Sounds like voter intimidation to me. :p

J/K, good on her, and good on you. Shame that the Count didn't get his vote, especially since, like you, I hope he beats Lawrence Fox who is both stupid and vile.

Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson? If not why not? (Oh well, Bernard Manning is dead right now, so I suppose that could be a problem). But seriously... "right-wing comedy"? You ring that dinner bell and just see what kind of clientele you end up with slobbering at your door.

Never heard of him. I had to look this one up. Oh Geez! I at least found a new use for Incognito mode (I didn't want Google offering up more of that garbage on You Tube for me).

Again, the people who love to whine about snowflakes are really the ones who whine the longest and the shrillest.

It's definitely possible for other people to die from his smugness.

At this rate Geoff Norcott is going to be the busiest man in the entertainment industry.

He might need to redecorate: https://www.nature.com/articles/299626a0

London Mayor election: Laurence Fox set to lose £10,000 deposit after failing to secure enough votes

Laurence Fox is among 16 mayoral candidates set to lose their £10,000 deposit.

Candidates have to achieve five per cent of first-preference votes to have the money returned.

Mr Fox, the actor and “anti-woke” campaigner, was only polling two per cent, despite a well-funded bid for City Hall.

In March, Mr Fox told the Standard that his campaign was being funded solely by the millionaire financier Jeremy Hosking, a former Tory donor who has also funded the Brexit party.

Other candidates set to lose their deposit include UKIP’s Peter Gammons, Piers Corbyn, YouTube prankster Niko Omilana and Count Binface.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/l...t-b933973.html

It's a pity about the Count, he has some of the most sensible policies in modern local government,

I’m hearing the Count has taken full responsibility for his poor showing, and has sacked his bin.

Peter Gammons! I mentioned that before but isn't that a hilarious bit of nominative determinism. After all, he was running as candidate for ... UKIP?!?

Jesus, they really are behind the times. Do they not know that the UK has left the EU?

As for Lawrence Fox, look at this hilarious tweet. I can't believe this kind of cheeky banter didn't get him voted Mayor:

Bwahahaha. Isn't he funny, everyone.

Election results 2021: PM calls devolution summit after SNP victory

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has invited the leaders of the devolved nations to a summit on how "Team UK" can recover from the pandemic.

It follows the SNP's fourth Scottish Parliament election win in a row and Labour's win in the Welsh Parliament.

The SNP's Nicola Sturgeon said there was "no democratic justification" for blocking a Scottish independence vote.

But Mr Johnson said talk of "ripping our country apart" would be "irresponsible and reckless".

Writing in Saturday's Daily Telegraph earlier, Mr Johnson said "talking about ripping our country apart" with an independence referendum at a time when people wanted to recover from the coronavirus crisis would be "irresponsible and reckless".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57043758

BOJo might be the last PM of the United Kingdom......

I very much doubt it. What would the timetable for independence look like? First the legal wrangling over passing a bill for a referendum, setting the date, having the vote, and even in the event of Scotland leaving there will be a fairly long procedure for that.

David Cameron wasn't the last PM of a UK in the EU. There were two more after the UK voted leave.

Besides, that would take into account the speediest possible timeline and Johnson's obviously going to make sure that that won't happen.

The real problems for Scotland might start after indpendence. long, Sad history of the party that headed the indepdence movement thinking that gave them the right to eternally be the Party in Power. The COngress Party in India is a good example.

What becomes of the SNP after independence is probably a trivial matter for those who want independence.

Also all the wrangling about who is going to pay for renovating the wall.

And the bits of England we get with it, assuming the poor geography of Daily Mail readers is reflected at Westminster.

He didn't say which wall. :) I vote for the Antonine.

In dirty glasses since they don't seem to believe in transmissible illnesses. God knows what they will put in the condom machines though one has to assume that the chances of anyone attending such a place having sexual intercourse to be fairly limited.

His entire schtick seems to be that he can't get work because he's right-wing. Rather than say because his idea of funny is to shout 'LEFT WING PEOPLE ARE STUPID SNOWFLAKES' repeatedly at an empty room.

The goal for Indyref2 is 2023. I believe (and honestly nobody seems to really know least of all Nicola Sturgeon) the plan would be to just go ahead and do it and let the Tories try to block it in the courts.

The narrative is as expected that the SNP failed to get a majority (by 1 in a system designed NEVER to give anyone a majority) and therefore have no mandate for a referendum. The press will go along with this and the Unionists will try to push it but I think anyone with two braincells will see through that. Not least of all because the Greens also support independence and would support a referendum bill.

It basically comes down to the Tories believing that they have the right to stop Scotland and the Scottish people having the right to self-determination and apparently large swathes of the UK agreeing with them.

I'm not sure if BoJo the grifter will really stick around for a second term so it's entirely likely the whole shebang will become someone else's problem soon enough.

I'm not even sure the SNP would continue to exist post-independence (at least not in the same form) there do seem to be some fairly serious policy differences amongst the group held together by the overarching goal of independence.

I think you would see a shakeup in the parties following independence and it would probably be the best thing to ever happen to Labour. Part of the issue seems to be that the opposition parties are either so moribund (or in the case of the Tories having to cater to the nutjob element) that there really isn't much political talent and brain matter outside the SNP (and you could say the same about some in the SNP too!)

As long as any line is drawn North of Hartlepool I'm OK with it really

As a Scot I vote for Stonehenge.

Aaah yes, so Northumberland can be ignored from Holyrood instead of being ignored from Westminster...

Some days I think it might be a good idea for us, as a county, to ask Denmark if we can join them.

I'd rather be ignored by a left of centre national government that Bojo's mob to be honest.

The problem with that is that all the OTHER people who caused the problems would come with you. The clever move would be to move to Denmark, but unfortunately the idiots who would never want to do such a thing took that right away from us.

The UK needs to be laser-focused on recovery from the pandemic and not Scottish independence discussions, Michael Gove says

Former Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell, has been talking to Radio 4's The World This Weekend.

He says people want to see the governments within the UK working together and they don't want conflict.

Asked if the election results mean Scotland does not want to be governed by Boris Johnson, he says he does not accept that premise because people voted to stay in the union in a referendum in 2014.

He says it is not within the gift of the Scottish government to try to hold another independence referendum.

The SNP's Jeane Freeman, who serves as the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Health, has been talking to Radio 4.

She denies her party's failure to get a majority in the elections to the Scottish Parliament takes the shine off its victory.

Freeman says the electoral system is different in Scotland, so "the idea you can get a majority in a system designed not to do that is a big ask".

She says the SNP has a "moral authority based on those results" for the Scottish Parliament to decide if and when it wants to hold an independence referendum.

I'm not sure exactly what that might consist of. Presumably nothing derived from the indigenous cuisines, herbs, and spices of the various British controlled territories over the past few centuries.

What does that leave? Overcooked roasts and veggies? Eel pies? Kippered herring?

Whatever it is it is bound to be boring.

Which, I suppose, is fitting. Somehow.

I'm not sure if tea can actually be considered British, since it was brought to Europe by Dutch traders and had never been seen in England before the middle of the 17th century.

Link

That's not a wall, that's a trench!

Chicken tikka masala.

There has been a video on twitter of two Hartlepool voters explaining why they voted Conservative. They blamed Labour for the closure of a local police station and the loss of local hospital services to another larger hospital outside the constituency.

I get their unhappiness at the apparent failure of the local MP to save local services, but it is rather odd they have switched to voting for the party that closed those services.

It may help Labour to try and educate more people about how politics works.

*Found the video

https://twitter.com/resophonick/stat...88617449005058

potato? New World surely?

It used to be a wall.

Talk Radio had one giving one of his reasons for voting Tory as under a Labor govt they only had one Food Bank and now they have Seven.

Oh FFS!

I used to work into the Teesside acute hospitals in my job before I moved up here and that thing about moving services from Hartlepool General to James Cook in Middlesbrough has been going on since around the turn of the century.

HGH is a ******* pig's ear of a site and always has been. Ditto North Tees in Stockton and Middlesbrough General. James Cook is the only one on a site which allows for service expansion and modernisation without demolishing the existing buildings. Services at all sites expanded and improved under the last Labour governents and have been hacked since 2010: which is, of course, all Labour's fault, as they clearly control the DoH and the commissioners (the knowledge that most folk have about commissioning of health services is pretty much non-existent).

If we’re going that far back then presumably Italian cookery is not allowed tomato.

And the hospitals are so full! Not like under Labour!

Despair is fine at this point.

Middlesbrough General has completely disappeared, the site was completely redeveloped as new housing years ago.
The ENT hospital has gone from Middlesbrough too. It is now an Aldi. It's main building frontage was supposed to be retained in any redevelopment but Aldi persuaded the council it should be completely flattened so their standard building could be put up. The main portico was rebuilt as a pedestrian entrance to the car park.

West Lane Mental Health Hospital was closed in 2019 when it was rated as inadequate but has just re-opened as the Acklam Road Hospital, for some reason has been taken over by the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Health trust.

Yeah, I was based at West Lane for a time (community base for some specialist CAMHS) until I left in 2003.

As to why (my old employer) CumbriaNTW took over some of those services...Well, there has been a tendency in North East MH services for Newcastle ('cos Newcastle is the core of that trust) to dominate services since I can't remember when and I trained in Newcastle in the '80s - it's the big medical school and has dominated nurse, psychology and OT training in the region for some time.

But this must all be Labour's fault...