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They're like the can of emergency soup you keep in the cupboard - when you're desperate enough you'll resort to it but the rest of the time it's forgotten about.

Brilliant

That’s a wonderful analogy.

so it may have been the OLE to blame rather than the pantograph

Apparently that is one reason for pantograph cameras on trains. When the wires are damaged the TOC might want to show it wasn't their train at fault. Would a faulty pantograph that pulls down the wires end up with a bill for whoever is responsible for maintaining that pantograph?

later analysis by AI algorithm

There's no reason that it couldn't be live these days.

@Velocio @hippy ^

291 Tory MPs have majorities smaller than the one they just lost in Devon.

By-elections when your party has a massive parliamentary majority are easy. Let's see if that translates to a GE (personally i doubt it).

Surely just a coincidence that Johson is scheduled to be out of the country for 8 days now.
Keeps him out of the press firing line a bit, but will hopefully allow some Tory planning behind his back to get rid.

Not sure what the advantage of wider use of them would be (routine recording during service for later analysis by AI algorithm/Network Rail staff?) but I didn't hear the original interview.

Go back a couple of pages and you'll see @paininthe giving a good explanation

Resigning your job minutes before having to take responsibility for your performance on a public stage is the hero's way out.

1922 Treasurer Geoffrey Clifton Brown to @MishalHusain

• parliamentary party will have to make a judgement as to whether a “satisfactory explanation” for by elections given by PM, “or whether we should actually take steps to have a new PM”
  

Love this:

in 1991 the Conservatives had John Major, a new prime minister who was regarded as competent, unifying and honest, while in 2022 they have Boris Johnson.

From here.

Some of the excuses coming from the Tories right now would make the Iraqi information minister blush.

Dowden is my MP.

Didn't realise Chairman was his current job (well not now obvs), and only just twigged that Nadine Dorris succeeded him as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Maybe that's why he never responded to me over C4 privatisation.

Jesus can you imagine losing your job to her. Feel genuinely sorry for him.

On Johnson resigning/similar; I just can't see it. He jdgaf about what the wider party says, and has enough lackies to prop himself up. Also I think there are still enough "got the big calls right" voters around to make it debatable whether he's toxic or not.

Why would he resign, he has a mandate from the British people?

Turns out they didn't bother to go and exercise it last night though
https://twitter.com/DavidGHFrost/status/1540218121943916550

I find Frost hard to fathom. He was promoted from Whiskey salesman to chief brexit negotiator, totally failed at that and resigned cos he was so out of his depth.....

If I were him I think I'd pipe down and keep my opinions and analysis to myself

(I'm aware of the irony of that statement coming from a place of ignorance and being publicly shared...)

Both were lower than usual turnout, but for his statement in those tweets to be true (we only lost because our voters didn't come out to vote) would (I think) have to assume that everyone who didn't vote, would have voted Tory. Which I doubt.

Feel genuinely sorry for him.

He's a useless sycophantic cunt like the rest of the cabinet. Fuck him off into the sea.

Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. Abraham Lincoln

Both were lower than usual turnout

With the Wakefield one it’s not straight forward, Labour have been 1/100 to win it at the bookies for weeks, that tends to mean people for and against Labour are less likely to turn out as it seen as a done deal.

Labour won the seat by 18%, the last time they did that they were winning elections, it’s very much been a marginal constituency since the Tory’s have been in government.

bookies 1/100?!?!?!? he's a convicted pedophile isn't he?

1/100 not 100/1

Isn't he assuming that the entirety of the drop in turnout was ex Tory voters?

It could just as well have been that all the 2019 Tory voters turned out to vent and other voters tended to stay at home.

Or more likely, broadly similar proportions of each party's 2019 voters didn't turnout.

Dunno, John Curtis has come out making the same analysis