Mailwatch(ed) Forum

What lessons have you learned from losing your deposit in Denton, Ms Badenoch?

we tried being nice to everybody

Yug wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 7:52 am Why did I just hear Jello Biafra say "Last call for alcohol. Happy hour is now enforced by law"?

I just heard Closing Time by Semisonic when you said that.

This is going to go about as well as Back to Basics, except it's going to be even easier to find Tory parliamentarians who are living lives that aren't particularly integrated with the rest of the population than it was to find Tory parliamentarians who were over the side with mistresses.

I'm reminded when I was on a forum a long time ago that had a BNP lad on it (this rather dates the story). I asked him what he meant by British culture and the best he could come up with was "football and pubs". It'll be an upmarket version of that, perhaps in the spirit of that weird draft of the History curriculum that circulated for a while. Except this time there won't be a Sam Freedman figure in the office to force them to see sense. It'll be written by some Douglas Murray wannabe at Policy Exchange, and Kemi's spads will probably make it worse.

Otters must be assimilated

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 12:35 pm

Yug wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 7:52 am Why did I just hear Jello Biafra say "Last call for alcohol. Happy hour is now enforced by law"?

I just heard Closing Time by Semisonic when you said that.

So it wasn't just me?

I feel slightly better now.

Youngian wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 1:35 pm Otters must be assimilated

Who knew the test of being a hero was whether you were on a banknote or not? Winston Churchill wasn't on the £5 till 2016.

It fills a gap in the Gammon outrage calender between 'they've banned Christmas' and 'not allowed to call chocolate Easter Eggs any more.'

Youngian wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 4:03 pm It fills a gap in the Gammon outrage calender between 'they've banned Christmas' and 'not allowed to call chocolate Easter Eggs any more.'

I thought that was "Where's your Lent message?"

It's on issues like this that Reform will win a ton of councils in May. You can imagine the scene when the new culture warriors rock up to their first council meeting to argue the toss about dinghies and who's on the back of a fiver. "First on the agenda are the three new ride on lawnmowers for the Estates department".

Reform are not doing so well in council by elections as they were. Kemi might get some support back from them, which she’ll doubtless interpret as a sign she’s a genius.

I do wonder who they're appealing to, and where the new generation of MPs will come from. They got rid of the last semi-decent ones in 2019, the new breed will be looking to the R words and the old-school electorate who think of elections in terms of two parties are dying off.

I hope this isn't racist,

davidjay wrote: ↑Fri Mar 13, 2026 8:42 pm I do wonder who they're appealing to, and where the new generation of MPs will come from. They got rid of the last semi-decent ones in 2019, the new breed will be looking to the R words and the old-school electorate who think of elections in terms of two parties are dying off.

The rentier class.

Businessmen "with a sense of destiny".

Kemi does actually have a good policy on stamp duty, sort of. It's a bad tax; but if you just axe it, you're doing in effect a handout to home owners. If you can afford eg £305,000, you currently pay £5,000 stamp duty, with £300,000 going to the vendor. Abolish stamp duty, and you can still afford £305,000. The vendor gets £5k more, and tax revenue goes down. I believe it's genuinely hard to unwind stamp duty in a good way.

History buffs will recall that Churchill was actually replaced by Clement Attlee.

We got an NHS and a large proportion of the modern welfare state.

I don't believe that Kemi has answered the usual "How are you going to pay for it".

I assume she'll take the money of poor kids, who should have known better than to be born to not very well off parents.

What a lightweight chancer.

Bozo might be chasing the Trump money now as an ex-PM, but I don't think that even he would have rushed in as rashly as Badenoch did.