Brexit, for once some facts.

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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What must be disturbing to those on the left is that the Kensington council election did not result in a labour majority... Considering that it was the site of the Grenfell disaster.
What mattered is that Labour won in London with an overall increase in council seats, while the Tories lost seats and councils. It was the best London Labour result since 1971, solidly reinforcing their two thirds hold on the capital. And the LibDems won back their past three boroughs segment of south-west London and increased their seats elsewhere. The only London party really fretting are the Tories who can't see how they can ever overturn the capital in their favour. The population is too young and too multicultural for that to happen.

Kensington was unlikely to change since it's a borough of two very different halves. The poor half already Labour and the very wealthy half very unlikely to switch to Labour.

I think Labour were hoping for too much though, their targets of winning Wandsworth and Westminster weren't realistic. That they got close in Wandsworth was very good for them in fact, since Wandsworth's Tory council has for decades been exceptionally good by any political standards and they didn't deserve to lose.
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Woosh

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What must be disturbing to those on the left is that the Kensington council election did not result in a labour majority... Considering that it was the site of the Grenfell disaster.
I don't know why you think Labour has not won the local elections last Thursday.
if there were a GE tomorrow, Labour would be the largest party and JC will be PM.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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I don't know why you think Labour has not won the local elections last Thursday.
if there were a GE tomorrow, Labour would be the largest party and JC will be PM.
It's the Tory propaganda machine that's responsible, helped as usual by the media to give a totally false impression.

Watching "The Sunday Politics" today one would have thought the local elections were a Tory triumph, so biased were the interviewers in talking over and shouting down anyone trying to mention any Labour positive factor.
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flecc

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Strange borough - people living in parallel universes just a few streets apart.
We have more like it Tom. In my own borough of Croydon there's some very poor people and living standards in the Old Town and North, but to the south there are gated private estates with homes costing several millions each.
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oyster

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We have more like it Tom. In my own borough of Croydon there's some very poor people and living standards in the Old Town and North, but to the south there are gated private estates with homes costing several millions each.
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Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Charles Booth's London enables you to search the catalogue of over 450 original notebooks from the Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903), view 41 digitised notebooks and explore the London poverty maps.

https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map/14/-0.1174/51.5064/100/0
 
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flecc

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oyster

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......and with a very important airport too! Some things do change.

Tom
I can just imagine Booth doing his work within Gatwick and identifying the areas of extreme wealth (first class lounge, VIP suites) and poverty (cattle class "lounges"). Quite possibly located within metres of each other (I can't remember much of of the geography of the airport). And the clashes of culture/wealth where the poorest passengers can view shops selling handbags which each cost more than their whole trip.
 
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oldtom

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This useless PM can't be far away from retirement from mainstream politics, perhaps at a time not of her own choosing.......please God!

31956580_433998140386231_8013269012706230272_n.jpg

Now, there is that old saw, 'Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!' (Scott's 'Marmion') but liars like May never seem to change and she is now caught up in a mess of her own creation. There are several old adages which might be applied to May's predicament such as the Shakespearean, "For tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his owne petar". from Hamlet......or even, 'When you're in a hole and you want to get out of it, first stop digging!' - heard down my local pub.

This image seems to fit nicely.....

24174300_1892088321104319_8605228132692083013_n.jpg

Which of you will rescue her?

Tom
 
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oyster

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This useless PM can't be far away from retirement from mainstream politics, perhaps at a time not of her own choosing.......please God!
At this time of year it is possible to speculate on which will last longer - the month, or the prime minister?

Having said that, there have been all too many PMs, presidents, etc., who lasted for what appeared unfeasibly long periods. Mugabe, Assad, Zuma, ...

(What is a vicar's daughter doing in such resplendent company?)
 
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oldtom

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I can just imagine Booth doing his work within Gatwick and identifying the areas of extreme wealth (first class lounge, VIP suites) and poverty (cattle class "lounges"). Quite possibly located within metres of each other (I can't remember much of of the geography of the airport). And the clashes of culture/wealth where the poorest passengers can view shops selling handbags which each cost more than their whole trip.
You really do have a vivid imagination but your point is well-made. My reference though, was actually to Croydon aerodrome which was essentially the main London airport after WW2 until it became essential to find somewhere more appropriate to cope with the burgeoning demand for air travel in the early 1950s. Heathrow and Gatwick became the main international air transport hubs in the south of England and that remains the case today.

Tom
 

Danidl

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The following is copied from the irish times of today..... it is part of a business section and written by Chris .Jones.

It is slightly off centre, as might be expected for a bank holiday Monday...

Just before his death, Stephen Hawking apparently repudiated some of his views about time. He used to think that time didn’t have either a beginning or an end. Now, instead of something that has always been around, time could have started with the Big Bang. Time is weird.

In the equations it sometimes doesn’t exist at all and occasionally runs backwards. Some physicists think that our perceptions of time are merely flawed impressions; beliefs that are sincerely held but probably bear little comparison to reality.

Bogus
Our sense of time’s arrow could be bogus. This moment that we think we are living in is all there is; it’s not that yesterday didn’t happen or that tomorrow won’t come, but maybe it’s all ‘happened’, or is happening, all at once, and we merely have this perception of time that helps us make sense of it all.

Substitute ‘Brexit’ for ‘time’ in that preceding paragraph and see if it makes any more sense. I am comforted by the words of another great physicist, Richard Feynman, who once said that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

Brexit and time are now linked in ways that even Nobel Prize winners may find hard to disentangle. With less than 11 months to go, the fundamental equations of Brexit don’t add up.

There are red lines that may or may not run through borders. May deploys time like a weapon, one that sees everything shoved far into the future. The British cabinet delays choosing between two types of customs arrangement.

Each of those two possibilities was long ago rejected by Brussels: one is unworkable the other does not exist. That’s reminiscent of quantum particles: what they are depends on when they are looked at and who is doing the looking.

It continues on ... But you have the ghist....
 
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flecc

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I can just imagine Booth doing his work within Gatwick and identifying the areas of extreme wealth (first class lounge, VIP suites) and poverty (cattle class "lounges"). Quite possibly located within metres of each other (I can't remember much of of the geography of the airport). And the clashes of culture/wealth where the poorest passengers can view shops selling handbags which each cost more than their whole trip.
As Tom says, it was Croydon that had Britain's international airport then. The amusing thing about it was that traffic lights on a local road had to change to red for takeoffs and landings since the runway straddled it. A treat to see for those waiting at the lights. Below is the largest airliner using it in the 1930s, the Handley Page Heracles, with the terminal and control tower behind it:
 

oyster

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As Tom says, it was Croydon that had Britain's international airport then. The amusing thing about it was that traffic lights on a local road had to change to red for takeoffs and landings since the runway straddled it
Many times in the very early 1960s we got stuck on one side of the runway at Prestwick waiting for an aircraft. My goodness they were noisy!
 
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