msc

Yes, 11 years in a row now. The oldies/de facto B-team is Here's Who You Could Have Won, and there's also The Gallifrey Regeneration Game (back after a 6 year absence). This has got Edward de Souza, Janet Henfrey, cult horror star Candace Hilligoss and Bond ally Lon Satton on the DDP at least. Oh btw for @Ulitzer95 - the pick I was reminded of by him before Christmas and went to check an official website to see if they were still alive. Lord Morgan, historian and Michael Foot's biographer. He showed up in the Lords to speak about 2 years and was so frail he looked like he'd die on the spot. So thanks for reminding me he existed.

Pan Breed came close with, err, no unique picks. (The theme teams have 28 out of 40 though)

It's the same Tony Brown me and Joey have. Either we all are interested in 80 year old cricketers after Ray Illingworth, or you know...

I mean, we could wait for the official announcement. Especially as its clearly still in progress. Just a thought?

Well note I haven't made my own view on the licence fee or the BBC here at all, I'm just noting the logistics of doing such a thing. Which are quite separate. So choice of what the BBC do or don't do with their share of the fee is irrelevant to my point here. A better analogy would have been the police rather than the Krays imo. Did the Sarah Everard case horrify? Does Cressida Dicks continual "one rule for them, another for the plebs" policing irritate? Certainly, as with all right thinking people. Do we want to abolish the police? Of course not. The knock on effect on society would be unthinkable. As for alternatives... An alternative to the licence fee could be the creation of a new telecommunications infrastructure tax needed to raise the funds to keep basic TV/etc going. But that would be renaming the licence fee, basically. The "Netflix model" wouldn't work as it wouldn't pay for all those other bits and would be focused solely on one part of the BBC's output. The only private companies with the ability to step in and fund that infrastructure, on a British level, are pretty much BT (currently putting prices up because they overreached themselves with BT Sports) and Virgin (who are hilariously incompetent at infrastructure, though that might improve if we fined them every time their workers cut the water supply digging in the streets), so that's currently a non-starter. And even the private companies involved currently still get handsome top ups from the government. Because as you'll note, they haven't even started to ask these questions. Just assumed it'll work. A lot of that in government decisions this century. British infrastructure (of which this is only a small part) has been left to grow dusty since before I was even born, kicked down the road by successive governments. It's their job to deal with it (and infrastructure support is basically a boon on the economy, it raises more in the long term) but instead, it appears like the role of government is to make members of the government wealthier, strangely enough.

It's the sort of political statements that look good to a certain type of voter (this is not a reference to you!) but which would be suicidal to any government which actually went through with them. (For example, did you know that the licence fee also keeps the TV broadcasting infrastructure across the UK going, that even with private companies running them, they still require BBC/government top ups from the licence fee, and that without those, basic signal across most of the UK would fall apart thanks to decades of government neglect? Which is just as well as the licence fee also keeps Freeview on the air, which is the only TV access about 1/3rd of the UK get at all, most of whom are very old and Tory voting.) Given the move from the licence fee needs a lot of careful planning so that large chunks of British infrastructure doesn't just die overnight, this government's achievements so far suggest that sort of thinking and planning is utterly beyond them. Given they can't even sort out one single train line without existential crisis.

Bible John never dies, only others.

The Prime minister is a fucking twat. Big dog ffs. That's probably his chat up line and all. "Hello its Big Dog Boris"

He fucking named it himself!

msc *puts feet on table and reads paper sympathetically*

Now, don't knock Yahoo, it's just given me a hot tip that Wendy Richard and Peter Falk are apparently unwell. Don't tell anyone else...

Aye, in 2016, when it happened? iirc you even posted about it at the time!

No wonder they can't remember specific parties, they never sobered up in between! 16th December looking lonely there. Probably a work event there.

I hear he doesn't want an expensive funeral. It'll be cheap as chips. ...I've already got my coat. (Hmm, 81 this year. Older than I thought by a fair bit.)

I mean, even Churchill 45, Thatcher 82 and Blair 97 (some popular PMs at their arguably most popular moment) wouldn't have won a popularity contest pitted against the Queen. Boris Johnson doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't care if you are the Queen or if you are a newborn baby in a council estate. He only cares about Boris Johnson.

Or, he could be reading this right now! @themaninblack, nice avatar change!

Reptile was absolutely convinced early days of the Cmme that James case was "6 months behind Vicky Phelan". Didn't pick her in the end though she was one of the last decisions on the deadline day, and likely to be the biggest regret if she does go.

Randomly mentioning these old guys is a bloody curse - someone go check Alvin Rakoff's health quick!

iirc not a single party was over 30% of the vote, so the Tory vote crashed without anyone able to take mass advantage of it.

The May local elections may not be quite the bloodbath expected. It's seats last contested in 2018 when Jeremy Corbyn's Labour were actually doing OK (by their standards) and made several gains, and when, far more understandably, Vince Cable's Lib Dems were doing well also. As a result, only about 30% of the seats up for grabs in May are held by the Tories, and likely most of them safe or uncontested. Next year (2023) is the killer as, thanks to the conditions of 2019, there's thousands of Tory seats with sod all majority up for grabs. But then if they haven't sorted themselves out in a year...

I dropped Jana Bennett this year. Not intentionally, it happened accidentally and I only noticed yesterday. D'oh!

Confirmed after surgery to have Stage 3 ovarian cancer.

I think he'll linger onwards too but his card is marked for good - doubtful any of us are going to turn around in 6 months and change our minds on Boris Johnson now. And the May critics jumped the gun too early also, remember the embarrassing farce a few weeks before they finally got that VoC that she won anyway? They've learnt nothing.

Hmm. The message isn't exactly cheery, the lack of a positive update from his last op rings alarms, as does the fact they've used an old photo of him here and in the previous tweets, when he was keen to post current ones before this. Your bi-quarterly Richard Franklin "update".

Well I mean, stripping away all of their controversies and greatness's here for a moment, post-war Churchill, Attlee, Eden, MacMillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan, Major all go without saying governed with the aim of achieving the best for Britain. Theresa May and Gordon Brown stressed so much over decisions they became ill, so even if you disagree with their choices, they clearly were trying to be public servants. Thatcher and Blair, marmite as they are, were completely binary in their view that they knew what was best for Britain and again, that's in the spirit of principles, ideals and trying to serve the country in the way they imagine best. Boris Johnson's entire life, including his Premiership, has been about enriching the life of luxury and bank account of Boris Johnson. He is the least capable person to hold the role, probably since the Viscount Goderich nearly 200 years ago! And we had the good sense to get rid of that guy in about 3 or 4 months.