No one comes to the Father except though me

Richard K Herring on Twitter @Herring1967 writes...

"Christians, I know if you live a bad life and then sincerely repent at the last minute then you go to Heaven. But what if you live a perfect religious life and then at the last second sincerely renounce Christ, do you go to Hell?"

Well, I can only explain Catholic theology and that not very well but I gave this a go so...

In Catholic theology most of us go to purgatory & then have to "do our time" to get to heaven. It is a continuum.  So really evil people can still get to heaven if they put enough eternity in.  The lower levels of purgatory are like hell. Hell is for those who totally reject God.  Therefore the answer is that yes, it is a choice.  Those who go to hell have chosen to reject God.  So you can get to the end of your life, decide you don't want to go to heaven & then pootle off to hell.  Blah blah etc I think

Mind you they'll probably change their mind on all of that like limbo. I remember being told at school that everyone BC was in limbo cus they couldn't be saved because the saviour was not born then so Moses etc were in some kind of administrative holding pen until Judgement Day.  I had visions of them in suspended animation but I suspect actually they are doing lots of paperwork...

Desperate Musk sues everyone for not advertising with him..

Every day, hundreds of millions of people come to X to be part of the only global, real-time conversation. They come to share their thoughts and hear others. To share their content and see more. To debate and be debated. To entertain and be entertained. To inspire and be inspired. There is no substitute for X.

The power of this community to bring global conversations to life was the reason I was so excited to join X as CEO in June 2023.

After a career in media and advertising, I thought I had seen everything. Then I read the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s report entitled “GARM’s (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) Harm” last month. The report disclosed that their investigation had found evidence of an illegal boycott against many companies, including X.

As their report found: "Evidence obtained by the Committee shows that GARM and its members directly organized boycotts and used other indirect tactics to target disfavored platforms, content creators, and news organizations in an effort to demonetize and, in effect, limit certain choices for consumers."

The consequence - perhaps the intent - of this boycott was to seek to deprive X’s users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents or political and corporate leaders, of the Global Town Square.

To put it simply, people are hurt when the marketplace of ideas is undermined and some viewpoints are not funded over others as part of an illegal boycott.

This behavior is a stain on a great industry, and cannot be allowed to continue.

That is why, today, X has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever. This is not a decision we took lightly, but it is a direct consequence of their actions.

The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.

Since arriving at X, I made it my mission to continue to build a platform where people, brands and advertisers can thrive in our unique, dynamic and safe environment.

And because of this commitment to our users, even despite the boycott, usage has reached all time highs. Using a Twitter legacy metric, user active minutes, in August 2022, people spent 7.2 billion active minutes on the platform. Today, that number is more than 9 billion, a 25% increase.

The same is true for video - even compared to last year, daily video views are up 45% to 8.2 billion. X is innovating and growing.

We have met and surpassed the requests made by advertisers and groups such as GARM for new tools, both to improve advertiser controls and the effectiveness of our products to drive increased value for our customers.

We have proven our platform provides advertisers a way to showcase their brands and reach their target audiences safely, efficiently and effectively. That’s why I’ve worked in good faith with marketers across the globe to showcase our innovations and allay any concerns with brands whom I’ve partnered with for decades. The unfortunate reality is that despite all our efforts, hundreds of meetings and research to the contrary, many companies chose to dismiss the facts.

To those who broke the law, we say enough is enough. We are compelled to seek justice for the harm that has been done by these and potentially additional defendants, depending what the legal process reveals.

It's also clear that there are likely others who suffered at the hands of this activity. This case is about more than damages - we have to fix a broken ecosystem that allows this illegal activity to occur.

We will continue to innovate and ensure X has a vibrant future while the courts will hold accountable those who engaged in illegal behavior.

To all of you who have been part of the transformative journey we are on, thank you. Rest assured, we will not stop defending our global town square.

Stuffed shirt is stuffed

 

So professional stuffed shirt Huw Edwards turns out to have been a nonce with kiddy porn on his phone.  Well, he always looked dead behind the eyes to me.  Soullessly unlikable although it was hard to fully isolate why.  A man so bland he was often difficult to distinguish from the BBC CGI augmented set which may be why he was chief borer.  Of course BBC newsreaders have always been pompous but at least Richard Dimbleby gave us the spaghetti tree and David had a few jokes and even Nicholas Witchell sat on the odd lesbian.  Huw took being dull to a whole new level.  A man so seemingly devoid of personality he sounded like a cross between Marvin the Paranoid Android and Harry Secombe during his Highway days... I often wondered if he was actually dead and been brought digitally back to life by AI like a modern day Max Headroom. Perhaps what made him a shoe in for the job was that he was suppressing so much of his true nature that there was nothing left but a blank sheet or an empty suit. After all who's the best person not to make a big deal of the presence of Prince Andrew at a coronation?  Now we have the DG doing the weknewbutwedidntknow interview.  One has to wonder if Huw has something on someone else given how long Huw's been huwmongously overpaid not to be on our screens since his previous seedy scandal.  It is surely time to stop paying these stuffed shirts huwmongous sums of money and get some AI Newsreaders in.  They couldn't be less lifeless and soulless than Huw.  I mean, you could get better newsreaders selecting people at random and appointing them jury service style.  Id always thought he should write an autobiography called "Huw Edwards, Complete Anchor" but in the light of current events it doesn't sound like he can even ...

The BBC continues to defend continuing to pay perverts like Edwards whilst they are awaiting trial on the grounds they have a duty of care but whilst it is true he could take them to an Employment Tribunal if found Not Guilty... which he wasn't... You don't actually need the same burden of proof for a Tribunal as a Criminal Trial ...it would be enough to argue he had violated his contract on the balance of probabilities.  We see similar nonsense in the police who keep their staff on wages but "suspended" for up to a year for trials after which they're found guilty.  Perhaps a solution would be to employ all newsreaders as outside contractors, then their contracts could be easily ended and if they're so employable they'd be free to also gig at ITV or SKY ...

Just to prove it's open to criticism here's a Twitter post the BBC have blocked comments on...

BBC not aware of 'deeply disturbing' specifics, says director general https://t.co/yxV1QhvmoV

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) August 1, 2024

The mask slips...

 

As the Master used to say in Doctor Who "for a lie to work it must be shrouded in truth".  Therefore Jordan Peterson uses his academic knowledge, training and reputation to hide some nasty lies in plausible uncontroversial output.  Academia has long ago put him out to pasture but he's played on his previous respectability to try to pass off bullshit as psychology.  I recently saw him (for he invades my feeds like a deadly virus wherever I go on the internet) waxing lyrical about how meeting Trump was like visiting the court of a medieval monarch whilst dressed in a smoking jacket patterned with various religious icons.  It seems the mask has finally slipped completely now as he and his wife pretend interview Yaxley-Lennon nee Icallmyselftommybutiveneverfoughtformycountryonlyasacasual Robinson.

Some years ago a child was waterboarded by another child at school and Tommy turned this into a whole load of dangerous victim blaming.  He was sued for libel and lost.  Jordan gives him free reign to repeat his lies unchallenged taking his every utterance as truth.  I do believe Jordan has reached peek nauseating.  However it's probably the best example of him being openly fascist available so I'll leave it here.

Tommy is currently on the run as the police are after him for repeating his libel and breaking his injunction...  doubtless Jordan and his wife are even more pofaced than usual and are rolling their dead eyes again.  Perhaps they're climbing up the wall on the ladder they inexplicably keep in their front room...

Donald Trump is a house built on sand...

Whilst much of the media still goes on like a Trump Presidency is still the most likely possibility believing that all his prosecutions have been washed away by the Supreme Court Immunity decision there is still the ticking time bomb in the background of Trump's New York conviction for falsifying business records.  The case is on hold whilst Judge Merchan reviews the impact of the Supreme Court ruling which says not only is the President immune for official acts or those adjacent to them but that his official records can't be used to prosecute him.  Under this ruling some of the evidence used to convict Trump may be invalid... But actually a very small amount as most of the events took place before he was President and it's hard to argue writing business cheques for his own private business was an official government act even if he signed them in the Oval office.  The judge is currently reading Alvin Bragg's rebuttal of Trump's lawyer's arguments with a decision scheduled from early September with sentencing still set for the 18th.  It's entirely possible Trump could still get a custodial sentence and be taken down straight away and have to run from prison.  In the event he was allowed out before the start of his sentence to appeal or set his affairs (corrupting democracy) in order it is indeed possible he could win the election and then go to prison in the 3 months between election & inauguration triggering a major constitutional crisis ... If there isn't one already... ?  Anyway, that bomb 💣 is still ticking even if the GOP can't hear it ... 

Pear Shaped Series 2 Episode 3

 

Selling bits of yourself....

 An AI company asked if I would sell my voice patterns for analysis?  They're offering decent money but should I do it?  It feels a bit like Fantine in Les Miserables selling her hair and her two front teeth.  Lord knows why they want my nasal south London drawl... they might as well get Ken Livingstone out of retirement and be done with it.

J D Vance revives Mussolini's Battle for Births

Footage has recently emerged of repugnant turncoat and Trump wouldbe VP & sycophant J D Vance purporting that "cat ladies" and people without children should not have their votes taken with the same degree of importance as those who have children because they don't have as big a stake in the future of society.  I expect like Il Duce's Battle for Births this policy will turn out a dismal failure.  Despite heavy propaganda and handing out medals Benito failed miserably to get his people to pop more out and spent a lot of the war whining that he'd have had a better chance of winning if there'd been more cannon fodder birthed.  Being a repugnant bully Vance even named individuals he didn't think had produced enough mini mes despite some of them suffering reproductive medical issues.

I often hear bilge along the same lines but it's usually more snide than this open fascist rhetoric but maybe we can compromise.  For example Tories saying that they shouldn't have to pay VAT on private education because they pay through general taxation for state school education they don't use.  But then I don't have any children so I also pay for state school places I don't use so ... Maybe we can do a trade.  I'll hand back some of my polity in return for a tax rebate on the education taxes I pay for everyone else's anklebiters and give the money instead to Battersea Dogs & Cats home.  There will be a lot of happy cats (and dogs).

As if having children makes you wise ... I saw the other day Elon Musk stating that he was estranged from his trans offspring because they'd been made trans by the "woke mind virus".  No, Elon, you had 12 children because you had to use IVF so your wives had multiple births.  The number of trans people in the population is 2%.  1/12 is 8% ... Therefore you had a 25% chance of at least one of your sprogs being trans.  If you don't like that there's a simple answer - stop putting buns in the oven...

People who don't let their cats out...

One of the things I can't get my head around is people who don't let their cat out... a man on Facebook recently said his cat had escaped and he had had to go any rescue it.  It wasn't even missing just two doors down or something and hadn't even been gone a whole day.  He said he lived in a dangerous area with lots of busy traffic so only let them play in in a walled garden.  "They're my babies."  No, they're not mate, they're cats.  They have their own parents.  

These cat captors always remind me of my music teacher Miss* Rainbow's mother Mrs Rainbow's cat Chink.  Miss Rainbow's mother was a cultured intelligent woman capable of very intellectual conversation but unfortunately she was also suffering from mental decline.  If you went out the room and came back in then she'd completely forget she'd ever met you and the conversation would start again as if you were literally meeting for the first time.  Chink, who she never let out and used to take for walks on a bit of string, had learned to exploit these President-Biden-like qualities to get constantly fed as Mrs Rainbow would keep forgetting that she'd fed Chink every time Chink went in and out of the room so Chink would constantly pop in and out of the kitchen to get fed again.  The result was that Chink was the fattest cat you have ever seen - about the size of three normal cats.  Eventually Mrs Rainbow had to have permanent care and was taken into an old people's home.  Miss Rainbow then radically redecorated the house which had had the same decor for about 50 years as Mrs Rainbow was still convinced it was 1950 and Chink went on a rapid diet and gradually reduced in size from three cats size to normal cat size.  Eventually he was even able to get up off the floor and sit on my lap when I was playing the piano and dig his claws in... but it's always left me with the belief that it's just not right to not let cats out...

Then I thought is this reasonable?  Well, Larry the cat lives at 10 Downing Street and he's allowed out on his own.  He's never been run over... Although Larry's coworker Freya (drafted in by Cameron to create a competitive mousing market) was hit by a car and had to see a vet and was retired to the countryside after wandering too far away from home.  Previous to that predecessor Peter II was run over and killed by a car in 1947.  Peter II replaced Peter I who was put down aged 17 because the Attlee government decided he was inefficient.  And he wondered why his majority was slashed to 5 at the next General Election.  Anyway, one cat death per hundred years seems a reasonable pet death risk to take...?  Okay, maybe not...

* Note to feminist historians ....

Ms wasn't in common parlance till the mid-80s so they were Mrs & Miss.  Due to the formality of the age one was not allowed to address teachers by their first name - even music teachers - but Ms Rainbow later told me her name was Marguerite.  I don't know what Mrs Rainbow's first name was but I do remember Marguerite showing me a photograph of her great grandfather who was the butler in the Tichborne fraud / impersonation case trial (see here).  The kind of thing that happened before DNA when people who were greedy would claim to be rich dead relatives of missing persons in an attempt to inherit lots of money.  (See Anastasia.)  There was a film made about it a decade ago... (see here).

 

I say I say... is it already dead American Democracy?

Seventy years ago, a farmer beheaded a chicken in Colorado, and it refused to die. Mike, as the bird became known, survived for 18 months.  A similar fate appears to be befalling American Democracy.  American democracy is founded around the separation of political power among a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary.  

With recent events such as the Supreme Court making perverse and unconstitutional decisions (such as that Trump has immunity from prosecution to the level where if the President commits a crime whilst within his official capacity or adjacent to it his motives can't be questioned or his documents used to convict him) and Judge Cannon pulling the plug of the Missing Documents case on the grounds that Jack Smith's position as Special Council is unconstitutional on the advice of a rogue Supreme Court Justice's unasked for opinion it's pretty clear that the Judicial wing of government has been totally corrupted.  It doesn't matter what court finds Donald Trump guilty of felonies, it will be escalated to the Supreme Court who will just let him off ...or concoct another reason why he should not be in prison.  If it gets there at all before or after November when Trump is sworn in again... Although he isn't actually sworn in till January... If he wins in November....

However, the death of the Judicial wing of the government still leaves the Legislature and Executive ticking over in much the same way that after the chicken was beheaded in Colorado there was still enough of its brain stem surviving to allow its legs to keep moving and to keep it running all over the place.  Perpetually in motion but seemingly going nowhere.  Incumbent governments everywhere are having a hard time due to massive inflation and the pandemic so it's likely Biden won't win this year.  Not unless he stays up after his bedtime again and we all saw what happened last time...  

I think it was Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff who said "We read in the newspapers that the after-pandemic years were bad everywhere, that crime was increasing and that honest citizens were having a hard job to put the gangsters in jail.  Well in the United States, the gangsters finally succeeded in putting the honest citizens in jail."  

For how else can you describe the situation where Donald Trump becomes President, pardons himself and then his lackies...? He then promises to go on a vengeance spree to match a Tarantino movie...?

There may be a miracle like Juan Merchan actually passing sentence on the 18th of September but I doubt it...  He would be a fool not to fear retribution.  The damage is done.

Could it be a VP thicker than Dan Quayle

 His mistakes now seem like small potatoes 

Donald Trump's new running mate JD Vance says the UK may now be “the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon... since Labour took over" pic.twitter.com/wchcPYg2m5

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) July 16, 2024

Reform are Real People

 

The Reform Party today rebutted accusations that it had fielded any fake "ghost" candidates in the General Election.  

"It is completely false to state that any of our candidates are not real," said their vetting spokesman Mr Timothy Claypole.  

"Although we did not have time for administrative reasons to fully biographically detail all of our candidates on our website and left a great many blank spaces and missing photographs, it is important to state that all our candidates were real people like Hubert Davenport and Fred Mumford and all their candidate papers were signed by well known business persons in their local areas such as Harold and Ethel Meaker and Adam Painting," he added.  "It is true that some candidates were not seen at any hustings but just because they did not live or campaign locally to their constituencies does not mean that they had no connection with those local areas.  For example, although she has not been seen in Scotland since before the Civil War, Hazel McWitch still has a strong affinity with the Glasgow area due to having being burned to death there.  Contrary too to the media depiction of Reform as a party dominated by aging middle aged white gentlemen ("gammons") we also include among our number several ethnic minority women such as Nadia Popov who unfortunately could not canvass during the summer due to suffering from hay fever.  Any rumors to the contrary are completely false and we believe they have been put about by local Conservative activists Rose and Arthur Perkins against whom we shall soon be instituting legal proceedings.  We are consulting our solicitor Whatsisname Smith."

Moiré patterns ....

 Looking at Rishi's wife's much derided / unusual dress ...

...it reminded me of a question that has haunted me all my life.  In the 80s the late political journalist John Cole was famous for wearing this coat...

...he wore a coat because he was always out in the cold on Westminster Green because in those days lobby journalists were banned from inside the Houses of Parliament.  Should one be caught there an MP could proclaim "I spy stranger!" and throw them out into the cold.  TV was completely verboten.  Cameras weren't even allowed in the chambers till the late 80s.  Anyway...

...this meant John was forever being filmed on Westminster Green in the rain interviewing MPs in this coat.  The problem was with it's zig zag pattern it created all kinds of Moiré patterns on the limited 625 line TV system of the time.

Now if you go on TV (so I've been told by many people including Ava Alexis) they give you a lot of advice on what not to wear.  Even today where Moiré patterns aren't so much of an issue due to increased picture resolution and contrast, they give you a lot of advice about colour and contrast.  So the question is...

Did John really not know this was happening?

Or did he not care?

Or did he have special dispensation?

Or did he wear it precisely because he knew it would make him stand out?

Or was it that as a journalist he thought he was above such things?

Or was the BBC so siloed that the News department just didn't have a costume department full stop?

Or... Or...

Can anyone answer this mystery from history?

No man is a traffic island

 

Well, this has been a boring election campaign with the leaders assiduously avoiding any real voters in case they might get heckled and lose it like Gordon Brown.  Just a series of staged photo ops.  Look, Rishi is in a factory again.  Honestly, it's getting to the point where I'm afraid to put on my high viz at work in case Rishi or Keir pops out and makes a speech.  Imagine being forced by your boss to listen that nonsense... Talk about a captive audience.

Say what you like about John Major but he got his soap box out and went about shopping centres ... well, I suppose they're all half empty or closed now so Rishi has to hang out in warehouses, factories and robot distribution centres as that's where the jobs are now... I wonder what the robots think about his STEM obsessions and if he's canvassing them?  Oh well, at least when he calls up all the young men for WWIII National Service we won't have to send the women to work in the factories... Funny how they can make robots to pack one's shopping but not do one's cleaning...

Further from the action I have been somewhat entertained by Johnny Mercer's campaign videos.  He's as doomed as the dodo but it's kind of amusing to watch him pounding the streets with his long suffering wife.  Due to boundary changes a larger than usual number of sitting MPs are doomed to electoral oblivion - including Jeremy Hunt who was on the news last night trying to look chipper.  Theresa May left a message on a videophone.  It would be sweet being left a message by a former Tory Prime Minister if there weren't so many of them... One day everyone will be a Tory Prime Minister for 15 minutes...

My abiding memory of the Brexit campaign was seeing an old man sitting on a Croydon roundabout in the rain displaying a cardboard sign saying "Freedom Now!".  No man is a traffic island ... but some of them stand on them...

The Bigly Immunity

Having waited to the last possible moment to release it, the Supreme Court of the United States has just issued it’s bonkers ruling on Donald Trump’s immunity with all the aplomb of a toddler showing its mummy what it has left in its potty. 

The timing could not be more cynical.  At the last minute of their latest judicial term and just before Donald Trump’s sentencing in New York and the Republican Convention.  It was previously a possibility that the Convention would not have been able to confer the nomination in person on Donald because with the sentencing on the 11^th and the Convention on the 15^th Trump might have been in prison.

However, not content with defining the President’s “Core” Acts as Immune from prosecution and any acts that may also be vaguely related to those as probably Immune as well, the SCROTUM – sorry SCOTUS – has decided to throw a number of legal testicles – sorry, I mean curveballs at the lower courts as well.  In particular prosecutors are now no longer allowed to use “testimony or private records of the President or his advisors” as evidence in criminal proceedings. 

This immediately means that the verdict in Donald Trump’s Hush Money / Election Interference case may be questioned on the grounds that the jury saw evidence that should not have been submitted.  Since, like the Pope when speaking ex cathedra, the position of the Supreme Court is that it never makes a mistake and only reinterprets what has gone before …it’s rulings now should have been applied in the past as in SCOTUS world nothing ever changes, it just wasn’t noticed before.  Except when the SCOTUS actually did “overturn” Roe V Wade as "egregiously wrong from the start" explaining that this was because its reasoning was "exceptionally weak".  In much the same way that the RCC now purports that Limbo never existed and animals do have souls it was just the theology that was misunderstood…

Anyway, the upshot is that Trump’s lawyers were straight off the starting block at challenging the conviction and sentencing has had to be put back… incidentally, if official records can’t be used to prosecute a President because they’re inadmissible in Court does that mean the Watergate tapes couldn’t have been used to prosecute Nixon (if he hadn’t been pardoned)?

Not content with just this legal hand grenade the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Smith issued a “concurring opinion” having a go at the legality of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s job – suggesting that “there are serious questions whether the Attorney General violated the structure …” of the constitution by appointing him.  Which wasn’t even a question on which he’d been asked to adjudicate but just happens to be one of the nebulous delaying arguments that Judge Aileen Canon has been cogitating in her attempt to find reasons not to fix a Trial date in the Classified Documents case …If the Office of the Special Council is illegal someone should tell them because they have their own official government website https://www.usa.gov/agencies/office-of-special-counsel#:~:text=The%20Office%20of%20Special%20Counsel,protect%20government%20employees%20and%20whistleblowers.

It all goes to show how closely the MAGA movement has wrapped it's corrupt tentacles around the American institutions placing Trump's flunkies in positions to later help him in his machinations... his plans to be a Dictator were obvious as early as November 2020 ...I said there would be a coup but no one listened until... people don't want to believe the worst of people but if there is a person with no redeeming features it probably is Donald Trump.  A convicted crook, a convicted felon, a serial libeler, a man who boasts of molesting women and according to one court probably an actual rapist...

Trump attorney Will Scharf: “We believe the assembly of those alternate slates of electors was an official act of the presidency.”

pic.twitter.com/pvZm0jUqih

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 2, 2024

Some had argued that the SCOTUS wouldn’t find in favour of Presidential Immunity for criminal acts because it would undermine its own power… but Judges on the Court are probably more interested in their position than in power… After all, like all Dictators from day one Trump will still need a Judiciary.  I mean, all those political dissidents aren’t going to try and execute themselves…  If you really want to scare yourself read Project 2025… 

They know Trump's vulnerable here.

Justice Barrett: pic.twitter.com/YKjkHdsDQC

— Tom Hoefling (@TomHoefling) July 2, 2024

Leaving aside the issue of whether Presidential Criminal Immunity exists and to what degree there is also the question of whether it needs to exist.  UK Prime Ministers have no immunity from prosecution (being only “first among equals”) and the system seems to function fine with Boris being booted out etc… One argument advanced for Presidential Immunity is something along the lines that “If a President was to order his minions assassinate a terrorist leader abroad he shouldn’t be prosecuted for that”.  But such a prosecution would only take place within the jurisdiction where it happened anyway (where there is unlikely to an extradition treaty) and unlike Mr Blair who could have been prosecuted by the ICC if they had a “definition of aggressive war” which was strangely not at hand at the time a prosecution was attempted …the US isn’t even a signatory to the ICC … so how could such a bizarre set of events happen anyway?

Faites vos jeux

As the Today Program has given up racing tips..here are my "which MP will lose their seat" tips.  Because why should MPs make all the money out of General Election Results?  I've put a tenner each on Grant Shapps, Penny Mourdant & Kwasi's replacement to lose to Labour... after all he gambled with our money so now I'm gambling on them...  I think this is a fairly safe slate of bets ... I was too scared to bet on the Greens even though they're probably going to win Bristol Central...  but other than that...

The spreadsheet below took me so long that by the end I felt like Winston Ingram.  The betting odds are from William Hill - not everyone will still take bets and some candidates they won't let you bet on ... it starts with Liverpool Riverside - the safest seat in the country (bet £10 to win 1p) ...and works its way down to the better bets.... I've drawn the line at Kwasi's seat because I recon to be safe one should factor in a 10->15% electoral shock.  The EC chance column is taken from Electoral Calculus Website ... I've also plundered the wisdom of Sam Coates of Sky News whose wall of digital Tory doom can be found here.

Oh well, it almost worked... think possibly my strategy of spread betting didn't work but I suppose it did ameliorate the losses... the logical path to success would have been to put all the money on someone with lower odds ... but where's the fun in that?  ...that's not how the greed monster works, is it?

The police shouldn't make sure the house always wins

I fail to understand why it's cheating at gambling to place a bet knowing something the bookmaker doesn't.  If they don't like it that the punters might know more than them they shouldn't take bets on predictable events.  Here's an idea.  If bookmakers lost money because people were able to predict the election better than them, why don't they just suck it up?

The Gambling Commission can whinge all it likes that "snot fair" but the law says ...

(1)A person commits an offence if he—

(a)cheats at gambling, or

(b)does anything for the purpose of enabling or assisting another person to cheat at gambling.

But there's never been any fixed definition of what cheating is.  I don't see any reason why the punter should have to yield their foreknowledge to the Turf Accountant.  It is up to bookmakers to research the likelihood of an event they take a bet against.  If they can't do that they shouldn't take the bet, not blame everyone else for their incompetence.  But in the Topsy Turvey world we live in outwitting the bookmaker is wrong...

All this rubbish talked about insider knowledge.... This is not insider trading.  Insider trading damages businesses because their share prices are what they raise finance against and those finances are used to run productive businesses that create jobs.  Whereas if you outwit a bookie the only loser is the bookie.

From websites to TV shows to Fixed Odds Betting Terminals to employing PHD level mathematicians gambling companies use every trick in the book to try to separate the punters from their money.  Why when they lose should police time be wasted investigating their customers because the bookies lost their own bets?  Not a microsecond should be wasted on this.

Sorry Jason Cummings I cannot vote for you...

...for you are the candidate for Croydon East.  And I live in Croydon South.  Sorry no one told you that the boundaries had changed.

Anklebiters

I think Prince Louis is going to pass the age soon where his antics stop being considered cute.  I wonder what happened that he isn't a Stepford child like the other two...