General Election 2019

Is it normal for a constituency not to have a husting in the run up to an election, its a Tory seat with a 20K majority, ?

Such a depressing video. The papers have done a good job.

This echoes my thoughts.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a huge number of 2019 Boris backers are just low political-information voters. Only vaguely more ‘conservative’ than the Lib Dem’s but infinity more impressionable.

Polling Day weather in London

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Maybe I'm an old man before my time but if people pull those images away from the tweets they just look 'legitimate'. Too easy to be taken seriously for a cheap laugh.

They might be trolling the guardian but taken out of the context they making commentators and politicians look like morons.

This is what came up for me

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Remove the 'www'.

Just go to voteforpolicies.org.uk

Imagine a world without the world wide echo chambers.

Imagine.

I'm sure they have tried compared the leaked documents to the redacted FOI ones and I'm sure they'll have tried plenty of other things to stand them up too. "Reuters has been unable to verify whether the documents are genuine" means exactly that, not that they're questioning their authenticity, there's an implicit 'could well be'. But reporting a story like this would certainly mean digging pretty deep.

I actually used to be on the same team as Jack Stubbs who did the reporting on that. He's currently cybersecurity correspondent, but previously did lots of very strong Russia stories (he speaks fluent Russian and used to be based in Moscow) and is super bright, so he's well placed to report on this.

I don't know if you read this:
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywaydx/nhs-for-sale-labour-documents-leaks

But the Global Justice Now story on how they got the documents really doesn't tie up with them being distributed by Russian botnets.

Should add that I find the unredacted documents worryingly/scarily believeable :/

So they are undoubtedly real?

https://scramnews.com/telegraph-published-same-leaked-trade-documents-as-jeremy-corbyn-claims-russian-disinformation/

The style and contents of the documents certainly aligns with what I'd expect to read. If they are fakes, they are masterpieces.

This is an interesting piece for those worried about / accusing the BBC of bias. I've found it pretty interesting to watch both sides say the BBC has an agenda - as the article says, perhaps that suggests they are doing something right.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/04/bbc-impartiality-precious-protect-election-coverage

I know what you mean.

While some Guardian opinion pieces are definitely complete bullshit, I don't really see the point of playing into the hands of alt-right assholes (I think they call themselves 'classical liberals' here).

Exactly. All so twitter activists can get a little giggle.

https://datalobo.com/mp-earnings/

I read that as mp-earlobes on first glance, looked up at the picture of IDS and thought "Blofeld!"

Given >5M Britons live abroad, I'm surprised how ropey the postal vote stuff is. Mine arrived in the post today and I sent it back but given it usually takes 3-4 working days to get stuff to the UK even in Europe, there's no buffer. They really should find a better system.

Yeah, I too was disappointed. Fortunately my in-laws were visiting so they've taken mine back with them. However, my partner's still hasn't turned up. She registered well within the deadline.

My postal vote card arrived here (France) yesterday.

Mine arrived yesterday and I live in-constituency.

Yours, at least, probably doesn't have quite as far to get back to the election office. That's my main issue. Also for the referendum, by the time the council accepted that my papers weren't coming it was too late to get replacements.