Will Scotland benefit from playing at home? Will Ireland be able to achieve what the world’s number one team were unable to do playing at Twickenham? Answers on a postcard. Or below the line.
International rugby on the telly this weekend
Saturday 24th August
- Scotland v France 13:10 Premier Sports 2
- England v Ireland 14:15 (kick-off 15:00) Sky Sports Action & Sky Sports Main Event
Ovally Balls 
And Hastings as well of course.
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Ticht – I’d be perfectly happy with Lucas as head of a Government of National Unity. In your wider area, I think (?) it’s probably the LibDems who are more likely to win a seat. I don’t trust ’em, I’ve looked at Swinson’s despicable voting record, but they’re still preferable to Tories etc.
And yep … apparently ‘regaining Parliamentary sovereignty’ means sending Parliament home because they’re not likely to vote in line with the Dictator’s views.
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Worthing is of course in West Sussex, but still.
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There’s also a Parliamentary petition to oppose prorogation that’s garnered nearly 800K votes so far: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/269157
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Amber Rudd’s majority in Hastings and Rye is about 250 over Labour. That’ll be a happy victory come election day.
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As CMW noted above.
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Tom, Lewes used to be LibDem, Norman Baker held the seat for a good while.
If you go inland to Buckinghamshire and Surrey the Tories have the stranglehold there
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What I left out of my OP was that I meant to say “South East”
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Finally got round to (re)joining the Labour Party. Been meaning to for a while (and have helped a little here and there with leafleting and what have you in the last couple of years anyway), but today has pushed me over the edge.
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Spent the weekend at my mum’s in Hereford. That’s a political wasteland if ever there was one.
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Spaffer Johnson didn’t have a huge majority at the 2017 election, and his dereliction of his promise to oppose the third runway at Heathrow – not to mention his current heinous activities – could easily lead to his downfall in a GE.
Now that would be a good result.
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Ticht, there’s a really good Danny Dorling presentation about how it wasn’t the northern working-classes who delivered Brexit but rather the country set. Will see if I can find it.
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Thaum, the petition was on nearly 830K when I signed it a minute ago
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Been avoiding the political stuff as much as possible. But what a load of boak this is. outrageous.
Democracy in action eh.
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@TomP – it was that lot in Hereford I can promise you.
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Here: https://media.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/2019-02-11-danny-dorling-sally-tomlinson.mp3
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Onto more important things, anyone know when the Scotland team is announced?
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TomP – the largest correlation in Brexit-voting is level of education: those with less education are more likely to have voted for it. People think it was the elderly, but that’s only true insofar as the elderly generally tend to have a lower level of education, for obvious reasons.
And yes, after that, you’re right about the ‘country set’ vs the northern working classes.
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Ticht – good to know; it’ll probably hit a million before the day is over.
NN from me!
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The only person my mum knows down there who didn’t vote for Brexit is her husband. There’s even someone in the house who voted leave. That person did leave school at fourteen though and is rather getting on a bit, but that’s no excuse and I have a feeling that if there’s another referendum she’ll have to walk to the post box herself which can pretty much be ruled out.
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My local MP is Owen Smith. I’ll stop typing now.
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Tomp – they’re all Australians though.
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I’d let Johnson , Mogg etc. go ahead and force Brexit and then own it; time would be better spent pursuing the legality of it through the courts.
Meanwhile the Opposition parties should focus on the consequences and winning an election. No-deal Brexit has to happen now, come what may.
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Isn’t corbyn a reluctant remainer? Tbh, labour’s shiteness was part of the reason Brexit happened anyway. Not joining any time soon.
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Newsnight’s legal expert (a top former judge of some sort) didn’t think there was much hope of defeating the government’s latest move in the courts even though he quite strongly intimated that he wished there was and thought there should be.
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@Craigs -I’m certainly not on here to try to convince anyone to join the Labour Party. However, apart from anything else Brexit hasn’t happened yet precisely because Labour and others have defeated it in parliament up to this point. If you want to argue that No Deal may happen because they weren’t prepared to vote May’s deal through for her then that’s another matter. I suppose it would help me to understand what you mean by ‘Labour’s shiteness’. I would think their biggest fairly direct contribution to the Leave vote would be some decisions made when in power under Blair regarding Eastern European countries joining the EU and the associated rules regarding immigration. I don’t necessarily disagree with those decisions, but it seems to me to be plain daft to think they haven’t had an effect. Subsequent to that I guess you would have Milliband’s failure to challenge the Tory narrative about public spending being responsible for the financial crisis. If you mean Corbyn and co’s failure to get an even higher percentage of Labour supporters to vote Remain in 2016 then I think you’re asking a lot as the great majority did and what we have is a Tory problem which like all Tory problems ends up as really a problem for the rest of us.
I can see why some of Labour’s triangulation/supposed ambiguity has put off some remainers from voting for them at recent Euro/local elections and will probably do so at the next General Election, but how this is supposed to mean they have ’caused Brexit’ is beyond me. For what it’s worth their position has always been fairly clear to me even if it doesn’t particularly fit with my own preference and I think anyone that wanted to try to understand it could do so easily enough.
There are of course as ever many reasons to vote Labour regardless of Brexit and today’s behaviour by the government should be seen as utterly appalling by any right-thinking person, again regardless of their views on the EU.
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Cmw – lots of cider in me right now. Sorry if this is incoherent.
But the second paragraph is sort of where I’m at. Although, I don’t think they caused Brexit, merely didn’t oppose it effectively before the vote.
We haven’t had a great opposition to this laughable tory government and that is largely corbyn’s fault. I think Boris/tories would win a ge right now too. So I’m completely fed up with labour right now.
P. S. From a practical point of view, if I was Boris I’m not sure what I would do differently. If you want brexit then he’s doing a good job so far.
P. P. S. I don’t want to bring the mood down or cause the first new blog argument but I’m resigned to whatever happens right now.
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Iks – no-deal Brexit means goodbye to my job and that of hundreds of thousands of others employed directly or indirectly by the automotive industry.
Craigs – the best way to stop the Tories winning the next GE (which I’m also afraid of) is to help Labour, or indeed the SNP/Plaid/Greens/sodding LDs in key constituencies. And you don’t have to join the party to donate, or even to help out with leafleting or whatever.
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Thaum – tbh none of these options thrill me. I’ve only ever voted lib dems* (and remain) in my life. If the option is ‘anyone but the tories’ then I understand. But compared to the alternative I can’t really hold that position – and I realise how that sounds. I think Corbyn would be a disaster for the UK. And I don’t think he’s morally better than Boris (who is a fucking tool).
Hence my total ambivalence right now.
* this probably explains a lot tbh.
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It is actually a Machiavellian genius strategy from Cummings:
Most constituencies voted Leave, and Leave voters are more likely to vote. Move to the right, adopt no-deal, hoover up Farage’s Gammons and the system will deliver a decent majority.
Sure, it is the complete reverse of that ‘uniting the country’ stuff Alexander de Phallus was on about a few weeks ago, but many Leave voters don’t care about that at all. The wailing from ‘remoaners’ delights them. Many only seem to want this shit because it upsets the ‘people who think they’re clever’.
An argument that you don’t see too often in the UK media that I regularly read here on the continent is the fact that many ‘left behind’ working class Brexit supporters are furious at the damage globalisation has done to their communities. The problem is those ‘delivering’ Brexit propose much more of the same. Of course these people are being fed a narrative of ‘the elite hate Brexit’ which seems to convince them that Brexit must therefore be in their interest.
In reality, of course, the ‘elite’ will be fine, and those already struggling will be savaged.
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Just for a change from brexit-mageddon
‘Folau argues the posts were done on his own time and not in the workplace, and were substantively unrelated to rugby union since he became born-again.’
Pfft
“He believed it was a loving gesture to share passages from the Bible with others,” the statement of claim states.’
Pffffft!
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Got a colleague bleating on about how this brexit mess is all the EU’s fault.
Christ it’s tedious.
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Chimpie – think he loves himself too much tbh.
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To be fair, not many players tweet on the pitch or training paddock.
Not many tweet loving gestures from the 18th century, either.
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Views himself as a proper persecuted little christian soldier doesn’t he.
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Unfortunately no deal will probably happen, it’ll mostly be shit for the country as a whole, and our dear government will have a great deal of success in laying the blame on the EU with the help of the press.
May’s WA would have been better than where we are now.
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Arse. I’m commenting on brexit. Someone shoot me.
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“Takes aim”
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Still no Scotland team Gerronwithit.
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I’m looking forward to Georgia v Scotland more than I am Wales A v Crisis Ireland. Nice to see a tier 1 team go to Tblisi – I’d love Wales to play a test over there.
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An unelected monarch waves through a suspension of parliament at the behest of an unelected prime minister in order to force through a hugely damaging situation that no one voted for.
And this is legal.
We need new laws
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Yosoy, I was looking up pictures of Tiblisi, it looks amazing, I wish I was going to the match
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The Ministry of Highways in Tblisi is an amazing buikding.
We went to a Caucasus restaurant last week and had khachapuri. My favourite heart attack welcoming grub.
Am also looking forward to the Georgia-Scotland match.
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@Ticht
And to think that millions of people voted to leave the ‘undemocratic’ EU.
Let’s also consider the fact that the government are calling the NI Backstop ‘anti-democratic’ – claiming it would force the UK citizens of NI to live under EU rules.
56% of the NI electorate voted for exactly that.
‘Democracy’ and ‘Sovereignty’ have just been redefined to mean ‘whatever enough angry Leave voters want in order for them to deliver a Tory majority’.
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@ticht
It does look incredible. It would make for a great long weekend. Bit of the local red, bit of rugby…
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Tories polling at 34%.
It’s working.
Get out while you still can…..
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Georgia looks fantastic, great mountains etc.
If I had more time & money a trip over this weekend would have been the bizniss.
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Hasn’t FD spent some time in Georgia? ‘Research’ apparently.
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Hola, folks. Just a quick fly by to say hello. Will be back for a longer chat soon – so, so busy atm.
Also, normally WC warm up games are the only test matches I don’t give a toss about but last weekend… Ouch. That was embarrassing. Group-stage knock out if we keep that up.
Hope everyone’s well.
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Tîm Wales:
15. Hallam Amos (Cardiff Blues)
14. Owen Lane (Cardiff Blues)*
13. Scott Williams (Ospreys)
12. Owen Watkin (Ospreys)
11. Steff Evans (Scarlets)
10. Jarrod Evans (Cardiff Blues)
9. Aled Davies (Ospreys)
1. Rhys Carre (Saracens)*
2. Ryan Elias (Scarlets)
3. Samson Lee (Scarlets)
4. Adam Beard (Ospreys)
5. Bradley Davies (Ospreys)
6. Aaron Shingler (Scarlets)
7. James Davies (Scarlets)
8. Josh Navidi (Cardiff Blues) (CAPT)
Replacements:
16. Elliot Dee (Dragons)
17. Rob Evans (Scarlets)
18. Leon Brown (Dragons)
19. Jake Ball (Scarlets)
20. Ross Moriarty (Dragons)
21. Tomos Williams (Cardiff Blues)
22. Rhys Patchell (Scarlets)
23. Jonah Holmes (Leicester Tigers)
*Uncapped
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