Search results

I'd had McDonald as a key player on FM a couple of seasons before we signed him (I forget which club I had going on that save... Bath City maybe?) so I was very excited to see what the real deal was like. And the real deal turned out to be inconsistent and kind of a dick?

There is plenty of evidence, but the Cass Review cherry-picked what it wanted to get the answer it was established to achieve (ie eliminating longstanding treatment pathways as part of a campaign to make transition more difficult). Studies which found positive outcomes for gender-confirming care...

A joke perfectly pitched for an audience whose favourite film is The Great Escape (and who probably think they helped dig the tunnel if you asked them).

For all Spain's quality they haven't actually created that many clear on-target chances outside of the second goal. Then they've gradually let France back into the game throughout the second half and look increasingly shaky. Still my favourites to win the whole tournament, and this is the best...

Right of the party did worse out of the election than the rest so supposedly the one nation lot are feeling a lot more confident that they have a chance. In which case Tugendhat is a strong candidate for representing that wing. Jenrick’s a weirdo, not sure he has any real base of support.

Yeah it's like looking at the 1931 general election in the UK and going "holy shit, Stanley Baldwin, electoral king." Easy to win 470 seats if you're not standing against half the opposition parties you normally stand against. RN rise is terrifying, but the % for the left and Macronist blocs...

Contrast with the absolute joy among the French squad at last night's French election results.

Switzerland 2 here we go.

Not counting my chickens on this one. Still no women & equalities minister appointed, three days in. Very conspicuous and all the trans people I know are sweating about whether it gets given to one of the "legitimate concerns" muppets.

Mate, I rewatched 1955 as well. Got 1966 on iplayer to look forward to as well when I have a spare evening. When my parents and teachers warned me of the dangers of doing too much acid and ecstasy in my youth, I assume this was what they were worried about.

PR is the norm in most democracies (in various forms) and it works just fine. This idea that coalitions gum things up and nothing gets done isn't based on anything other than outliers like eg Israel or Italy.

ITV and Sky were miiiiles ahead in their coverage all night. (Channel 4 was better too, but only for the pure entertainment value of Nadine Dorries going off the deep end.) BBC was obsessed with Reform all night. They kept missing declarations - not even acknowleding some big ones had happened...

Rewatched the 97 election night in the run-up to Thursday and it was exactly the same kind of dynamic. Vast majority of the chat wasn't about Labour's win (other than to go "shit it's enormous"), it was about who would be left to rebuild the Tories, what the different wings of the party would be...

The Lib Dems have been ruthless. It's so impressive. I know a lot of us were getting carried away hoping that they might end up the official opposition, but only 50 seats between them and the Tories... you usually get 10-20 byelections, retirements, deaths, party switches per parliament, that...

To be fair, France's system is probably worse than ours in some ways - forces people into choosing between the lesser of two evils over and over, which is never exactly encouraging. Combines a lot of the flaws of both the UK and US systems, which is some going.

I'd strongly disagree that a party winning 2/3 of seats with 1/3 of the vote is a healthy democracy in action. Representation is inherent to democratic politics - people have to be able to vote for who represents them in a way that makes their choice count in a substantive way, and the...

The only other election that comes close is 2005, when Blair won with 36%. Historically, 34% is the kind of vote share that means you've suffered a landslide loss. All things are relative, of course, but the disconnect between popularity and seat share is so stark here as to be an unavoidable...

Nah what those elections did was temporarily stop and partially reverse the longer-term trend going back to 1983, when the SDP-Liberal alliance created a three-way split that gave Thatcher her first landslide. Ever since the shares of the vote won by the top two parties has steadily decreased...

As predicted, we are entering a very strange era of multi-party politics which FPTP isn't really capable of handling.

Postal voters tend to be older, it's probably worse for the Tories than any other party tbh.