Predicting every London election result Plus: What's the tube strike ACTUALLY about?

It’s the most Bluesky thing that’s ever happened: Comment is Freed x London Centric local elections prediction collab just dropped. www.londoncentric.media/p/london-loc...

UK's migration crackdown risks care home staffing crunch Government plans to make it harder for migrant workers to settle permanently in Britain risk a staffing crunch in care homes for elderly people, where one employee in three is from overseas.

Good Reuters story on the government's "earned settlement" proposals and the care sector.

www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks...

Imagine having to grade this as a piece of student work

Thanks. Hadn't seen this

West Ham fan turnout against Nottingham Forest almost half official attendance West Ham’s official attendance of 62,429 for their 2-1 by Nottingham Forest was almost twice as high as the number of fans who went through the turnstiles

West Ham attendances are lower than ticket sales
www.theguardian.com/football/202...

Modern Ibrox not quite big enough: have grown to 50k

West Ham fan turnout against Nottingham Forest almost half official attendance West Ham’s official attendance of 62,429 for their 2-1 by Nottingham Forest was almost twice as high as the number of fans who went through the turnstiles

Although attendance data is much less reliable these days as most clubs report on “tickets sold” rather than actual bums on seats - so true numbers will be somewhat lower. Here is the most egregious example

Schalke have been relegated from the German Bundesliga averaging > 60k

Spurs averaged 30k in 1976/7 (half their 2026 attendances) though this rose to 33k in the second division: a promotion season. Man Utd averaged 41k getting relegated in 1973/4, but that rose to an average home attendance of 47,781 in division two, higher than any top flight club that season

Table of Newcastle average attendances and league position in 2010s

The record average attendance for a club while getting relegated from the premier league is 49,754 for Newcastle United in 2015/16 (which was followed by > 51k average in winning the championship).

Both West Ham & Spurs average over 60,000 this season so would break this record if relegated

Elections 2026: The Five Battlegrounds There are local elections in the UK every May, and every year I do a preview.

New post:

"Elections 2026: The Five Battlegrounds"

With national politics fragmenting I've sorted all councils up for election outside London into five groups to help explain how things are evolving.

Incl predictions for all 104 councils.

(£/free trial)

samf.substack.com/p/elections-...

Last night's 10 o'clock broadcast new did report the 600 arrivals, and mention the 35% year on year drop in doing so. That is what the BBC should be doing more consistently: giving the audience the relevant context (the overall rise or fall) while reporting the specific event. BBC online sketchier

BBC migration coverage: Review finds no consistent bias but risks to impartiality A review of the BBC's coverage of migration suggests the corporation should explore stories in greater detail.

BBC Migration Review: an incisive and balanced review on how to do context from all perspectives. But the coverage continues to be dominated by reporting the politics, not the substance too + not doing enough on context for the average viewer to have got it
www.bbc.co.uk/news/enterta...

The BBC executive has endorsed six key points from the report, which it expects all journalists to consider carefully when working on stories about migration: cover the substance and not just the politics ensure audiences have enough context hear from migrants explain migration terms clearly represent the full range of opinions remember good stories also come from outside Westminster

"Ensure audiences have enough context" is simply is not happening often enough (even on overall immigration numbers dropping over 2 years while more recent reversal in small boat trends in the last 6-9 months overlooked)

So over 80% of people don't know the key context on the biggest public issue

Thanks for the info

The year on year comparison is 9352 (2025) vs more than 6077 in 2026 by 18th April in both years, after the 600 arrivals of 18/4/26 are counted
bsky.app/profile/jonf...

It was up to 9,352 by 18.4.25. Even accounting the 600 arrivals on Saturday, there have been 35% fewer crossings this year.

Since few BBC reporters/editors use BlueSky it was suggested I should put this question "why is a 33% fall much less newsworthy than a 33% rise" in this X thread too

x.com/sundersays/s...

The 33% year-on-year fall has been reported in one BBC news report, in the 20th paragraph of a news report on 1.4.26

Main public service broadcaster has an enormous skew on the newsworthyness of rises vs falls. It ought to mitigate it a little bit as feeds misperceptions
bsky.app/profile/sund...

But if "tap the questions below" a news report saying "over the past three years crossing have increased" (true for 2023-25, but falling since Aug 2025), the reader is told that over the last 4 months "this was down by 35% compared to the same period the previous year"

Covert contextualisation!

"Over the past three years, crossings have increased, with 41,472 people arriving in the UK by small boat in 2025"

News report does not refer to the year-on-year fall shown (if you squint) in the graph. Clearer in BBC Verify tracker (which reporters don't seems to use)

BBC reports "more than 600 people crossed the Channel on small boats on Saturday, making it second busiest day so far this year".

BBC reports "Over the past three years, crossings have increased" while omitting 33% year on year fall this year
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

PA report on Reform asylum plans exemplifies media skew to report rises

"602 people crossed the Channel on small boats on Saturday, making it this year’s second busiest day for crossings and bringing the total number of arrivals in 2026 to more than 6,000"

(Omits context: 8604 by 13.4.2025)

Need to scrap treaties, conventions and UK laws to return people to the country they fled - a breach of key legal principle of refoulement - but Reform unlikely to feel bound by letter or spirit if could legislate to overrule UK courts applying current treaties and laws

Reform more likely to remove people's legal status (hope for voluntary departures). Will find returns to Europe harder (outside ECHR). Hard to return without a deal to origin (Taliban/Tehran may want those who fled persecution, as enemies of regime). May invent Falklands/Ascension Island/Rwanda idea

The retrospective cancellation of refugee status + the retrospective cancellation of permanent residence* should be a red line.

[*which Reform willing to cancel for non-Europeans, though its policy is to respect permanent settled status for Europeans, disregarding it for Commonwealth nations ]

That's right: many games are more competitive between the top two, top 4-6 and everyone else.

A Reform source said: “Assuming a Reform UK government is formed after a general election in 2029, we would expect over 400,000 people to be in scope of this policy. This is based on grants over the last two years, those currently in the asylum system, and those expected to enter it over the next three years.”

Reform's 400k is based on assuming claims continue at the 2025 level

Reform would almost certainly ignore the 33% drop in boat crossings this year if they were aware of it. {Almost nobody in politics or the media appears aware of it)

It has also proposed a new Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Act which would place a legal duty on the Home Secretary to remove from the UK any migrant without a legal right to remain.

Reform's new Illegal Immigration (Mass Deportation) Act will at least be familiar to Reform's Cons converts Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, who passed this clause in the 2023 Illegal Migration Act, then failed to bring it into legal force, because it was a legal duty impossible to uphold

Just after explaining that "could be safely returned" isn't a necessary condition, Telegraph writes this "Reform has calculated that more than 400,000 migrants would be in scope of the new policy to review and revoke the asylum status of any illegal migrant or refugee who could be safely returned"