WaffenThinMint

Votes in referendums are seldom a good indication of how people will vote in parliamentary elections, any more than votes in European elections/council elections are good indicators of how people will vote in parliamentary elections. Witness the way Scotland rejected independence, yet only three seats failed to go SNP (in some cases with massive majorities) at the GE a few months later - one of those only failing to go SNP because Hearts fans voted for the Federation of Hearts member candidate (which of course will not be replicated come the next GE). No matter how the Kippers spin it, Stoke Central was their best chance of winning a seat in a routine by-election - if they can't win there, highly unlikely they can win anywhere. That said, there were some extraordinary circumstances - for one the entire left wing press (or would like to think itself as left wing) in the UK were running articles of increasing hysteria over the prospect of Nuttall winning, the right wing press meanwhile were split. Secondly, the complete shitgibbon UKIP had as a candidate, whom they must now accept is a complete liability wherever they stand him, no matter how much Farage & Banks think he's the dog's bollocks. Thirdly, Labour's habit of throwing every resource (& pulling every dirty trick) they have into seats where there's the threat of some other Opposition party winning the seat (see SNP 1945 to infinity). Fourthly, HQ Tories coming in at the last (& against the local branch wishes who saw UKIP taking the seat as a long term investment when that party inevitably collapses post-Brexit) to split the anti-Snell vote & keep Corbyn in his job ensuring Tinfoil Theresa walks the next GE. It's highly unlikely we will see another double set of by-elections this term, so any future losses by Labour aren't as likely to result in triggering discontent into action. Come a general election, where Labour can't be all places at once & the party is shedding real activists daily (as opposed to buckled leftie infiltrators who piss off the moment any real dull plodding constituency work is to be done), if the Kippers put Tariq Mahmood up (& from his showing where he was the one that kept them in the race right up until the close of poll) Snell may find himself back on the dole - that of course depends on UKIP lasting that long...

They can. Still it wasn't all bad. Got to get that free money where you can.

Is it no longer the case that you still get support allowance while you appeal the judgement? Been a long time since I was in that position, but the situation then was you were declared fit for work by some outside assessor, you appealed the judgement, & it would be a year if you were lucky before your appeal was assessed (which as I was merely convalescing was plenty of time to get back on my feet & into work). Obviously in this case it's merely playing for time, but at least it would mean much needed money coming in. Whatever the case, kick up as much shit as possible - the press, the works. The only lingo the DWP understands is bad publicity when they're being c***s.

FTFY

As long as Labour are so utterly shite, UKIP & anyone else able to put a team together for an election will be able to cultivate those who will vote anything but Tory. The Greens won a council by election yesterday by promising to fill the local river with beavers! (cue inevitable beaver jokes in 3 2 1.....)

Considering their chairman's a fat racist b*****d & their candidate Nick Delves is pro-fox hunting, I wouldn't paint this as any victory over the far right, especially with them losing a lot of what little members they have left over their cosying up to UKIP. Also the far more racist Barbera Fielding - who was arrested during the campaign for her leaflets - was 10 votes clear of the closet racists. For those of you interested in what this old bat believes in - & she makes the late unlamented Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood look like a buckled leftie - fill yer boots with the platform of her Abolish Magna Carta Reinstate Monarchy party: https://abolishmcrm.com/ She also has a reputation as a vexatious litigant, having amongst other matters taken Signal Radio to court for invasion of privacy, harassment, altering her heartbeat, coercion by psychological broadcasting & the loss of her entire life. https://www.infotextmanuscripts.org/vexatiouslitigant/vex_lit_queens_bench_morris.html

^^^^ This. Short memories: wasn't that long we humped Rangers & Cathro was being hailed as the new Sergio. The cold hard fact is we've never been the same since Callum Paterson was lost to long term injury, who not only was commanding at the back but a vital component midfield & upfront. Every match he seemed to be just about everywhere at once & his loss has proven a far bigger body blow than was appreciated at the time. That & Flap Jack being a nightmare between the sticks is where much of the problem lies.

Hurry up & die please, you sycophant. Just saying.

More than likely trying to ensure Labour keeps the seat, regardless of what the local Tory branch wants, & it's not hard to see why. It's pretty clear that Tony Blair has pretentions on setting up a splinter party with as much of the old Labour Party as he can coax across, but that will only be delivered if Labour loses both seats this week which will make Corbyn's position untenable to the vast majority of the MPs (knowing their seats could all be next come the next GE) and virtually all the party's remaining financial backers who see the Corbynistas as Student Grant writ large. On the face of it such an idea would appear to be long term suicide, were it not for the fact there's a badly wounded Liberal Democrats desperate to get back into the big time who would certainly consider yet another alliance of convenience with a "social democratic" Labourite splinter, same as all those decades ago; & who would happily campaign for "new Alliance" candidates in return for the credibility of being part of a pseudo party with seats in the hundreds instead of less than 10. This of course would be disastrous for Tinfoil Teresa, unless the Argies decide to go for the Falklands again, so by stopping any more Tories loaning their votes to the Kippers, she stops Labour from losing a battle, but ultimately dooming them to losing the electoral wars to come.

Newspaper propagated urban myth: Clockwork Orange was never banned - Kubrick had it withdrawn due to the level of death threats levelled against his family. The cinema chains were furious.

MUCH better, Killiepiyo with the game vid this time out, far less pretentious & kept businesslike with just enough dash of flash to make it better. The scheme goblins in Ibiza style soundtrack won't be to everyone's taste, but you've used it sparingly enough to break up the start and end neatly. Keep this up & that'll be something else to add to the list of things Talbot do better than everyone else in the non-leagues!

Unless it came wrapped up in chip paper or McDonald's wrapping the rabbit was pretty safe. You have to go way out into the countryside to find foxes that still bother to hunt, today's ones are useless scavenging c***s.

Produced by the same people behind Channel 4's Who Dares Wins, & it showed - completely bonkers from start to finish, but Pzycho the Magnificent was the best part.

There was a hysterical Daily Mail last year about red kites with the usual overreaction from thick urban proles moving out into the sticks & unable to handle a bit of mother nature. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3631633/Buckinghamshire-village-terrorised-dive-bombing-birds-prey.html The people that moved next door to us from the centre of Weegie wanted the council to bring the pest exterminators around because hedgehogs & squirrels kept wandering through their garden & they were convinced they'd bite their children & give them diseases. They were duly told to man the f**k up. The freak out the next year when we got some foxes & ONE wild rabbit (where it came from & where it was burrowed no one ever found out) was even worse.

Never knew the Kippers debated Junior football matters.

No real surprise at a voter backlash - Colin Guyton held the County council & district council seats, & decided he was bored with politics after the Brexit result, was persuaded to stay on both as a pretend independent to save the council money on two by-elections, leaving the Tories & Labour in their respective wards to cover the workload shortfall; but due to the non-attendance rules he had to move his resignation in November. Mark Hawthorne - the Conservative leader of Gloucestershire County Council - & Di Martin, the leader of the Labour group on Forest of Dean District Council, both seemed to regard this as good politics. Under such circumstances, no wonder the locals delivered a big GYTF to the Con/Lab/Kippers, & had no time for the LibDems opportunistically crawling out of the woodwork for a seat they never bothered with last time out. Well done to the Greens, especially their local chair (& now councillor) Sid Phelps, the only one it appears who fought the campaign on local issues & duly won.

Copeland is Tories easily, every poll and bookie is saying they've got it in the bag. As for Stoke, Mahmood is a bigger factor on the ground than Nuttall - it is neck & neck.

There's been wallabies in Derbyshire since WW2, their population fluctuating a fair bit. There are also about 100 bouncing around the Isle of Man, far more than could have escaped from the local wildlife park over the decades as often claimed, suggesting some nutter or the Tynwald are doing it on purpose on the quiet as a way of keeping certain species of plant in check. The interesting part is they've been found in just about every habitat on the island & shown a remarkable ability to adapt to all, contrary to the previous wisdom of their dependency on particular plant species.

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere, but just to compound St Mirren's woes, they've now been branded as minimum wage cheats: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-38974448 Fifteen Scottish firms have been "named and shamed" by the UK government as national minimum and living wage offenders. The employers on the largest list ever compiled by the Department of Business must now give 124 members of staff a total of £29,033 in back pay. They include St Mirren Football Club, as well as firms in the care sector and fast food industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38965377 Disney has cut ties with the world's highest paid YouTube star PewDiePie over allegations of anti-Semitism. The decision came after several videos he released over the past few months were found to contain Nazi references or anti-Semitic imagery. If Uncle Walt had still been in charge he'd have been offered a seat on the board!

Think you may want to see this: https://www.buzzfeed.com/sirajdatoo/ukip-fakey-fakey-accounts?utm_term=.iaxJJBbzd#.ajR11dreA The DavidJo52951945 appeared on Twitter with less than a remarkable coincidence at the point in time concerns began being raised in the Labour Party they were losing more votes to UKIP than the Tories were back in 2013. Considering Labour's history of gutter scraping dirty tricks (ask any SNP activist from the 1970s & 80s about the "Scottish Nazi Party" slurs on the doorsteps), wouldn't put this one past them considering how much they've got the wind up of perhaps losing the seat mainly thanks to the only star turn of the whole dull by-election - Tariq Mahmood (who should have been UKIP's candidate had they any sense, yes yes silly question!) - looking like he's swinging the Muslim vote over (ironically on local Muslim concerns over the BNP's appearence on the hustings where they were hoping to ruin it for the Kippers by splitting their vote!) That top leaflet by the way was the handiwork of Colin Jordan "National Socialist Movement", the chief race hate rabble rouser back in the 1960s whose protegy John Tyndall proved ten times worse, although there's some dispute as to where it was used, Lambeth and Croydon both being cited (some have cited Smethwick, but newspapers of the period show both Jordan & Tyndall's separate nazi mobs only began running leaflets with "cleaned up" versions of the infamous Smethwick slogan after Gordon-Walker's win, not before)