RoverAndOut

Trying to work out if Badenough winning is a good thing or a bad thing when the alternative was little Hitler Robert Jenrick. It suggests the Tory membership are perhaps less inclined to want close partnership with Farage and Reform and perhaps don't see leaving the EHRC as a key concern, both of which were big parts of Jenrick's pitch. Doubtless there'll be plenty of Tories crowing about how in the past 40 years the Tories have elected 4 female leaders to Labour's 0, ignoring that 3 of them were Theresa May, Liz Clusterfuck and now the Kemical toilet.

Why? The Tories made it progressively worse over 14 years and won 4 General elections.

Seems to have gone down relatively well, despite the doom mongering of the past month plus. Lots of talk about growth being sluggish until 2032 although the measures should start to bear fruit by then - good! This country needs to stop with the short-termism. We need long-term investment all over the place - in terms of people, time AND money. If Labour start delivering some of that, then it's a start.

Other recent pictures notwithstanding, it's fair to say in this press photo of the gathering he died at, he does look very much like a heart attack waiting to happen...

On the one hand, a shocking death that was unexpected at this moment in time. On the other, as others have said, a ticking timebomb that was always likely to end this way. Always rather full of himself, but you can't really deny his successes and his impact on the independence debate in Scotland. To even get to the point where a referendum took place was staggering, to only lose by 4 points was truly seismic. Wonder what will become of Alba now, is there anybody to fill the void? If the SNP wasn't such a mess at the moment, one would think this would be the end of the split in the independence movement. That seems less likely now, but I'm not sure who has the personality to take up the mantle of the leavers who are disenchanted with the SNP.

With the greatest of respect, will you kindly shut the fuck up? Your perpetual soul-crushing pessimism is matched only by the utter garbage of your political understanding.

Badenoch seems to be the favourite of the members, but there are concerns she's the next Liz Truss given her poor media performances. One can only hope. What an absolute fucking shit show.

Watched the Brighton Bomb programme on BBC2 tonight. John Gummer was a leading contributor, as was Robin Butler. Conspicuous by his absence was Norman Tebbit, given his personal experiences of the incident. He was only included in archive footage. Did he refuse or was he unable to contribute? The programme was very interesting, by the way.

With an astonishing lack of self-awareness that is surprising to literally nobody at this stage, Liz Truss has claimed at the Conservative party conference that the party would have done better in the General Election if she had remained in charge rather than Rishi Sunak. This despite not even being able to hold on to her own seat. The fact they've let her in the building, let alone given her a platform, is ridiculous. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7481gy3kg9o

I nearly checked that before I posted and didn't. Maybe I'm misremembering...wasn't there a storyline of her having some tests in hospital in secret away from the rest of the gang? Maybe she was worried she was dying and it turned out to be benign? It's a while since I saw it - I remember Tom Wilkinson keeling over in the first one, assumed there must have been a death in the second one too.

Is there anybody in the world surprised that Rosie Duffield has quit the Labour Party? A ticking timebomb for at least 2 years. Doing so at a time of peak weakness. How ever much the left froth and the right shout and scream, Sir Keir has a majority of more than 160, he can largely do what he likes. I would appreciate it if he could clean his act up though, stop the amateur mistakes and crack on with solving some of the issues this country faces. Lots of words and plans but not a lot of action yet (I know that's not all his fault, summer then conference season - just imagine if Rishi had called the election in May like he was meant to!) and plenty of pain but not much in the way of rewards. All this nonsense is taking up the room because there's nothing else to talk about. Let's see some practical steps that sure up the finances, make people feel more confident and start to move the country in the right direction. No problem with him taking executive tickets at Arsenal, fully understand the security risks and he's had a season ticket for years. The clothes and stuff is a trickier issue, some of it is a storm in a teacup (Angela Rayner in NYC) but the clothes gifts are awkward when he's so personally wealthy. That said, the double standards from the Tories on this is incredible - do they remember their saviour Boris?

Superb actress, universally known for a variety of different roles. I suspect only Judi Dench's passing will carry more weight among current film actresses. It's been coming, but it doesn't make it any less sad when it happens. She died in Marigold Hotel 2, Downton 2, now she's gone for good. Rest in Peace, Dame Maggie.

This is the one I remember.

It is in Crem's world, where it had already been conceived and implemented to disastrous effect. Of course, in the real world, there was a lot of hot air, nothing was said or announced and now he's formally ruled it out. So now he's apparently u-turning on decisions he never even made. I mean...when are we going to ban him?

As you don't seem to have received an answer to this, I have discovered the way to make it work is to retype the url in the forum. If you copy and paste the url and then change the x.com to twitter.com, then it stays a link. So instead, I copy and paste it but then underneath type out exactly what it says (including all the numbers) but with twitter.com instead of x.com and then it loads as it used to (you can delete the pasted x.com link then too). Takes a minute or two but at least the tweets show up as they should. Fucking Elon Musk.

This is not unusual. The school I'm currently in has a "no phones" policy. They are switched off and in their bags. If it goes off, it is confiscated and collected from the office by a parent. The previous school I worked in allowed them more, but there were still confiscations if they were out in class. Another school I've worked in required students to hand their phones in during form at the start of the day and collect them from form at the end of the day. There are loads of rules around no phones in school and there is no requirement for them to have access to them during school time. The worst offenders are actually parents texting their children instead of phoning the school to pass on a message as they're supposed to. But what you're saying is (once again) a fucking nonsense. They are capable of having access to their phones for the journey to and from school without having it in school. It's not hard.

21/9/24 44 The Waterboys - The Whole of the Moon 41 Monty Python - Always Look on the Bright Side of Life 41 Roxette - It Must Have Been Love +4 40 Erasure — Blue Savannah 37 MC Hammer - U Can’t Touch This 32 EMF - Unbelievable  29 Guns N’ Roses - You Could Be Mine 24 Erasure - Chorus 23 C+C Music Factory ft. Freedom Williams - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) 21 Oceanic - Insanity  20 Madonna - Rescue Me  20 P.M. Dawn - Set Adrift on Memory Bliss  20 K-Klass - Rhythm Is a Mystery  20 East Side Beat - Ride Like The Wind 16 The Prodigy - Charly -6 14 Rod Stewart - Rhythm of My Heart  14 Altern 8 - Activ 8 (Come With Me) 12 Betty Boo - Where Are You Baby?

20th September  44 The Waterboys - The Whole of the Moon 43 Monty Python - Always Look on the Bright Side of Life 36 Erasure — Blue Savannah 32 Roxette - It Must Have Been Love +4 29 Guns N’ Roses - You Could Be Mine  28 EMF - Unbelievable  27 MC Hammer - U Can’t Touch This 24 C+C Music Factory ft. Freedom Williams - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) 24 Oceanic - Insanity   22 The Prodigy - Charly  20 Madonna - Rescue Me  20 Erasure - Chorus  20 P.M. Dawn - Set Adrift on Memory Bliss  20 K-Klass - Rhythm Is a Mystery  20 Altern 8 - Activ 8 (Come With Me)  20 East Side Beat - Ride Like The Wind 17 Betty Boo - Where Are You Baby? 16 Rod Stewart - Rhythm of My Heart  12 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Sailing on the Seven Seas  12 Beverly Craven - Promise Me  06 Candy Flip - Strawberry Fields Forever -6 Bit of a comedown after the 80s isn't it? Few decent ones, but a lot I'm happy to lose.

I bowed out of this as there was so little to choose between so many of the finalists I didn't feel in a position to decide. Of the final 3, if have thrown my weight behind the lovely Susanna Hoffs I think, so apologies for not helping those in The Bangles' corner, but Mad World is a very worthy winner. What a decade!

Sad news. Parker is iconic in both the old and new series. Rest in peace, David. Another link with the distant past fades away...

The people whining are Trump supporters because he lost. The polls saying he won are by organisations like Fox News. By most mainstream measures and analysis, Harris won the debate and the reason I know is that Trump has point blank refused to debate her again. Running scared. Amazing how doddery and rambling he looks when his opponent isn't 106. I'd say he looked nasty too, but he's always looked nasty. He's a busted flush. The further right he has gone, the more of the centre he has alienated. Now he's trying to moderate his views (like on abortion, steering clear of the Project 2025 nonsense) but people see through that, and even worse, he's alienating the nut jobs on the far right, who think he's betrayed them (interesting article on an anti-abortion absolutist on the BBC yesterday who is saying "don't vote for Trump" because he's still up for killing babies, just a few less than Harris.)

FFS he's imploding all by himself! Why shoot him?! Just let him lose at the ballot box. AGAIN.

Jacky Ickx looks great for his vintage, given the time he was racing too.

I'd forgotten I'd already had a hit in this round! 3 away from victory!

So where do the 16 Stride supporters go? If they're sensible enough to have avoided Jenrick and Badenoch so far, could they break more for Tugendhat than Cleverley? If he can see off Cleverley, he could be the voice of reason against the terrible twosome if MPs want to give the membership some choice. Looks almost certain it will end up being Jenrick who wins though. What an amazing race to the bottom the Tory Party is engaged in. It'll be Farage next.