JNLister

11 minutes ago, BigJag said:

The Lord's have voted against the Rwanda bill. There's another round of voting to come. 

It's not actually the bill. They've voted to delay ratifying the treaty with Rwanda. But it doesn't have any affect unless the Commons votes the same way.

Like arguing with a bot.

https://x.com/thhamilton/status/1747741201334153567?t=BR-YRMufUVImIHLsLgsvfw&s=09

The first episode of RollerGames, the Roller Derby revival of 1988. I always assumed the "Roller Derby is like pro wrestling" stuff was overblown but, no. It's just pro wrestling with different moves.

Ah balls, I forgot to check 2019 when a couple of constituencies had Labour win by-elections and then lose the seats in the December general.

I'd say the forecasts of Mogg losing are plausible but with three big asterisks:

* Some of them are based on his current boundaries. His newly formed seat is losing areas where Labour/Lib Dem did best at the last council elections and gaining areas where the Conservatives did best. It's close in all cases, so it's a marginal effect, but in theory he's got a little more favourable ground to fight on.

* The forecasts are based on the current polls. It's likely but not certain that the national Labour lead over the Tories will be narrower at a real election.

* There's still potential for confusion over who anti-Mogg voters would support. At first glance, the Lib Dems came second last time and would be the obvious tactical vote. In reality, Labour have a much better chance of winning. That's probably because the Lib Dems already do a good job of getting the votes of most people who would ever consider them (it's a rural area.) Meanwhile floating voters are more likely to be the types who'd be choosing Labour or Conservatives based on who seems least incompetent/extreme.

Electoral Calculus (on current national polling) has him losing to Labour by 35%-30%, so there's certainly room for it to be a close run thing. For context, all things being equal, his is the type of seat you'd expect Labour to be just about winning if the Tories were on around 200 seats, similar to 2005 (which seems to me a plausible comparison election that's being overlooked in the whole "will it be a 1997 landslide, a hung parliament or a 1992 Tory upset" debate.

(Edit for some extra context: Rees-Mogg won it in 2010 when it was technically a new seat, though it was virtually identical to what was previously Wansdyke. He beat the former Wansdyke MP, a Labour guy who'd taken it from the Tories in 97 and won again 01 and 05. That man, Dan Norris, went on to be the current West of England mayor and is one of the potential candidates to be the Labour challenger to Rees-Mogg this time, in what can only be called a long-time grudge rematch.)

Going to a Kapow show next week (very family friendly) and I really hope this guy is on it:

On 1/11/2024 at 1:12 PM, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

No chicanery this time Johnny L. Looks like 15th of February for both Wellingborough and Kingswood. 

The seat is being split at the general at which point the Labour candidate for the Kingwsood byelection (and likely winner) is standing in a different seat (Bristol Northeast) to the one I'll be moved to (Northeast Somerset and Hanham). Even if the Tories win Kingswood, the winner won't be standing in the general at my new seat as the candidate there will be a certain Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Awaiting confirmation from bigger nerds, but the upshot is it looks like I may be among the first group of voters to have three different MPs in a calendar year since 1974.

An interesting/dull thing I've done recently is walk every street in my council ward (not all at once.) It's fairly easy to find which streets (see below), but there are rules, namely you don't have to literally walk every inch of pavement, but you do have to walk past a street sign (unless there isn't one), and you do have to walk far enough to see every house in the street. I've done my own ward and an adjacent one and am starting on a third. I did have a vague idea to do every street in my parliamentary constituency before it gets abolished at the next election, but that's a lot of streets and a big chunk of countryside/farms.

To find your ward's streets:

Go to https://maps.walkingclub.org.uk/admin/county-list.html

Find your country and then click on your council (could be a county area, could be a town/city).

Click on "Wards Map"

Find your ward on the map (if you don't already know it), then click on the name in the list just above the map.

You'll then get an OS map with the ward boundaries, though you can also switch to show them on Google Maps, Bing Maps or Open Streets.

2 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Don't they have 3 months before they have to have a by-election, with 6 months as the absolute maximum if its the end of a parliament. The only way around a by-election is a GE inside 6 months. 

Turns out that's just convention. The speaker has to call the byelection and set a date (aka "moving a writ") following a motion passed by the House of Commons. The convention is that the chief whip of the party of the former MP tables the motion, within three months unless there's good reason (it's the summer holidays/nobody is sure if Gerry Adams is allowed to quit) or it's nearly the end of the parliament and an automatic general election is pending. 

Occasionally if the relevant party is dragging its feet, a different party will move the writ. In theory the House of Commons could vote to reject the writ, which then can't be brought back in that Parliamentary session. I don't think that's  happened since the war, and you can imagine the response if the government voted against having a byelection.

28 minutes ago, Gus Mears said:

Geoff is a great man. The original videos where they go to every UK station on a single trip is wonderful pre-sleep viewing (RIP Felix the cat).

The Dull Man YouTube series I would record if I ever won the Lottery or something would be staying at every Premier Inn round the UK - reviewing each room and doing some local tourist stuff, even if it's somewhere dismal. No one steal this licence to print money now I have posted it.

 

https://www.youtube.com/@WalkWithMeTim has a bit of a headstart. He's unfortunately got the budget now to do fancy foreign hotels, but for a while it was just him going to British budget hotels, plus a period where he'd go to the worst rated Tripadvisor hotel in a city.

22 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Some of those are so dull they haven't embedded. They must be TOO dull.

Would it be too dull to point out most of those links are to channels, which don't embed, rather than to specific videos?

My Conservative MP Chris Skidmore has resigned the whip and is stepping down as an MP. Not a major surprise as he's very pro-environment/Net Zero and previously said he wouldn't vote for the King's Speech because it contains measures for more gas and oil.

In theory it's a by-election, though given the seat is disappearing completely at the next general election (and given the Tories aren't ruling out that being in just a few months), it's possible they'll try to string it out.

A bit meta, but I spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos of theoretically boring subjects. A few regular channels:

https://www.youtube.com/@AutoShenanigans is mainly a bloke taking a different motorway every week and talking through the different junctions and features. As a non-driver I don't really know why I find a guy droning on about sliproad configurations so fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheWideWorldofStadiums is full on stadium/arena nerdery (plus a dry sense of humour.) Some are genuinely too boring (like indentikit baseball/college football stadiums), but give me a run down of Croatian ice hockey arenas and I'm well in. Probably the best was where he did the Scottish Premier League and then kept promising to do the next league down if he got enough feedback, eventually getting to the Highland League.

https://www.youtube.com/@KentSurvival videos are a bit long and he does nervous laugh too much, but if you want a reliable video of a man putting up a random tent, chopping wood, making dinner and then waking up in the morning to tell you whether the tent leaked, it's your hookup.

https://www.youtube.com/@SoloTravelJapan is basically the same video every time, a first person POV of a Japanese ferry trip, including meticulous room tour, a tour of the ship facilities, and all the meals. There's some variance in the room types (capsule up to full on suite) but it does eventually get repetitive. There's also https://www.youtube.com/@SoloTravelJapan which is a different channel but clearly inspired by the original poster.

https://www.youtube.com/@PedestrianDiversions is mainly Bristol and West Country, with a bloke spending 30 minutes on where's the actual centre of Bristol or why he loves the brutalist architecture of that bit at the end of harbour everyone drives past but ignores. What makes the channel is that he had one video go viral but then openly refused to do any of the things you're meant to do to retain people's interest and build an audience.

And the ultimate is https://www.youtube.com/@just_alex, which is a man who, while not dull as such, is certainly not what you called conventionally charismatic, doing stuff that is not considered conventionally interesting. We're talking beekeeping, brewing, growing veg, living in a remote Swiss hut for a month just because. What makes it work is that he's utterly fascinated by everything, which inherently makes it dull but interesting. My absolute favourite is 25 minutes of him making a knife with a professional, which is just oddly compelling: 

On 12/24/2023 at 10:10 PM, gmoney said:

 

Famously Konnan (who was doing a tryout) used his traditional people skills to collar Vince McMahon when he saw Max Moon at a taping and say "hey, that's a Liger ripoff right?" and Vince flatly denied ever having heard of or seen Liger, despite that photo above existing.

OK, slightly clickbaity: it's Dave Finlay Sr (Fit Finlay's dad): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/northern-ireland/67839647

He was a pro wrestler and the main promoter in Northern Ireland for many years, but the MBE is for his 50+ years work in amateur wrestling. He's pretty much the top guy in training amateur wrestling in Northern Ireland and it's not much of an exaggeration to say he's the reason the country still has an amateur scene.

Northern Ireland is very unusual as it effectively had a pro wrestling industry (originally a mix of shoot and show matches before going fully show) long before it had amateur wrestling to speak of. Some of the pro wrestlers entered a tournament in the Republic of Ireland and soon discovered pro holds are either not allowed or don't work in amateur matches. They then advertised for people to join their gym and two of the initial recruits were Eddie 'Kung Fu' Hammil and Dave Finlay Sr. 

Not going to link to it because it doesn't even deserve the hate clicks, but the online site of the the Mail has a story based on the idea that a woman with a pixie cut winning Miss Universe is "woke".

No new games for a while but replayed Obsession (strong Pride & Prejudice/Downton Abbey theme) and it really stood out how it's not just thematic, but thinking about the them actually makes some of the more unwieldy rules make sense.

The cards you've build up in your deck -- that's your social circle of people who know you and might come to your event.

Need to persuade an uncouth person to stop coming to your events -- either the mother of the house uses her diplomacy to have a firm word in their ear, or you need to take them out to the paddock and tell them where they can't make a scene in front of others.

Don't have the social reputation to attract particular guests -- wait for the national holiday where they'll be prepared to slum it for a fun day out,

Built a new facility but not used it yet -- not very social, bit of a new money thing to do, lose some reputation for now.

The pandemic was undeniably awful, but it did lead to this becoming the go-to stock photo, of which I strongly approve.

What if the role had always been played by females: https://scifind.com/the-other-11-doctors/

5 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I hear Bumble can be good for people who are just looking for a friend as well? It doesn't have to be dating. 

If gingers count as unconventional, let it simply be known that on BBC 2 last night, Hannah Fry gripped a sausage and referred to it as a meat stylus.

Unfortunate that the real world champion hasn't defended the title since beating Samoa Joe.

This is on Amazon Freevee. It's almost so-bad-its-compelling but does eventually fall into the "is it a spoof or just a remake" territory: