Maybe your friend should have talked to Mark first ?

“But doctor, I am Pagliacci!”

The UCI fined Julien Bernard 200CHF. Clowns.

Pardon my stream of consciousness, but I think it’s going to be very hard to get the supporters of Reform UK and the Conservative Party to vote for the same candidates from here on. Johnson managed it in 2019, but he lied and overpromised to the electorate and then didn’t deliver. UKIP/Brexit Party/Reform UK pulled their candidates and backed him. I feel they enabled the shambles of the last five years almost as much as the Tories did. Whatever “Leveling Up” was supposed to be, it basically never happened, and struggling communities did worse if anything. The Brexit “deal” has been a disaster and the economic effects have left people worse off too. Where we are now: Nativists are turned off by neoliberal economic policies and want things tilted in their favour and graft; Thatcherites are turned off by protectionism, corruption, and rivers of ****. The right is pretty fundamentally split now in the UK, though there is a danger that an ignorant and desperate electorate and pandering media facilitate growth in nativism as a rejection of orthodox politics, if Labour doesn’t turn the ship around. I think Labour can turn the ship around though, and I hope they will.

Being trying to find the least Reform voting seat in the UK.

They didn’t bother standing a candidate here, if 0.0% counts for anything: https://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=291&RPID=89625428

Green success has barely moved the dial.

It could plausibly be argued that the denial of airtime to the Greens over the years is not orthogonal to that.

we need to start thinking about mandatory voting 55% turn out is an embarrassment!

Are you embarrassed? It sounds foolish if you think about it. Low turnout is a failure of politicians, not of voters. Politicians (and our media) need to provide compelling reasons to voters to turn out. Hopefully Labour delivers automatic voter registration: the actual turnout is even lower as millions are missing from the roll.

Farage criticising the MSM for not having reform members on the shows… then cuts to one of them on CH4. What a dick head.

A cynical liar and beneficiary of fellow mendicant Johnson’s role as populist thought leader.

“Honestly Nadine, you need to get over Boris Johnson.”

”Do you really want to talk about Liz Truss?”

Shots already fired on Channel 4.

There was a small queue at about 10am when I went. To maximise my personal amusement I used my plastic EU passport card as ID. (The forum stripped my metal emoji, but you can imagine the horned fist for yourselves.)

Johnson really owns so much of this for removing almost every Tory MP with any principles or scruples five years ago.

I know I shouldn’t even say it, but I’ll be disappointed if the Tories are still the second largest party on Friday.

I prefer Reform having next to no MPs. Of course I’d love the greens and maybe some lib dems to be in govt but for now keeping Reform at bay should be the singular focus and FPTP is currently the best way of doing that. When Reform are long gone and their populist bullshit is marginalised after 10 years of public service improvement and better living standards we can think about PR. Until then though we need to do everything we can to keep Reform as far away from power as possible.

This reads like dangerous wishful thinking to me. I think it’s also entirely possible that FPTP hands Reform UK a majority in 2029, with our fawning media continuing to fan the flames, the Conservative Party thrashing about for political space between Labour and Reform UK, and Labour themselves increasingly unpopular in our continuing slide into inequality and mass poverty under firmly Reaganite/Thatcherite economic policy and again constantly denigrated by the media as in the late 00s.

Why don’t they use a Schraeder valve stem

Because Schraeder stems are still too wide for most road rims.

In the late 90s I used to ride with people who as a matter of course drilled out mtb rims to take Schraeder valves. I think that’s probably still where we’re at for those who feel strongly enough, though for those who break valves through cack-handedness using a drill is probably a bad idea…

Why are people obsessed with the “SIR” ? It wasn’t hereditary, he got it by virtue of working his way to the top of a public organization.

The honours system sometimes seems widely perceived as tainted by the Conservatives’ cronyism in recent years with titles sarcastically used for those holders who’ve fallen from grace. Some of Starmer’s detractors probably (deliberately or subconsciously) lean on the Sir because it makes him seem crooked or a participant in clientelism.

Strong “HOLD THE F****** WHEEL!” vibes right through the peleton in the uphill run to the intermediate sprint.

A Conservative friend told me that Britain is being ruled and ruined by “The Blob” and that that is things will not improve after the election. It sounded to me very much like a British variation of the “Deep State” conspiracy in the USA.

Pogi coming in 4th he just can’t help himself 🙂

It took a sprint from Wout to deny him bonus seconds. In the moment I wondered if it was Jonas going for them when I saw the Visma kit in the sprint.

kilt-dom is a social construct…

Kilt-dom sounds like a slightly niche kink.

My problem with this particular question is that effective communication is a basic everyday need; a fundamental requirement for working effectively in any collaborative environment or even functioning in society with any real quality of life. What is the interviewer hoping to ascertain from the answer they’re going to get? What are they really hoping to hear? I suspect that unless they’re a clueless buffoon this question is interrogating my willingness to operate in a bull**** organisation with a straight face, and while I might give a measured answer in an interview scenario I would not be taking that job because I know it would be a destructive experience in either case. I would never ask this on an interview panel, and would be mortified to participate in an interview where it was asked. Just because an interview is by its nature quite contrived does not make it acceptable to ask unserious questions.

I can only offer encouragement, because although I am a plumbing liability I recently removed and descaled some cartridges in my house, measuring them up and acquiring some replacements as I did so instead of paying the plumbers I asked to look at them several hundred to replace the mixer because their suppliers didn’t have matching cartridges.

That Team Visma “Control Room” van is just another way for DS to shout “get to the front!” and “stay at the front!” to riders…

This is a hugely reductive take of all the important analysis and orchestration they have to do. They also have to shout “eat!”

– Provide an example of a time when you have used communication effectively.
– When I took a **** in the Prime Minister’s duck pond.

It is being reported that Sir Philip Davies bet £8k he would lose his seat. His defenestration by his electorate is on my Portillo Moment wishlist.

– What do you consider your biggest weakness?

– Honesty.

– That doesn’t sound like a weakness to me. 

– I don’t actually GAF what you think though.

they can be quite an effective way of eliminating two types of candidates

Three types. The third is the kind of candidates who find such questions tedious and formulaic and will guess (probably correctly) that your organisation is not for them. It’s important when interviewing to remember that an interview cuts both ways. I believe the OP might be in category 3.

Maybe Starmer is just a bit **** though?

AFAIK there’s no constituency where the tactical vote to get rid of the Tories; is to vote Green.

Waveney Valley?

I’m being shown a lot of YouTube ads for Charlie Dewhirst, who tells me he’s running for the Conservative Party in Driffield. I usually skip ads as soon as possible, but I’m making an exception for these in the hope it costs him more. I am in Cambridge, so couldn’t vote for him even if I was that kind of ****.

I just don’t see how honest conversations about the cost of living crisis can ignore Brexit.

Someone broke in and took a s*** in Rishi’s duck pond. It feels like it should be one from a familiar set of comedy threats. I suppose he was all out of sausages, and couldn’t find those Sambas to rechristen.

Fellatio. So disappointing.

For what it’s worth there’s a woman in Cambridge with a criminal record for attacking a cyclist with dog turds. This doesn’t seem entirely dissimilar.

I’d be more worried about old tyres than partially worn tyres.

Sonder Camino is a good shout I think. I got my other half a higher-specced one and it’s a lot of bike for the money. The same frame with a cheaper group set would be a great bike too.

Not sure what will happen to the old One Nation wing though.

The old ones will die off. The younger ones will be one pole of a big centrist Labour Party pavilion.

I think one of my Met road helmets (a fancier model, but pretty old now) has a silicone band across the brow that seems to send my sweat down the sides instead of into my eyes.

About the only thing we could do that would likely end worse than using a pluralitarian electoral system to limit the power of fascists while our media fawns on them, would be for our mainstream parties to also adopt their mindsets, speech and policies and welcome some of them onto front benches.

You really want the 18-19% of votes for Farage to count for something?! I’m sure Nigel will be very grateful for giving him the one thing he wants more than anything else. 🙄

Do you really think denying representation to 1in 5 people is going to end up with anything positive. If each of those aggrieved persuades just 1 friend to support fascism (for whatever reason) their leaders will sudden go from outsiders to a comfortable majority which they’ll merrily use to establish dictatorship just as they have done elsewhere whenever they have received a mandate to do so.

In bad organisations presenteeism is a common consequence of inaccurate performance metrics and the absence of a growth mindset. Pathological management often embraces dysfunction as it’s easier to quantify absence than actual business value, and allows training and improvement to be left to the individual initiative of employees with ambitions elsewhere. These organisations are where careers go to die; be very careful.

Lots of fans of shop assistants here. I generally go by reviews instead, but I know I want a variety of neutral shoes with a relatively wide forefoot and not too much drop. Gait analysis is woo.