racist, they wouldn’t have selected Sunak at all.

https://citypopulation.de/en/uk/yorkshireandthehumber/north_yorkshire/E63000382__richmond/

Throwing a “paddy”, it’s completely obvious where that comes from.

The English have a bit of history of stereotyping the Irish.

The Scots too. Probably worse per capita in Scotland, actually, considering the strength of the Orange Lodge and religiously segregated schooling there.

Many on here have never been the subject of racism – I have, through school and the work place. Only the other day one of the juniors described our ERP system as having a bit of a paddy.

Is there a reliable source to show that “paddy” in the sense you mean it is derived from the nickname for Irish people? Reliable meaning a rigorous etymology rather than some toss on the Internet.

I do wonder what many posters on here would think about themselves if they could read their content through someone else’s eyes?

I’d probably think I was a massive throbber. But to be fair I think that already.

tjagain

Full Member

I think you mean sexist not sexiest :-)

I think they were right first time ;)

You’re accusing me of being a racist, which I take massive offence at!

Come off it, Binners, you’ve been happily insulting, provoking and ridiculing others for years on here. Don’t act the delicate flower when someone points out that your use of the pot/kettle metaphor in this context could have unintended unpleasant resonance.

That Liz Truss clip? Dear god! Isn’t Braverman out there too? Along with Boris, Farage and Russel Brand?

Trump isn’t always wrong:

When Britain sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.

All my stuff’s working fine thanks *smugface

Well you’ve jinxed it now

Tell us another rape “joke”, @binners

“And since fees are paid by the student over their working life, what has their parents income got to do with it?”

Kids born into wealthier families generally turn out wealthier themselves, and part of that it because their parents have more money to spend on their education. That’s not a radical idea. There are very few middle class kids that don’t end up going to uni/HE because they would pay some or all of their fees – we can see that from what’s happening in places that do charge fees to some students.

https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/intergenerational-wealth-transfers-drive-inequality-in-britain

Seeing as this is apparently more or less the rolling UK politics thread now, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more discussion of the riots/public disorder in South Belfast and (today) in Harehills Leeds:

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/edwin-poots-suggests-removing-pedestrian-access-at-south-belfast-flashpoint-to-quell-rioting/a178877428.html

Riots in Harehills
byu/GottsParkLad inLeeds

The South Belfast disorder is at the “interface” between a Catholic/Irish/Republican neighbourhood and a Protestant/British/Unionists one. The solution according to the DUP is to remove pedestrian access (ie segregate) the two neighbourhoods…

“In the first instance it is entirely appropriate that a Prime Minister who is only in office 13 days has the opportunity to tease through with his own team what that looks like”.

I’m disgusted that the Taoiseach is parroting this revolting centrist extremist nonsense. Starmer has had loads of time to prepare and he’s been in government for two weeks. The UK should be back in the EU by now, there should have been a final status agreement on Northern Ireland, a tunnel between Dublin and Liverpool should at least have begun construction, and Team GB should be leading the medal table at the Olympics. He’s done none of that and is basically Mussolini. I wish we still had Truss.

It’s got… everything to do with political expediency.

Labour got elected with a massive majority 2 weeks ago. They could nationalise King Charles’s left nut and there would be no electoral blowback in 5 years time. They don’t need to be politically expedient or worry about a few negative headlines – which abolishing the 2CBC wouldn’t create anyway. You lot are living in the 1990s.

Vance is going to be Vice-President. About the only role in the job description is; hang about, just in case of emergencies

…like the President being incapacitated by illness or death. I accept that Trump has bucked every other trend but it’s not outlandish to think that he might get sick or die in the next 4.5 years and Vance will take over automatically.

VP can also spend 4 years building a platform for their own election (although don’t ask Kamala Harris for tips on this).

Statham has also criticised Starmer’s economic caution

I loved The Transporter but all the same I trust Starmer on the economy more

I’d like to apologise to @kevog for being rude to them personally. It should be possible to talk about ideas without being insulting or snotty. Sorry.

This bit of Dobbs, you mean?

At the risk of returning you to your own confusion: your suggestion was that “if you can’t point to the bit in the Constitution that protects abortion, it isn’t protected”. That’s self-evidently a load of toss, as constitutional scholars call it. Roe v Wade and the dissent in Dobbs cogently explain why that’s a load of toss, and where such a protection can be found in the Constitution – in much the same way that bump stocks have constitutional protection even though you can’t point to the bit in the Constitution that mentions bump stocks.

Obviously the majority in Dobbs disagreed with the proposition that abortion was worthy of protection under the (federal) constitution. That much is obvious – it’s why the case is of any interest and why the law has changed. But even Alito and Thomas, who would love to agree with your proposition (if it weren’t, as previously mentioned, a load of toss), take a more nuanced approach than “can you point to that bit of the constitution? Nope, thought not”.