bickster

My point isn’t about Farage it’s about the Tories, there is no simple merge / allow Farage in, a big big big chunk of them hate him.

As if to illustrate my point earlier regarding the Tory and Reform potential merge / take over / alliance / group sex session.

Suspicious…Mind you might be right for once

Wouldn’t deny it, he certainly is. Just not to my taste and never was. Album going in the trade-in pile

My only experience of Exeter is a PWEI end of tour gig and party. Some basement club with a vaulted roof, that’s it, all I remember, definitely had a vaulted roof, definitely PWEI and yes we got mightily pissed.

So moving on… The Police - Outlandos d'Amour. You’ve heard the singles… there were no more songs to mine the charts with. Decent 1978 pressing in decent Nick, going to a dealer as I have no interest. currently on Dire Straights eponymous debut. Haven’t tracked down the actual version this is yet but it’s not the very first but is early. In good condition, another one that’s off to a dealer. I can see why people liked them but they were never my thing

So the next obvious question… WHY?

Is this the small business one?

Where is it meant to be? Not that I particularly wish to visit it

Unless the two parties intend to form a mutually beneficial electoral alliance in the future, I really don’t see the point in a coalition in opposition. Why would the party second in the seats table voluntarily remove the massive advantage they have over the parties below them? Thinking out loud as I type this. There is one interesting possibility that no one has discussed over this and it isn’t the Tory / Reform alliance and it is much more likely. If the LibDems finish third in the seats, it might make sense (on some levels) for them to enter an alliance with the SNP & Plaid if that takes them over the Tories in second. The LibDems are likely to only have a few seats in Wales and Scotland so maybe deals can be done there. That then may force the Tories into an alliance with Reform and possibly the DUP to get the numbers back. The possibilities are rather dependent on the numbers though Meanwhile, Labour laughs… a lot

Tory and LibDems tied in second on seats would be hilarious on the one hand an briefly fascinating to see what happens on the other as we discovered the other day, no one knows what would happen, the legislation that exists doesn’t appear that well thought out.

This story has been about for a good while. But the thing that tweet doesn’t tell you is that this came to light years ago when he actually did it to a Sun reporter and they published the story

As an electoral force they really might be. If they finish below 2nd in terms of seats they absolutely face an existential crisis. The LibDems will have much more exposure in the media, the LibDems will bring in much more in donations, a lot of which would previously have gone to the Tories. Most big donors donate for influence not ideology. The Tories will be in a position they’ve never been in before, they'll have to dismantle a big part of the machine, CCHQ won’t be able to afford the staff, we're already seeing them have a funding crisis and they are still in power, finishing third and that won’t get any better. And on top of that, more and more of their voters will be dead. They’ve had a demographic time bomb ticking away for years and it really is about to go off and earlier by about 5 years than I expected. Thatchers children aren’t voting for them in big numbers and never have.

Exactly why he will want them coming to him and not the other way around. I feel that an electoral alliance is inevitable but some kind of merger is way off the mark.

Yes and there appears to be an assumption by lots of commentators that he'll win because “he has a lot of local support” etc. Labour canvassers in the constituency are trying to paint a different picture. It’s definitely one of those impossible to call seats

Boz Scaggs - Silk Degrees. I remember seeing this blokes albums in record shops in the seventies, not a clue what he sounded like I've just wasted 20 minutes of my life listening to the first side of this, which I can only describe as third division Elton John. Somehow this bloke and this album was critically acclaimed (research tells me) and a commercial success. The band on it went on to form Toto. John Travolta was dancing to one of the songs on this when they filmed Saturday Night Fever because the Bee Gees weren’t involved at the time and the record company refused to allow the track Lowdown to be used as it was in some other film Anyway, my verdict, utter shite! A charity shop beckons, the cover isn’t in good enough condition for a dealer and the resale value is in pennies

I’m not sure this trick can be pulled off as easily as commentators and certain Tory MPs keep hinting at. It represents a huge risk for Reform. Here’s my reasoning as to the difficulty; Reform isn’t a political party in the true sense as we the electorate understand it. It has no internal democracy, they haven’t yet had any party conferences and members don’t get a say on any policy or choice of candidates. It’s effectively the Farage and his Ego Party. If the Tories were to merge with Reform As much as the Conservative Party isn’t THAT democratic compared to say the appearance of Labour (or the LibDems, Greens, Plaid, SNP….) it does have some forms of internal democracy and firstly I can’t see Farage wanting that and outside of that internally the party has factions both in and outside the parliamentary party wanting to increase Party democracy such as the Conservative Democratic Organisation which you could probably label as Johnsonite and includes people like Pritti Patel and was set up by Lord Cruddas. They aren't the only ones, Tim Montgomerie, who set up the ConservativeHome website is another, he also set up conservativedemocracy.org to oppose Michael Howard’s attempt to remove one member one vote in leadership elections (and was successful.) If they start talks with Farage, I can’t see it ever getting past the electoral alliance stage, a significant proportion of the Tory Party want more party democracy not less. Farage really is only liked by a certain section even on the right in the Tory Party, he’s disliked by just as many Most of the Conservative Associations around the country are effectively independent of the party as an entity, they are social clubs that are affiliated to and not owned by the Tory Party. The grassroots does not have follow the merging of the party and we've seen this before when the SDP and the Liberal Party moved from their original alliance to merge. There were factions within both parties that didn’t wish to merge, famously the Owenites in the SDP remained as the SDP and a faction of the Liberals remained as the Liberal Party. They both still exist and the Liberal Party still have local councillors. It is highly unlikely that he'll ever take over the party wholesale and also likely that the individual associations could tell him to eff off. A lot of the Reform “membership” don’t actually like the Tories either. They are specifically going to Reform because they don’t like them despite being in the right. The Tories still have a lot of councillors in the UK, mostly these are grassroots dyed in the wool Tories, nothing can make them join Reform, Reform on the other hand have the best part of …. shite all. Farage will prefer it if the Tories come to him, he'll face stiff opposition to him actually taking over the Party despite what he says. And them coming to him may be the only way it works, so all he'll get is some politicians. There may not be as many of them left, in part due to his success. His success in this election may even be a big contributory factor in why he fails in his stated goal.

Well yes, obviously but a 90% drop in donations from the first week of the previous election is absolutely massive. And this is on the back of this being the first election of the new much higher spending caps for the election, they'll have been hoping for more than the last election not 90% less. This is also the reason the Tory Ad machine came to a grinding halt you’d have to think

I’m no massive fan, I don’t dislike him and I have some of his early solo albums on an imaginary list of things I’d like to explore, so this might serve as a decent jumping off point.

Electoral Commission

Also related… we use google voice to text and they keep messing with the algo. If it fails to make a booking, that means people try again i.e. two lookups and two charges. Their model rewards them for failure. Yes it’s fractions of buttons but billions of fractions add up to a lot of money. It’s insane to me that they are rewarded for failure

Wrong thread, it really should piss everyone off

Tory donations in first week of election campaign 2019: £5.7 million 2024: £570,000 10% of previous campaign Thats a serious financial blackhole