Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th July 2025

[refitman]

Morning all

[Frog222]

Light relief

[Frog222]

Nothing new below on describing the existing situation but some fun on new initiatives: such as dear Zara Sultana and the allotment man plus good interview with Jamie Driscoll on last night's Novara Media ( at 13.51mins) , and of course the possibility of working with the Greenies !

Coogan spoke in Rochdale’s Grade I-listed town hall, which this weekend is hosting a congress of co-operative movements from across the world to mark this year’s UN-designated International Year of Co-operatives.

The actor is a supporter of Middleton Co-operating, a community-led initiative based in his home town, just outside Manchester, which aims to provide locally run energy, banking, social care, housing and other schemes.

He said the government’s focus on attracting investment to major cities had created a “doughnut of neglect” with poorer communities “ethnically cleansed”.

“You look at Manchester, you look at Liverpool, and you go: ‘Wow, look at these shiny new buildings’ and everything looks clean, there’s no crisp bags flying about in the street,” he said.

“The disenfranchised people who lived there before are not there any more. They’ve been ethnically cleansed. They’ve been booted out to the next poor area. So who’s benefiting?”

Coogan urged Labour to breathe life back into towns by empowering grassroots groups to take over neglected buildings, using compulsory purchase orders for example.

“It’s not just the fact that people are disempowered and feel like they have no autonomy. It’s compounded by the fact that these people, these multinationals, are enabled and supported by the government to keep their foot on the neck of working people,” he said.

It was “perfectly understandable” for working people to vote for Farage’s Reform in large parts of England, where many voters feel disenfranchised, Coogan said.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Bwah ha ha.

[refitman]

Go on, tell me Labour aren't extremely right-wing

[Frog222]

completely lawless, dystopian underworld, but on the high street



When I googled the other youtube on the subject was seven years old

[Frog222]

[Frog222]

This is very good, all you need to know about Ben Gvir,

( quite short too )

[refitman]

It's lucky there are no MASSIVE international sporting events happening, in the next couple of years.

[refitman]

This should be EVERY Labour MP, not just a former one

[Frog222]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

With all the horrible things going on at home and abroad I must express my gratitude to ITV for lightening the mood by deciding to show French girls spanking English ladies for almost an hour and a half live on prime time Saturday night TV. I enjoyed it immensely.

[Frog222]

Last lol of the day, sinister !!

[refitman]

With a couple of exceptions, the British public have some terrible taste in music

[RogerOThornhill]

Good morning.

It didn't take much digging to find that the co-founder of Rupert Lowe's 'this really isn't a political party party called Restore would quite like a dictatorship. Shocked!

https://cfdownes.uk/britains-in-decline ... tive-view/

Without a strong leader who can reverse deindustrialisation, neoliberal economic policy and mass immigration, our country seems condemned to a future of being riddled with crime, political strife and social unrest.

Yet perhaps, out of this ongoing catastrophe, renewal will come.

History, after all, has a way of throwing up great men or women when the hour calls for them.

Yes, there would be outrage from some quarters – and many would squeal about the ‘death of democracy’. But young people in particular recognise that political leaders of all parties have made an abysmal mess of running things. No wonder so many believe it’s time for a radical alternative.

It sounds drastic – because it is drastic.

But otherwise we all face the continued rule of grey, miserable politicians with grey, miserable ideas, dragging us towards disaster.

And Gen Z will not tolerate that much longer.

I find it amusing that, naturally, that David Starkey has not only joined up but also that he is on the advisory board!

[gilsey]

Good morning.

One-stop family hubs to be opened in all English council areas
Government announces £500m project to provide single point of access for health, education and wellbeing services

The £500m project will open 1,000 centres from April 2026, meaning every council in England will have a family hub by 2028.

Not sure they've thought this through, sounds great for eg Middlesbrough, but North Yorkshire? It's 80 miles from Scarborough to Skipton. The midpoint is approx York which is ... a separate council area.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ncil-areas

[Sky'sGoneOut]

With a couple of exceptions, the British public have some terrible taste in music

I have to confess I bought two of those singles. Have fun guessing which ones before I reveal all this evening.

[refitman]

They just keep providing ways to hate them and never support them.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I find it amusing that, naturally, that David Starkey has not only joined up but also that he is on the advisory board!

You would have thought with Starkey being an alleged historian he would be able to see the obvious parallels between what's being proposed in that ludicrous screed and Mao's Cultural Revolution where academics like him were offered the choice of re-education or death by their own teenage students. Maybe that's why he's getting his pledge of loyalty in early.

It's possible Rupert Lowe may be tempted to emulate Mao's swimming the Yangtze by swimming the Thames. One would hope he would be prevented from doing so on environmental grounds as the last thing we need is more excrement being introduced to our already polluted waterways.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

They just keep providing ways to hate them and never support them.

And just look at what their actions and the narrative they've pushed for months is encouraging.

[Frog222]

Definite Hate Speech there, surely ?

"" But before Farage starts popping the champagne corks, he might want to read our Whitehall editor Gabriel Pogrund’s exclusive investigation into the Reform MP James McMurdock, who is alleged to have borrowed tens of thousands of pounds under the government’s Bounce Back loans scheme during the Covid pandemic. This is the same McMurdock who first came to national prominence last year when it emerged that he had been convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend in 2006.""

£70,000 ! For at least one of the two companies having no employees ...

https://archive.ph/mw5LK

[refitman]

In the least surprising news ever

[refitman]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Torrential rain and thunder forecast here by the Met Office and BBC pretty much all day and...nothing. A tiny bit of drizzle for 5 minutes at lunchtime. I eventually gave up waiting and begrudgingly watered the garden.

I've never managed to sit through more than about half an hour of a Marvel superhero film, they're just awful, yet intrigued by the bad reviews and the inclusion of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Florence Pugh I just watched Thunderbolts in its entirety and it wasn't half bad. That's not to say it was good but it was better than any of the other dross they've produced. Dreyfuss basically just played a toned down version of her Selina Mayer character from Veep, While Pugh revealed some hitherto unseen comic acting chops. Ironically it could have been the lack of actual superhero nonsense in it that made it watchable.

The two singles I bought (that were mentioned in the video Refitman posted above) were 'Shaddap you face' by Joe Dolce (when I was 9) and '19' by Paul Hardcastle (which I still stand by).

[refitman]

It's been torrential rain all day, here in Barnsley.

I watched most of the Marvel movies, up to Endgame, in the cinema. I thought they were a lot of fun. Had no real interest in them since then though.