Iz様 🌟

Metropolitan Boroughs Metropolitan boroughs are an interesting type of government within England. Only occurring with the largely urban areas of Merseyside, Manchester, West and South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and the West Midlands, they are clearly delineated to be for cities and built-up areas. One might think, for those who created them in 1974, a good way to get out from the obsolete county-tier structure for these areas ahead of the time to reform them. Though this may be the time Reform hits them. Any good? No? Meh. This is the map of current control, as you can see, mostly Labour with a couple of minority administrations, and Conservatives still alive in parts of the West Mids, the last election for these was 2022 which makes sense: Also roughly split between electing them all and electing in thirds, can't see much rhyme or reason here, Tyne and Wear are all up except for North Tyneside doing it in thirds, West and South Yorkshire are all up except Leeds and Sheffield also doing it in thirds, West Midlands are all up, but the western two let the side down. At least Greater Manchester is consistent. Four of the metropolitan boroughs, Liverpool, Wirral, Doncaster and Rotherham don't have any election at all. This being in an election where we might have needed Liverpool. Last year the only metropolitan borough up, Doncaster, had 37 of its 55 seats won by Reform - a city containing potential saviour of the Labour Party Ed Miliband for all the good that mattered. The traditional Labour heartlands are here to a very large extent and recent history has proved that large parts of what you see on this map is quite willing to flirt with economic populism no matter which wing it comes from. I expect quite a few councils in this area to show Reform allegiances soon, but Greens also. Either way, metropolitan areas and councils may soon have a lot of councillors from outside the central political spectrum, Manchester electing in thirds could either save them for now, or just cause the tide to slowly change.

Unitary AuthoritiesSo to the the unitary authorities that have elections this year, and again it's a bunch of weird exceptions because of the delaying elections rule. Below, their current composition. Note that some of these have all of their councillors up for election, but most of them are councils that elect in thirds. The faded ones, you can see it if you squint, are the latter. Black is, again, for No overall control and is a mix of minority administrations and odd coalitions. For those not immediately familiar with the location of every town/council in England that's, from west-to-east, Plymouth, Halton, Blackburn with Darwen, Swindon, Isle of Wight, Southampton, Portsmouth, Hartlepool, Reading, Wokingham, West Surrey, Milton Keynes, East Surrey, Peterborough, Hull, North East Lincolnshire, Thurrock and Southend-on-Sea. All councillors The Surrey councils are entirely new, as Surrey is a year ahead of those in the last post, its former district councils are mostly split but have a mix of Liberal Democrat and minority coalitions, expect LD and/or Conservatives here, but potentially any sort of mix really available. Isle Of Wight has a Green-independent coalition that could get swept aside for the island's more normal right-wing shift, this is again a delay from 2025, just with an already existing UA. Thurrock is the same and very likely to be a full-fat Reform council after this. Milton Keynes and Swindon normally elect in thirds but have new boundaries. They could easily be shocks of the election if they turn against their Labour control enough. Third of councillors Part of the benefit of electing in thirds is I suppose to not get swept away by transient political tides, but it generally requires a council to have three councillors per ward. Of the NOCs, North East Lincolnshire has a Conservative minority, Peterborough a Labour minority, Portsmouth a Lib Dem minority, and Southend a Labour/Lib Dem/independent coalition. They of course could easily swing in one way or another and NE Links and Peterborough seem in positions very vulnerable to Reform. Hartlepool, Hull and Blackburn as well from the rest. For Green pickups, Reading or Southampton feels perhaps the most likely of these but I don't expect enough seats to change to change control - can it even? In Reading, Labour have 32 seats currently out of 48, they are standing 17 seats, of which 10 are Labour incumbents. If all of those were to lose, Labour would have 22, but if the Greens, the second largest, were the beneficiaries, they would only have 18. So, in this case, yes, technically Labour could lose control. They probably won't lose every seat they're up for though, unless things have really gotten existential. Maybe a few of these will switch, but mostly from party control to NOC or vice versa.

Indeed, part of the planned restructure is to do away with anomalies like that and instead eventually have roughly equal-size unitary councils everywhere (with names like South West Essex and North East Hampshire). The original 2009 unitary authorities were mostly in much smaller counties population-wise like Wiltshire, Cornwall, Shropshire, and Cheshire was easily split in two. Trend would then be towards most of England outside of maybe the biggest cities eventually under geographically compact and sensible units of roughly 350k-550k people. Map is a new one that YAPMS posted btw, apparently up to date for 2026, though more in parties competing than any new boundaries, their most recent election one didn't have Reform in. https://yapms.com/app/gbr/counties/2026026/blank Will be interesting to see how the rural Greens fare in these and subsequent locals, though I don't know if anything is there that would push them away that wasn't there before if that makes sense.

Oh Cumulonimbia out is very sad even if the prediction sorta saw it coming, lovely track.

Great to be through, thank you all! oh nooo that's a huge loss from SF1 there though with Greenfroze out, not quite a full house for the J-bloc, sad

goes without saying that I am very happy to see a japanese rock girlband with strings through x

ZUTOMAYO qualifying with a 10 minute song also good to see the hosts through ^^

Ennea and Aelandor and Flynnonda all through yay! that's an excellent way to start. finally I am allowed to vote for Ennea in a main contest after liking all of their previous entries so far, will this one keep the pattern?

Mixed predictions for me and quite a few of my favourites across both semis, let's hope as many as possible good ones are in.

Oh that's what that new one was. Very cool for her, I don't know if it's among her best (though she does have a very good baseline) but that should be a huge hit in Japan again for her.

Shots fired at White House correspondents dinner late last night, Trump was in attendance. No one hurt, a 31-year old man has been arrested.

2025 Delayed CouncilsAlso a discrete bunch to take care of all at once, these are the rural councils in South East England and East Anglia that the Starmer anti-democracy machine cancelled elections for last year in dastardly attempts to ensure that Labour's ill-gotten councillors in rural Suffolk would have another year living off the fat of council tax from your grandmother and the local farmers. These are those 6 (blue for Conservative, black for NOC): The only current non-Conservative one, East Sussex, was elected as a Conservative administration, and their majority has been whittled away with by-elections, so essentially these are very, at least formerly, in 2021, Conservative areas. They are also the only 'county councils' up for election this time, as a result of being on the wrong election year, normally this part of the cycle is for district and unitary councils. Of course the main concern and the hoo-hah about delaying them was Reform not being able to make inroads into potentially fertile areas. As such they've so far failed to match the fate of Kent County Council, which has been mired in controversies since electing a Reform administration last year. The reason they were delayed is that England is undergoing a process to replace council and district councils with unitary authorities and as such, Labour instructed these to delay, to avoid more frequent and therefore expensive elections when the new authority comes in in a couple of years. As ever, this was a move that annoyed everybody, allowed opponents to assign unbacked sinister motives of anti-democracy to Labour and achieved nothing of what it set out to do, as they were instructed by the Supreme Court after a legal challenge from Reform to hold these anyway. As such, these will elect councillors for even less time than they were originally set to do so, with most of these new areas (except Sussex, whose new organisation hasn't been decided yet) voting for new councillors to replace these in 2027. For myself, unitary authorities and less levels of local government is not entirely desirable, a trend of more people to manage with less staff and accountability, cutting staff costs because of increasing costs everywhere else that I foresee burdening councils to becoming less and less useful for the average resident - though attempts to unwrangle England's historic complexities of local government aren't entirely unwelcome. Anyway these councils are likely to see a good influx of Reform councillors in a mercifully short term, though wouldn't be surprised to see Conservatives retain hold of Hampshire or one of both of the Sussexes, possibly Lib Dems and coalitions popping up too.

2026 Election PreviewsGoing to hijack this thread to start a number of previews, just a short basic runthroughs of the current state of play and what we might expect to see from the council results in just under 2 weeks from now, splitting it by general area so there's not a big overwhelming load of information. LondonCurrently among the 32 London boroughs, 5 are run by Conservative administrations, 3 Liberal Democrat, 1, Tower Hamlets, is run by local political party Aspire, two are run by minority/coalitions, and all of the rest are Labour-controlled - below the position after the 2022 elections: Might well be a very different map in a short while. With Labour alienating much of their left-wing, city-dwelling base throughout their time in government, much of what would normally be unassailable Labour central London is under threat. Very possible that multiple central London councils go Green - and expect to see a smattering of Muslim independents and yes, even Your Party members in there too. Outside of central London, east and south Outer London is close to the Reform-leaning grounds of Essex and Kent and may well head in that direction, while outer NW and SW seem likely to hold their Conservative and LD areas respectively. YouGov MRP projections, gone with them as they have this nice hatching that shows how close it may be in lots of places: London could look a lot more fragmented than it normally does after this. Suspect it'll attract a lot of the commentary as so many people (and journalists!) live there, and I've done it first because of that, but it'll be far from the only story in this election, though possibly the most hopeful spot for left-wing people, many are already doing calculus for the high-profile London Labour MPs who'll see this and start getting nervy. Outlying voting councils here may be an attraction for any perceived council failures.

When Love Takes Over I might have put somewhere similar, it's certainly good but not the most original song ever, as you say, very 'Clocks'-like. It's good for Guetta, based largely on the strength of his vocalist as ever with him. Do love Kelly's #1 here, it has a really fun instrumental and progression in the song that make it just very likeable, plus this is her at the peak of my liking her vibe, energetic power-pop with a hint of the rock backing still. Still one of her best. Compares very well to her hits on Breakaway. Boom Boom Pow I used to hate I'm sure, but I've come around to it as one of the BEP's more technical and interesting electronic hits. That sonic shift you note that is sort of going on throughout these years from 2008-2010 is one that's sorta hard to appreciate when you're at the epicenter at its time, now it's one clear way to signify something is from this era. That being this creative use of autotune - which may have been a bit of following T-Pain and 808s-era Kanye but this one was an absolute domination of the EDM sound for a few years from here and very interesting from that point of view.

Congratulations Julian, I am very naturally an ABBA fan as probably the artist in among all the lineup I've played the most, but as I've said I really liked how you played it, a great range of some of the best choices for underrated and lesser-played gems that got a chance in this competition, and good use of their big hits when it was required, right down to the very audacious move of indeed saving The Winner Takes It All for the last track, absolutely deserved as almost every round ABBA have been at the top end of my votes (which isn't what would have happened had it been a parade of ABBA hits x). Very well played from Scene and Joseph too, I love how many songs got used from My December for Kelly and it really must be tough to figure out how to survive all this way but a great strategy to get them both this far. I always felt I was underrating Lily in my votes, I do like her a lot, I definitely discovered the most from her out of the finalists in that I already knew most of ABBA and Kelly's songs and most rounds were so strong. And of course thank you for hosting this so well Calum, it's been really fun to take part as a voter after blanking that season 1 was happening at all, and thank you for inviting me to be a judge so I could continue inflicting my opinions on people with ever so slightly more power (the one (1) time we came to a 3-1 decision). Maybe next time I'll have a go at piloting an artist (will fail after series 3 absolutely gets rushed down lmao).

yes let's have ZUTOMAYO winning *.* honestly either of Cumulonimbia or Terra DNQing would be mad ~

see this can't be right I'm normally near the bottom of the odds somewhere but I am very pleased with these and I am taking them, no edit pls let me delude myself I'm onto a big hit thx

I might have put 'Evacuate The Dancefloor' very high, yes it's no 'Everytime We Touch' but it's super fun and Cascada are one of THE acts of late 00s eurodance so very happy having them get a #1. Glad it got a fair way into this countdown anyway. after several #1s I could really take or leave, with the exception that 'Number One' takes me right back to the least credible part of my music taste in that I quite enjoy it for what it is, Run This Town is one that keeps sticking with me. As you say Jim, the battle clap really makes this one, and it allows me to focus in on some very good contrast between the rap verses and a lifting chorus, one of the best rap-pop hits of around this time in my mind.

basically the exact same (though no guarantee we're talking about the same songs of course). good luck everyone!

Mandelson scandal rolls on. Does feel like everyone is starting to narrow down Starmer's escapes a bit following him giving a detail of the appointment yesterday only for the person he sacked now to start contradicting him. Only not a resigning matter immediately because the specifics are hard to follow for gen. public and even people actively aware of the case like myself. At least I think so. Abbott and Thornberry both had good moments over the past few days:

Deadline to register to vote is tonight if there is a local election of any sort in your area. I'll try and do an amateur preview soon. Also Wales and Scotland elections though any Welsh or Scottish posters are welcome to start topics for them.

knew that semi 1 placement looked familiar, get some imagination randomness happy to be the warm-up to the Aeroche comeback again x

123 was a great contest of this year, certainly in contention to be the best one of 2020, of all those highlights you mention in your votes I have a very similar list that I can recall, 'Azure Of The Horizon' is beautiful and of course I still love 'Blood Of The Fang' very much. Very good time for the contest to be this good. love that you entered 'Crab Rave', don't think that really gets old.

just pop hivemind things (vote for my song pls pop bloc)

Brilliant job with Delta Rich, I think that line-up covered so many of her highlights, when she gets it right it's fantastic and this has been a great reminder of her versatility as a singer. Atomic Kitten are very rarely my thing but very impressive to get so deep into the competition with them.