adamcain.bsky.social
🇱🇧🔶 QPR FC (God help me)
7,456 posts
1,166 followers
2,636 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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I've always thought it a bad thing that when Powell died he got such respectful obituaries.
He was a bad guy (and frankly stupid on quite a number of issues, contrary to the claims of intellectual status.)
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Yeah, I thought so too. Bonus point for including Flat Roofed Pubs as a category.
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Hang on, Stalin and Kim Il-Sung???
How about Genghiz Khan?
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White racists with a massive sense of self entitlement, or Latinos who will work their arses off to make a better life.
Your choice, America.
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Councillors could be different - much easier for a local church-roof-fixing Tory to become a local etc Lib Dem; big ideological questions matter less at that level.
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As a Lib Dem, I certainly wouldn't.
I doubt there are many cases of Tory MPs who would genuinely fit in the LDs *and* could hold their seat at the next election.
Nor do I see big advantages to the LDs in gaining an MP or two now we've got 72, other than underlining extent of Tory crisis.
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The current careers of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng suggests that however badly a Tory leader screws up, they can earn a nice living shuffling around the right wing cess pit spouting bullshit.
Probably takes less actual work and involves less comeback than being leader.
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Does anyone really care about the World Test Championship?
I was really looking forward to it but it's been such a damp squib. I prefer the old ICC mace and Test rankings, on the whole I believe they used to reflect the real balance of cricketing power pretty well.
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TL:DR - local politics are local.
In this part of the country Labour have fallen back since 2024 but this ward has always had a right of centre majority, it's not somewhere Labour would expect to win (or tried to, much.)
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Instead, despite winning the GE seat in July 2024, in May 2025 they fell back vs the Green Party in this part of the County (which overall went Lib Dem - incidentally in the County Division which this ward falls in, the Lib Dems beat both Green Party and Labour just a month ago.)
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What's probably significant was that in 2024, on the verge of Labour winning the GE, in this ward and with a good candidate, they could get a 1-1 draw with Tories. That was exceptional for Labour in that ward and might have been the start of something.
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But they held it in 2nd place when everyone had two votes. It's misleading to suggest that it was straightforward (even with *no* volatility) for them to come first when everyone has just one vote - on that scenario, it's a Tory hold.
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"Party which previously held the ward".
It's a 2-councillor ward in which one Tory and one Labour were elected in 2024.
The Tory was first, and until 2024 they had always held both seats.
The Labour councillor in 2024 was a one-off strong local candidate.
This was a Tory ward, not Labour.
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Only relevant if you insist on "revolutionary" as a qualifier.
If you're not an American then there are shedloads of successful white majority socialists who just didn't slaughter masses to acheive it.
In countries where this happened, the latter is seen as a good thing.
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4. No "no go" areas for Green Party in Stroud District now.
Not sure how that will play out if/when the district becomes part of a new Unitary.
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Couple of characteristics of this ward:
1. It's been Tory forever, so loss to the Green Party is a great result for the latter
2. Previous strong Labour vote due to a strong and well-liked councillor, whose death caused the by-election.
3. Tory vote still standing up to some extent here.
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There's a 50s/60s sci fi short story where a guy gets to test out the first AI house (not that it's called that)
Anyhoo it's told in 1st person by the guy giving a statement to the cops after being arrested for killing his house (it infuriates him to the point he shoots up the central control unit)
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Please please please please!
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It takes a lot for soldiers to disobey a direct order, it's contrary to the whole military ethos that the army will have worked hard to ingrain (especially for a professional, non-conscript force.)
Best bet is for one of the brass to give a contradictory order.
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That's an excellent point!
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I’ve checked and apparently bladder problems are more likely than colonic when it comes to side effects of long term ketamine abuse.
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I don’t know if you’ve been to rural Suffolk, but a friend of mine from there reckons all conversations there go like that.
“Do you know the way to Ipswich?"
"Yer."
"Could you tell me?"
“Yer."
etc etc
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I’d call that a pretty big victory and well worth celebrating.
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Was just going to say this - I think it’s more to the point because The Bolter’s “bolt” is well in the past at the start of the book, but Linda is the main character, treated sympathetically, and takes an instant dislike to the baby.
(Also, adapted for TV three times, rather well each time.)
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Great film, though I remember my reaction at the end being “Bloody Hell, I’m glad I wasn’t born in China at any point in the 20th Century"
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(Obviously the mixing is pretty important here, but awareness of the heritage seems quite foregrounded too)
I found both Eleanor Parker's "Conquered" and (the Welsh!) R R Davies generally both interesting on identity in this period.
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The issue of whether people are subject to Welsh or English law comes up more than once.
And this is the era when Domesday often records if there are "Franci" owning property, when Giraldus Cambrensis, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis are all quite specific about their mixed ancestry.
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On your point about "blood", I know where you're coming from (one of my pet peeves is modern people wanting to slot medieval people into neat ethnic categories) but I don't think Peters is all that wrong for that place and time.
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Anyway, I hope you enjoy Cadfael, he's an engaging character and I think The Anarchy is an interesting period.
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Elis Peters is quite strong (rightly, I think) on the mixing of Welsh and English societies and individuals in those border counties at the time.
Oswestry is in Shropshire but there are still people there today who consider themselves Welsh.
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Joe Public can crave the removal without process of people he's been told are criminals, but also be repelled by armed goons on the streets pushing citizens around and handcuffing kids.
The criminal immigrants are largely imaginary but the goon squads are on TV.
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There could be places where Labour and Tory collapse plus rise of RefUK means the best hope of beating RefUK is to rally behind LD (or maybe Green) if either of them have a strong local ground game, but the evidence for that isn't going to be obvious.
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It's still sort of true, in that the top LD targets are all Tory, but the success of 2024 means there are less of them.
Anyway the big deal isn't going to be taking more off the Tories, it's going to be stopping RefUK, so it's a bit harder to call.
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It was something observed soon after the previous GE - that virtually all the LD 2nd places were in Tory seats (unlike with the Greens, where their strongest areas tend to be in Labour seats, so they are less likely to take seats off the Tories).
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An underestimated point is that all parties have limited resources so that Lab and LDs *had* to prioritize different seats - Labour had no volunteers or money in eg Surrey, LDs had none in eg Nottinghamshire.
To some extent that's not changing, though local elections are worth watching for trends.
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While this is true, it would require a modicum of scrutiny and serious questioning of Yusuf by the UK media, and apart from honourable exceptions such as yourself I have low expectations.
(All the more reason to be grateful for your efforts, of course.)
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Exactly.
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I’ve long given up on BBC political coverage, but that might genuinely be about me.
The thing here is the proposition that *general* BBC programming should be more right wing.
Expect less diverse casting, no more black faces in period dramas, Attenborough banned from mentioning climate change, etc
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I’m afraid it is neither insane nor, given the people involved, terribly surprising.
it is a fucking disgrace that ought to have the DG of the Beeb in front of the Culture Secretary explaining himself.
That would however require the latter to acquire some sort of brain/backbone combination.
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“Astonishing” isn’t the word that first comes to my mind.
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I have managed to "like" all three posts in this thread, because frankly I think they all make valid points.
Am now trying to work out where that leaves me.
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I quite like even a grotty view.
With my childhood bedroom, when you got up, in Winter (when the trees were leafless) you could see the backs of the upper stories of the High Street - all fire escapes, dirty brick and no facades - and for some reason it always fascinated me.
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A view from the bed is always great.
When I was a kid, the trees along the road filled every inch of the window from bed level.