What a twat.

when soldiers hide, fight and store weapons there yes

There’s a saying: two war crimes don’t make a right.

They are. Arrested doesn’t even imply “charged”; it’s a threatening tactic, but the pilice and the cps know nothing will get very far in court.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mnnje4wlro

“One of the officers was taken to hospital with injuries to her back and has since been discharged, while the other officer received medical treatment at the scene after being struck on the back of his legs.”

If you’re going to take direct action, then you do so and if the police turn up you get arrested and go through the system; that’s kind of the traditional “British way” of doing direct action - it’s still pretty polite. So the six arrested here sound like right arseholes, Samuel Corner not the least (see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20l0vzpn1mo). Having said that, I can’t read “assaulted people with sledgehammers” without conjuring up images of life-threatening and life-changing injuries. So I think that whilst he’s a knob, this sounds like a scuffle rather than the picture that immediately springs to mind. I guess there’ll be more detail in November.

That being said: that was a year ago. The recent prohibition immediately followed someone spray-painting some planes, and that’s the thing in the public mind. I think most people associate that sort of thing with chucking soup over the frame of a painting - there’s not been a direct line drawn in the media between the burglary last August and the recent activities. I don’t think there’s been a claim of further assaults by P.A. or that it’s their general MO. Certainly the thing that hit the press recently appeared to be “victimless” in that regard (we’d have heard about it otherwise).

So the public outrage is at the outlawing of an organisation that probably summons a mental image of the Campbell Soup brigade rather than a kneecapping; that and some well-publicised awkward policing is what is behind the protests. I don’t think that anyone protesting this would be anything but appalled at thuggery.

I’m not quite sure why you fetishise a bit-for-bit over semantic equivalence. Doesn’t it turn “it works on my machine” into "it works on my machine as long as it has this sha: … "?

Concessions, or sinecures?

Yeah, STV requires macro-wards that return several members. It does preserve candidate locality however.

You could always season with a pinch of AMS if you wanted to continue the whipping system (which frankly is as much of a mess as FPTP).

Gah, what a fucking irritating paywall.

In any case: worth listening to this man, he’s a thoroughly decent man - his efforts to reduce child poverty as chancellor were pretty effective.

There are ranked choice PR systems, like STV.

Of course if we did get PR here it’d be the worst version that preserves the power of whips to hand out sinecures.

No, it’s not.

Labour canvasser asked why I wasn’t voting that way at the last GE. I said, “I’m a socialist - honestly, would you*?” and he seemed within a heartbeat of agreeing. The local crowd seemed pretty depressed about chasing the Overton window back then [although obviously they will make sympathetic noises towards anyone they’re talking to, that’s part of the job].

[* This isn’t risking a Reform storm - FPTP and I’m in a solidly Labour ward, but they still bothered to knock on doors, which was eye-opening in itself]

deleted by creator

He rode to power on the back of not being from the party behind the least popular government in fucking ages (after 14 years of disaster). He made lots of promises to appeal to the essentially left-wing party that he’s the leader of. In any case, he wound up with a landslide parliamentary majority off the back of around a third of the actual vote.

Since then he’s put Wes Streeting in charge of the NHS and McSweeney in charge of strategy, and has chased the racist vote that’s stoked up by Nige “Brexit” Farage.

So he’s triangulating right to chase the votes of people who can’t stand him and will never vote for him, and in the space of a month has lost 34 approval points from actual Labour voters to wind up with a net -5 approval or something like that.

What’s odd is that I know people who’ve met him and worked with him personally, and they are all largely of the belief that he’s a man of deep principle. Which just goes to show his talent, because he’s hiding it incredibly well at the moment.

I dunno. The temporary flyover near Temple Meads came down after 40 years and that’s looking a lot nicer.

Like most towns that go on forever, there are some nice corners: PRSC for instance.

The answer to all your “okay I was wrong, but…” questions is “no”.

According to Baroness Falkner on R4 this morning, they can use their considerable lobbying power to advocate for “third spaces.” She actually said that about trans people, not intersex, but I presume her response would have been the same.

But in the meantime, going anywhere (or doing any sport) is probably off the cards. But thank goodness we have “clarity”, right?

Well, “senior colleagues” told him not resigning was the thing to do. So add cowardice to the list.

Maybe half that time.

Do the top 1% have more or less than 30% of the total wealth?

It’s around one in two million.