Or the modern day equivalent, seeing your rosette on the Ring doorbell and not bothering to answer when in the past they might have.

I know it is the aggressive media training that they have, but I feel that the complete lack of emotion shown when any normal person would react emotionally grinds the "uncaring" nature into people

"You do not know how fucking pissed I was when I heard"

Just once I need to see a PM drop an f-bomb in the Commons.

This seat is probably one of the few that saw the incumbent party benefit from their MP deciding to stand down.

ME: [wincing, covering up Starmer's ears] sorry, do you mind not talking about politics around Keir? He doesn't know about scary things like nuclear war or poverty or Peter Mandelson and we'd like to maintain his innocence for a bit longer

KEIR: my father was a drill bit

ME: that's right Keir!

"Leaders can delegate responsibility, but not accountability" is pretty much the first thing that is taught in any management course.

Even if Starmer and Lammy had no idea, which in itself is a bad thing, they gave signs and fostered an environment where someone thought that it was acceptable.

Surprised it isn't a thing with the MRLP to do joke leaflets parodying the worst bar chart crimes possible

At 09:20 this morning, 75% of the UK's electricity need was being supplied by low and zero carbon sources.

Admittedly this doesn't deal with the price of fuel, which is the most visible impact, but this fact is a major thing that should be notice more.

I am confident that Lewis is purely upholding scrutiny here, but this is a good illustration.

Any approach that suggests maintaining US involvement in nuclear deterrent or scrapping it entirely will be treated as unserious, though building our own is deemed unaffordable.

It is unsustainable.

It's a tough needle to thread when the popular view is that developers are heartless, extractive bastards but exist in a market where the economics are such that any "dead weight" of development can kill the financials.

See also, affordable housing provision.

I can see why it is an attractive policy. Developers do not exactly hold net favourability with the public, especially regarding construction of infrastructure, and any talk of government funding leads to the "How will you pay for it?" question, where both answers gets you pilloried.

One can only assume that they took averages from demographic subsamples of national polling and then formulated the local result from weighted averages based on ward demographics from the 2021 census.

Pure crime.

If you want the final boss of MRPs, take a look at this bar chart.

Trying to make a case from an "MRP" that somehow is accurate at ward level despite there being no actual polling done for it.

The numbers don't even make sense

What sticks in my craw more than anything is that the concept of social mobility is a core tenet of the progressive left, but is attacked in pieces like this and cheered on.

Why strive for personal improvement if the outcome is articles calling your achievement a bad thing?

Crabs and buckets.

Yes IME MPs tend to be extremely attuned to the concerns of their constituents. If they weren't the cuts to PIP would have happened.

Thoughts on the article and reaction

1) The assumption that someone leaves their community when they become educated is bollocks
2) The idea of empathy doesnt exist is bollocks
3) I think it is important to have educated people running the country
4) Trade offs exist for countries as well as people

Because it is playing into a narrative that is tangentially true at best and damagingly inaccurate at worst.

The "Those elites in [x] don't understand you and are all as bad as each other, but I, the person of the people do" is a populist play that has been peddled by the likes of Farage for years.

Not only the pandering, but the resultant incoherence that is deeply damaging to the public's belief in competence.

Throw in the tying of hands that comes from a demotivated membership, something the party relies on, and it is a big problem.

My morning reflection on this is that Davey is falling into the Starmer trap, announcing stuff LDs hate to pander to Tories who aren't listening

There is a considerable, and growing, number of people who are angry and impatient for a number of reasons.

Are the solutions they are being sold even possible, and how do "mainstream" parties that deal in the achievable mundane counter this?

I see no issue with the government taking on a loss-making business where the only way to realistically turn it around according to their own industry strategy is to cut a whole load of jobs.

I'm sure a theocratic regime that is happy to murder its own citizens en masse and is facing existential threat will behave perfectly rationally in response to this.

The map, tiers and responsibilities of local government in the UK must be the most complicated in the world.

Absolutely zero consideration as to what defines a community, region or identity. No thought on economic areas, transport networks or what people want to be local and engaged with.

It is symptomatic of the general approach to government that Labour has taken. They could see an issue whilst in opposition, failed to spend the time to do a broad based review when they had the time, jumped straight to "something must be done" and rammed it through with their huge majority.

I know that I am a strange level of local government enjoyer, but any wonder that trust in local government is being sapped away when all talk around local elections is national.

The make up of Barnsley council will have no effect on the war, energy prices or the government's ability to respond.

Someone, somewhere, must have a contact within the rank and file of the US military.

What is the moral like? What is the claimed casus belli to justify this war? Are they doing this for America or Trump?

Doesn't get away from the fact that a self described socialist leader of a party that is known for its concern for the global disadvantage is leading an argument to use the UK's financial might to out bid poorer countries who are far more precarious when it comes to energy reliance.