PaddockLad

The current Mrs PL liked it very much including the last episode. Am mostly with her but I think I know what you mean. Some are calling it "Black Mirror lite" but I've not seen that and we've cancelled Netflix in favour of prime. I obviously didn't get the email about that meeting

Mark Field MP in a spot of bother this morning.....

They don’t need a vote for no deal? 🤔

Went to see this lads stand up show last week https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/12/every-tory-mp-sent-this-is-going-to-hurt-as-reminder-of-jeremy-hunts-record he despises Hunt with a vigour that took even me, a middle aged miserabalist who is naturally given to grievance to say the least, aback somewhat. If you get the chance go and see AK he’s mint 👍

Gove apparently stabbed by Johnson supporters for stabbing him in 2016 when May came up on the rails. They’re all cunts anyway in case anyone wasn’t too sure

Compared with who?

Poor fuckin pipey Id imagine if it's a 40+ year old rig the record keeping & permit system will be all over the shop.

@Monkeys Fist hows it going on the rig? has it come off in your hand yet??...

https://www.seek.co.nz/jobs-in-trades-services/electricians

If/when Scotland leaves the UK we're going to have to go through the same shit all over again too....in my lifetime I'll have seen the end of the Soviet Union & the Eastern Block and the end of the UK. Fuckin hell

Right someone is going to have to explain that one... I thought the problem with the NI backstop was it ties the UK into the EU by the back door? But now theres a NI backstop and a separate UK one?

If he scrapes through today, will he get support from those who are knocked out? He said on Breakfast this morning that if all those who said they're going to vote for him do actually vote for him he'll get his 33 votes required. Might get interesting after that .

Alex Massie in today’s Sunday Times... So, I asked a prominent Scottish Tory, what’s your reaction to the results of the first round of voting in the Tory leadership contest? “Oh f****** hell,” came the response. Nor was this an outlier. “Buckle-up for Boris,” said another influential Tory, in the tones of a man who knows only too well this is a rollercoaster that has never earned a safety certificate and, in a more sensibly regulated world, would not be allowed to operate. This is Boris Johnson’s contest to lose and most of the leading figures in the Scottish party are convinced the Tory membership is about to make a hideous blunder. “He’s the SNP’s candidate of choice. That fact alone is a serious worry,” says one senior Tory MSP. And yes, it is true that the prospect of Prime Minister Johnson has SNP politicians breaking out all the heart emojis. Perhaps they are mistaken about this; perhaps Johnson can once again be a Heineken candidate, who refreshes the parts other candidates cannot reach, even in Scotland. But it is worth observing that neither the Scottish Tories nor the SNP think he is. If joy is confined in the Scottish party, there are plenty of English Tories who look on the prospect of Johnson as prime minister with dismay. “I think it leads to three elections in two years and the break-up of the United Kingdom,” says one thoughtful up-and-coming Tory MP who despairs of the turn that the party is taking. First things must come first, however. That means seeing off the mortal threat posed by Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party. Unionism, to the minor extent it’s ever a true concern for home counties Tories, is not a priority. The SNP is a danger to be confronted another day, if indeed it ever comes to that. However much Scottish Tories might despair of this, there is at least some logic here. Unfortunately, the essential message sent by cuddling the Brexit Party is a simple one: “Nigel Farage is right, please don’t vote for him.” The Tories are in this mess partly because, in the end, successive prime ministers have preferred to pander to the Tory right than muster the courage to tell them they’re wrong. The dirty secret about Johnson is that not even his supporters actually think he can do the job. Hell, he can’t even answer the simple question, how many children do you have? That explains all the talk about surrounding him with good people, making sure he is given some guidance and direction, trusting that he will, in time, grow into the job. If he were ready for it, there’d be no need to talk about him as though he were a gifted but hopelessly erratic and moody teenager. However, as Matt Hancock lamented, “making the argument for being the candidate for the future is not where the party is at the moment”. Better, by far, to indulge the party’s worst instincts and retreat into a comfort zone where all that’s required is some sub-Wodehousian language and heroic dollops of wishful thinking and nonsense about “believing in ourselves”. This is a Tory party shipwrecked by its own delusions. Lurking somewhere, you suspect, there’s an awareness this is all their fault. Almost no kind of planned, or agreed, Brexit is plausible or possible by the October 31 deadline. That means just three options are left: accept the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May; plead for yet another extension to the article 50 process; or crash out with no deal. Johnson has been unequivocal: we are leaving come hell or high-water, or if necessary both — on October 31. That leaves little wiggle room, even by his standards, for pretending he has not, in fact, said what everyone has heard him saying. The party must “deliver” Brexit but many Tory voters are no longer in the mood to accept the kind of Brexit promised in 2016. Or, indeed, any kind of Brexit that could be delivered in 2019. May’s parting gift is a poisoned apple for it turns out that, if you spend years suggesting “no deal is better than a bad deal”, people will start to believe you. Her deal may not be a great one but there was never any good deal available, or at least none that would leave the United Kingdom in a better economic position than remaining an EU member state. If not Johnson then who? If Rory Stewart could meet every Tory member — and as he walks around the country, he must be meeting plenty — he could do well. But few people in Westminster believe his candidacy will survive the next eviction from the race. Sajid Javid’s personal story is a good one but there’s not yet much evidence there is enough to him beyond that. Nor is it clear that this iteration of the Conservative Party considers Javid’s story an inspirational one. Dominic Raab? No thanks, with knobs on. Michael Gove could do the job — even his critics might allow that he’s been a reforming minister at every department he’s run — but that, in the present circumstances, must count against him. I don’t know if he’s the opponent Johnson most fears but the contrast between a candidate with a plausibly coherent set of ideas and one with none save personal advancement would risk revealing the truth about Johnson. Namely, that he’s not good enough to do the job. That leaves some Tories suspecting that Johnson will use some of his votes to help prop up the rival he’d most like to face in the run-off. If some of his foot soldiers must vote for Jeremy Hunt to keep him in second place then so be it. This too makes some sense, since there is no question to which Jeremy Hunt is a compelling or vote-winning answer. But this is not a leadership election about policy or even, really, about Brexit. It is about surviving the next election, which few people at Westminster think can be delayed for long. The risk of a Jeremy Corbyn government is so acute, even Tories who know Johnson is no good will vote for him because he might help them keep their seats. They will discover that’s a Faustian pact, and the thing about such arrangements is they always end badly.

It’s unknowable. Am taking silence as a positive tbh. The last two bids have been a lot more public...

Fans are saying they don’t rate him and he’s no better than McTominay. I think that’s bollocks tbh, I can’t remember McTominay doing a single noteworthy thing against anyone. When we beat Man City Pep singled the “central midfielders” out as the reason we won. Hasn’t he already said he wants to stay though? Means nowt if Ashley agrees a fee like...

I think am fairly sure now about one thing, no taker over = no Rafa next season.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=17025299031

I just think most are just suing for peace now. That’s why Johnson’s favourite. They can say “we delivered the referendum result” then blame him for the horror show to come.

Its been about that since it dawned on them that NI/the backstop stops Brexit. Mays deal delivered an end to FoM, I think she thought most English MPs would settle for that.

Does Johnson as PM & no deal keep the Tory party largely together? From where I’m sat it does, they don’t need a vote to get that through Parliament,Johnson will be the pariah for the next decade of shit and the vast majority of rest of them will just carry on as before.

That very thought crossed my mind today. I think she’ll be judged well in the future compared with what is about to come......

My brothers the same. He reckons he doesn't pay the licence?

George Osborne cut funding to the BBC when he was chancellor knowing full well that when the BBC had to stop free licences for the over 75s because of the this specific policy thre BBC would cop all the flack and the Tory's mates in the media would pile in and also annihilate the national broadcaster.