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The Times is either getting leaked a lot of false stories about Labour, making things up or the people involved are lying

A rumour I've seen floating around Twitter is that the Murdoch press offered support for Labour in exchange for not doing Leveson 2.0. The rumour is they refused - and the barrage of stories last week was the response.

Also, daft (now deleted) tweet from Abbott last night - 'more lies from Starmer'. I had a lot of sympathy for her but I'm finding it wane rapidly.

It feels like this is the reset to me. She'll be free to stand, she'll decide not to, she'll get gushing praise from all concerned, dignified end to her career, everyone's a winner.

What an almighty mess tho eh.

Clearly all this blocking/suspending of the prominent left leaning Labour candidates is going to piss a lot of people off - but will it make for more effective government? I could really do with our governing party not tearing itself to shreds and instead focus on trying to make things a bit better all round.

I'm generally sympathetic to Starmer in both policy and strategy, and I think his arguable overcorrection to the centre is (almost) entirely justified by the 2019 GE results. So don't mistake what I'm about to say for ideological or factional disagreement. Because to me what's more important is principle, and the principle should apply to everyone.

But the process of parachuting ideological allies into safe seats is very rarely done with good governance in mind. It's done to create allies for the leader of the party, to make their life easier when they want to get stuff done, votes passed, etc. You could argue that's the same thing - I'm sure that's what the leader would argue - but it isn't, not really, and I'll explain why in a moment. That was the case when Corbyn did it, and it's the case now Starmer is doing it.

And the problem when leaders consider ideological allyship - before whether or not a person is the best candidate for the job - is that you end up giving seats to liabilities. And those liabilities end up damaging the party, and party unity, and our reputation, sooner or later.

Luke Akehurst is on the opposite side of the party to Claudia Webb, but they're both liabilities who would never have been chosen had factionalism not been front and centre in the process. Neither belong anywhere near a safe seat. Both betray bad judgement (imo) and their behaviour amounts to more of a risk for the party than the value of the allyship to the leadership. This is the key problem with factionalism, and every Labour leader has it, to one extent or the other. Some are better at it than others, that's all.

They need to offer Abbot a peerage and hope she takes it

I think it would be really difficult for them to do after some of the stuff Abbott has said over the last few months. Accusing Starmer of a 'purge' against leftwing candidates, verifying a story without confirming it with the leadership first, directly contradicting Starmer's position on R4 last week - I would love for it to happen but I think it'd make Starmer look too weak. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't do it.

Do you think Faiza Shaheen was also phished? And that it was a coincidence that she received official news after the news broke in the Times?

Just done some reading up on this and I think Faiza is a different kettle of fish to Abbott - she liked a bunch of posts including one which suggested that "professional organisations" were mobilising people to attack those who criticise Israel. She may be a decent person and a decent candidate but I can absolutely see why she would not be a candidate.

Unfortunately there is a factional element to this so there I think it's possible in this situation that one or other Labour faction may have leaked it to the Times. But I don't think that applies to Abbott for the reasons I already outlined.

If you accept that there are "Labour people" who believe this, it seems likely to me that they would also want to let the Tory swing voters know that they (the party) have refused to let her run.

Sure, but this feels more like cockup than conspiracy to me. If Starmer wanted this message to go out, he would've simply confirmed the rumours yesterday instead of denying them. He didn't do that.

I don't disagree with you on the other MPs, but I think Abbott's case is different. From what I can tell the agreement was for her to get the whip back, then stand down of her own accord, and the party would issue gushing praise - a decent compromise. It's shame it isn't happening.

It seems much more likely to me that someone in the party fucked her over and she learned about it from the Times.

I thought that at first too - I assumed someone on the left of the party leaked it to damage the right of the party (my own bias/factionalism speaking out there). Then I spoke to someone on the left of the party who thought the exact opposite - that the right of the party leaked it to damage the left. And that's when I realised - no faction benefits from the 'leak' - if it is a leak. There's no reason why either faction would do it. The only people who benefit from it are Times journalists and those who are anti-Labour. So I think it's much more likely that it was Times journos phisihing, and knowing that Abbott would believe an unsourced story because she thinks Starmer is a cunt. Which she's entitled to think! But it clearly has made her easily playable by the media.

Incidentally, my position is that Abbott is not solely to blame, but that she shares some measure of blame for how this has panned out, with the greater blame owned by the leadership. I don't think that's an unreasonable position.

No, I think it's a clusterfuck all round.

Labour should've processed the complaint quicker, and Starmer should've made her options clearer, earlier. This has dragged on for ages and could've been sorted months ago, and it wouldn't have risked the campaign. Poor strategic management. He should've been briefed better on R4 when he said the complaint would complete in June, when it had already completed.

But Abbott isn't blameless. She shouldn't have been firing broadsides at the leadership this whole time. She shouldn't have confirmed rumours to the Times / Pike without confirming them with her leadership first, especially not on the day when Labour were announcing their big plans for the NHS.

I like Diane Abbott - despite her not being a very good constituency MP (in my direct experience, which I'm happy to share), she's an important national MP and an important part of Labour, and historically she has been an asset.

But she got played by those Times journalists, who knew she disliked Starmer enough to believe the worst and give them a juicy quote before bothering to check whether it was true.

That's how she's ended up in a situation where she's quoted yesterday as follows:

7:30am “Although the whip has been restored, I am banned from standing as a Labour candidate.” https://x.com/joepike/status/1795706932478742757

9:54: "I am ... dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate." https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1795740459085750561

This is strictly liability territory and it only makes it less likely she'll be allowed to stand as a labour MP, which until yesterday I would've considered a shame. Now I think it's inevitable.

According to Joe Pike she confirmed to him by text that the times headline (that she’d been barred from standing as an MP) was correct.

https://x.com/joepike/status/1795706932478742757?s=46&t=BuG_nuwCPxJDQugVx93wbw

It was only after starmer said it wasn’t true that she rowed back.

This Diane Abbott story is mental isn't it. Times breaks the story that she's being blocked from standing as an MP, she confirms it. Starmer denies it an hour later, then she rows back from it too. What a mess.

He could've shown up to that interview naked eating a whole salami with his teeth and it wouldn't make a fucking difference in how enthusiastically I'm going to vote for him to get the Tories fucked into a concrete bin.

He doesn't have to convince anyone to vote FOR him. He's 20 points ahead. He's already done that.

He just has to not fuck it up.

Can't be accused of not switching on GB Energy if you only promised to swich on GB Energy.

tapforeheadguy.gif

Yes, exactly - and thank you for the clarification - I know you provided the information I needed in that picture, but this explanation made it sink in. This makes sense to me now. We're not planning to convert the loft so with our two liveable storeys it feels as though we can get regs sign off without the fire door being needed, though it may be best practice. I'll ask the builder what that might cost us. Cheers buddy

Thanks all, this is super useful. It's a two storey property with stairs, and while the stairs don't go directly into the kitchen/diner, they do run parallel to it so I've assumed a door would be needed:

However I do have some familiarity with the equivalent regs for flats and I'm not sure they'd apply in this situation - because the escape route is not on the same storey as the fire risk, the route itself would still be clear unless the fire was really spilling out into the hallway.

Can anyone recommend a third party building regs company who could clarify for me?

Alright all. I'm getting a builder to knock down a wall between the kitchen and the dining room to create a kitchen diner, in a freehold house. I've got a structural engineer to do the calcuations and design, and I have a builder ready to go.

I believe that to obtain building regs sign off, I would need to be able to isolate the kitchen with a fire door. If that's correct, I won't be able to obtain building regs sign off, because the design as is won't allow it - it's an open space.

But if in 10 years time I wanted to obtain building regs sign off by re-designing and installing a new fire door etc - would it possible for me to do this using historic pics of the work as evidence it was done right? Or should I just give up on the idea of ever getting building regs work approval for it?

Surely Breitling and Omega need a swap?

Aaah I misunderstood. The guy in the suit comes in for it in this thread - par for the course. Just Labour culture I think, we eat our own.

Appreciate that - can't pretend I didn't initially feel a bit like that myself, but it was pretty funny (even if I'm not sure it was fair!).

I know I paid about £250 for my complete teardown and rebuild with progress pics and all - but that's clearly at the top end of the scale, and the watch I sent was absolutely battered, not even running. I'm sure a basic clean lube and service is much cheaper. There are definitely a few recommendations in this thread so well worth a search.

Gotta be honest I really like the face discolouration - shows its history. You CAN get things refaced but often it makes a watch lose a lot of its charm.

I reckon a new crystal and a service would go a long way to making it very very wearable - it's probably dry as arseholes, and could at least do with a lubing - and you can always reface later if you want to.

I didn't like the film as much as everyone else seemed to at the time, but natural born killers has an absolute banger of a soundtrack - some real 90s classics. I was also re-listening to the Judgement Night soundtrack - loads of original collabs between rock bands and hiphop emcees. Most of them don't work, but the ones that do are pure magic - Faith no More and Boo Ya Tribe, Onyx and Biohazard, Helmet and House Of Pain - absolute fire one and all.

It's beautifully tasteful and they've really worked at making it look amazing, but it also brings out all my class war instincts.

Streeting, are you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?

whether the director has a secret sauce.

I think it's this. The thing about Valhalla Rising is that the whole thing has this atmosphere like the whole shoot was just a relentless fucking slog for all involved, just grim and dirty and cold and stinky and horrible and exhausting. And that'd be horrible for like, a Wes Anderson film, but on this it feels like they just go with it, and it works with the story, and it feels right with the characters. It has such a unique texture to it.

You can either spend a lot on a courier, or spend a lot on packaging - I found buying a guitar box from Amazon was the best approach. Not even parcel force could damage that bad boy.