I lived through the Blair government. Some left wing people were upset because he was on the right of the Labour Party, but things did indeed get a lot better in those ten years. Not everything by any stretch of the imagination. But no one expected him to make things better for gay people but not only did the legal situation change but the mood music affected the nation's morals for the better for a while. It became socially far less acceptable to hate on gay folk. Could happen again, but I get why you might be cynical.

It's altogether the wrong question.

Imagine a class who are excited to have a new teacher because the old one was a git and the new one seemed to be not a git, and one of the kids says "I'll get bullied either way." If one of the other kids says "What classroom rules do I have that you don't?" that kid is starting an irrelevant discussion and either doesn't understand, doesn't care about, or supports the bullying that the first kid experiences and no adult would be particularly surprised if it turns out that the kid counting rules was in the same friend group as the bullies.

You see, if there's a rule saying don't pick on kids who have red hair and you start a conversation about how many rules there are about brown haired kids vs red haired kids, you either don't understand why that rule exists at all, or you get it perfectly well and want to abolish it.

If you're complaining that you have fewer rights than someone who has the right to not be discriminated against because they have a protected characteristic under the human rights act, you're being self absorbed and insensitive at best, and no adult will be surprised if you turn out to have said a lot of very unkind things about trans people in the past.

Well, the shit of foxes, but yeah, bit unfair that.

With fox shit, you can put it in the bin and never see it again, but Farage is more of a stinky, greasy, smearing, permanently unflushable turd that's been hanging about in the loo for decades. Every so often you think he's gone away, but it turns out he was just lurking the other side of the u bend and pops back again.

Actually, we're disgusted with your party which we aren't really surprised is turning out to be full of racists and loonies far more, and your policies that seem designed from the ground up to replace the NHS with private health care.

I hadn't thought of the breakfast, but fried egg on toast would be great.

Pajama morning watching a film with the kids and having a Forza mini league. Vehicle handicap to even out the odds.

Out to Macdonalds for lunch, Water World in the afternoon, curry and a pint for tea in front of another film.

I would be prepared to swap Water World or the morning film for building a giant lego castle and waging war against the invaders.

No no no, it's 0118 999 88199 9119 725
3. It's very clear from the song.

Don't you wish we'd chosen chaos with Ed Milliband instead of the Conservative's Long Term Economic Plan?

If Rory Stewart were standing in my constituency, I would be very tempted to vote for him. In his work he's now an advocate of alleviating many of the problems in the poorest communities globally by giving no-conditions cash. Who knew that the problems of poverty could be solved with money?!!!

He's also a reasonable person and one who I think genuinely wants good things for the country in general rather than just for rich folk. He actually wants Britain to be governed well and in the interests of the population. He has some blind spots of course, he wouldn't be a Conservative of he didn't, but he's decent and there's hope that he can be persuaded by evidence of benefit.

Natural gas burns, but hydrogen explodes.

Gas can explode too, it’s just we’re so used to it that the danger is no longer immediately apparent to the average person.

No. Desperately misleading.

That's like saying that Biden says untrue things too, not just Trump. There's an incredible difference in scale, and lying is very normal behaviour for Trump.

(Also, everyone knows natural gas can explode, it's just that the danger is actually pretty low.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety

Natural gas burns in ratios only up to under 20%, whereas Hydrogen burns in ratios well over 95%, maybe up to 97% and down to about 4% meaning that you need hardly any oxygen at the top end and hardly any hydrogen at the bottom end for an explosion - so it's easy to get it lit and the whole lot goes up at once. Usually, not in rare cases. If you have a hydrogen leak, you have a high potential for oxygen ingress and you need vanishingly small amounts of oxygen for the whole lot to go up at once. That's what an explosion is.

That's what I meant by natural gas burning - that's its normal behaviour when you pipe it somewhere and light it at the exit. Where it meets the air, it burns, but that burning doesn't spread through your pipe or container unless your pipe or container has become mainly air. By contrast, it's very hard indeed to consistently have a controlled burn of hydrogen over decades without a large scale explosion, but with natural gas that's nowhere near as hard.

Hydrogen is low carbon, but it's incredibly dangerous. There are far better low carbon energy solutions that actually work and aren't as catastrophically dangerous. DO NOT get a hydrogen car if they ever make one. DO NOT get hydrogen piped into your home if they're ever stupid enough to attempt this.

Hydrogen looks like a good solution if you're a fossil fuel company - your customers are buying a product that you can label as environmentally friendly while you generate it as usual by burning high carbon fossil fuels. What you don't want if you're a fossil fuel company is solutions where you're irrelevant like solar, batteries, hydro, and the cheapest energy of all - wind.

but you’re not going to get the same output from letting a load of water run down a hill.

Tell that to Canada!

Hydrogen has a higher energy density, very much so, yes, but that's a silly argument against using water and gravity for electricity generation.

This is surely right - we really don't know where the undecided voters will go, and if a week is a long time in politics, five of them is an eternity.

Natural gas burns, but hydrogen explodes.
This is a mistake.
Pump water uphill instead.

I need my arsehole, though.

I mean it's not a lot of fun, but the alternatives are much worse.

If my seat could go Tory or Lib Dem, I’d vote Lib Dem every day and twice on Thursdays.

I nominate you for best written sentence on the Internet today.

The only reason it's not a tax is to save older, more likely-to-vote generations (who have a higher earnings differential from their degrees than younger folk) from having to pay it too, concentrating the cost on the currently-young.

Awful Awful Awful.

And they so very badly need to learn that lesson, yes. Hopefully this nonsense motivates a new generation of young people forming a habit of voting, and of voting against the Conservative Party.

The Conservative Party is notoriously unforgiving of leaders who lose general elections, and currently pathologically addicted to leadership elections. I'd be very surprised if he's not gone by the end of the year even if he does exceptionally well in the general election.

Very much so, yes.

Well in that sense, they've been remarkably successful. Literally billions of public money gone through the VIP lane and unrepaid business loans during covid. Nearly every tax cut giving more money to the already well off and less to below average earners. Wealth inequality soaring to help them feel superior.

OK, but he did claim he was going to stay on as an MP. Come to think of it, that's a bit of an admission that he's going to lose the election and then be replaced as leader of the Conservative Party.