Iz 🌟

Gold star for this video that very well summarises everything wrong with the last two years of the contest and particularly the whitewashing this year. I really can't see how the contest survives with leaving Israel in at this point.

Very much this. My last few entries had the 'hey, you haven't DNQed this year, don't mess it up now' feeling around choosing them, now I don't have that! Hopefully this means something great, though my flash of inspiration isn't quite there yet.

Quite. Sultana's made some missteps here and I think her ambitions as a major leader of the left are done for the moment, but it's far from the first time undeserved, belittling descriptors have been made about young, action-oriented left-wing female politicians and I've even regularly seen them applied at Sultana herself before. Up to now she was doing a great job at appearing like one of the only MPs in Parliament who actually gave a shit about moral causes and calling to do the right thing in terms that made her seem like one of the only politicians who both wanted to commit to action and for those things to not be terrible. Joining up with Corbyn was a probably necessary strategy because he still had a stranglehold over what should be the popular left in this country, but for inexplicable reasons in his old age he's siding more with these conservative Muslim MPs that should be nowhere near a left movement and letting that power struggle happen, and Sultana should have never let that be a part of the deal - the British left is not and should not be a vehicle for Islamism - not to say that Muslims aren't welcome in the left but as part of a pluralistic movement where their religion doesn't dictate policy, rather than it being all too easy for the popular image of the party to be Muslim-dominant which limits its reach. Hopefully it moves the left beyond Corbyn for good, for all that sneering detractors said that we were beholden to 'Magic Grandpa' circa 2015 and 2021, if anyone on the British left is picking a side in this sorry debacle, it's with Sultana. This party could have been just what the left needed, that is the tragedy, but being too wedded to Corbyn sank it. Indeed, thankfully Zach Polanski is being outstanding on the PR front for the Greens and the worries about vote overlap will now be gone, though my slight reservations about the residual Green Tory/anti-nuclear views stand, I'll be watching them closely in the hopes that they do emerge as the horse to back.

Well, he's already an expert at exploiting the working class.

The frustrating thing is that the popular will for something like this from the public is clearly there, it's just being let down by the politicians that should be responsible for getting it going - letting their own egos get in the way of building a movement. Though something to be said for parties being organic and not launched like one is launching a company (see also. Reform Ltd). Polanski is doing a lot better at building a movement and being a steady, good operating face of it, it's just a shame he's tied to the party structure of the Greens.

This morning, an email went out to people who signed up to the Your Party mailing list, asking them to sign up - set at £55 for a year. All apparently normal and expected with their timetable, I'd have expected they get up paid membership. Sultana posted a show of support for this, glad that over 20,000 people had already signed up as full paid members. This afternoon, Corbyn put out a statement saying that that email was sent in error, that the membership process is still being set up and that anyone who had signed up should cancel their payments. Notably, this statement was signed by all of the independent MPs except Sultana. Sultana's posted a follow-up statement claiming that she's being pushed out of the process, being sidelined by the other MPs, some claims of sexism and that her intention is to safeguard the grassroots movement. Definitely some maneuvering by her to try and retain control I think, though I'm definitely more sympathetic to her vision of what the party should be. It's a disorganised, chaotic, embarassing mess essentially.

Bloody hell. I see what Sultana was trying to do, there was a real risk of it just turning into a conservative Islamist party whose only alliance with the left is that of uniting on Palestine and it looks like the rest of the independent MPs were trying to freeze her out - their only long-term asset. But there's no excuse for such a public bust-up. Polanski's doing well, all the best to him then.

If the US had a proper system of checks and balances, as it is designed to, any presidential administration trying this, to silence criticism coming from journalists, entertainment figures or employees of private companies, would get raked over the coals by Congress, where even party loyalty wouldn't stop this, because voters would see such censorship as disqualifying. Media affected could likely hammer this too. Essentially the negative consequences would be so great for the executive branch that they wouldn't try. Unless they're Trumpian Republicans, who the rest of the political, media and legal class fails to hold to account properly and their 'team' of voters looks past any and all failings.

Those comments as transcribed from the BBC news article on the subject: 'The Maga Gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it' On Trump's antipathy about Kirk: 'This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish' I really struggle to see how anyone could find anything wrong with these, they're certainly not inaccurate - so to for Disney to cancel his show over it is incredibly weak-willed. Hope they get a lot of backlash for it, they should be prepared to defend figures making statements like this from state interference.

Always amuses me when that happens - I like to keep people guessing (plus it gives me great ideas/inspiration for the next Japanese entry when it inevitably comes). Thanks for the votes so far, I enjoyed seeing Eville's brand of metal at Reading Fest, they were on some of the earlier stages that day, so I checked out their new releases after and really liked the hard energy on this one. In the realm of songs that I wouldn't enter to UP but would to Nuggets I suppose. Very pleased to see Ichika Nito, Ankor and LITE doing well so far.

I entered, I thought this seems like an interesting theme and after a brief browse of my electronic sources found something pretty cool and unique.

Incidentally, watching the Last Night of The Proms last night, getting to Rule Britannia, Jerusalem et al, struck me as a great example of the best way to be patriotic, celebrating what makes this country great, for anyone who happens to be here, in the now, and making it a good place to be in the future. Crucially, the racists demanding that divisive rhetoric be attached to that imagery of our country is one of the more heinous side-effects of their bigotry, tainting that which unites those of us who aren't colossal cvnts into a community. This line is again, almost exclusively used by racists, bigots, Reform voters or whoever else who know that they can't justify their heinous views by saying them out loud and so instead pretend that they have been driven to it by supposed crimes of their adversaries. Which is weak, unprincipled horseshit even if it were true so I'm not sure why anyone lets them get away with that justification. Nothing people who are not these racists have done is responsible for them going to a racist criminal's march like SYL's, nor listening to a foreign unelected billionaire like Musk call for a coup and overthrow of our government. It's obvious what the march was for, it's obvious to anyone with a brain what happened there and I'm sorry, anyone who was there is complicit in letting malevolent far-right forces stand in a position of power in our democracy.

I love data. Interesting to see how that clashes with preconceived biases of how the voting goes, like say I only have 1 NQ (not counting this one) in that contest range, which is pretty excellent for me, and yet I'm still destined to NQ out of this semi based on past voting patterns, unless my base is just completely shallow or my focus on my own results blinds me that the average vote received was just better for so many other countries. That sample definitely favouring countries with recent big successes, as it naturally would, though Ajanaeda do look low despite that given their winner is in this range and I'm pretty sure they had a couple of other successes too. On actual song quality/hype I feel Kathaldazia seems a good one for electronic fans to rally behind and Summericia seems like a pretty safe pop consensus.

For all Reform supporters go on about their concern being about criminals, they sure do like to support our home-grown ones like SYL. cretinous flag-shaggers, looking forward to them getting thrown in jail for expressing their opinions oh wait

Oh yeah I meant video games that have versions of that song in it (surprisingly a few!) - considering one of the other bullets is directly a Helldivers reference. Though the cadence of the phrase he used is mocking in the way an antifascist might put it, so it could be just for the song, or it's all irony-poisoned bullshit. As the right are very keen to point out though, it doesn't really matter any more, they've got what they wanted out of it.

Given how internet-poisoned he clearly was, 'Bella Ciao' is likely a reference to a game (seen at least 3 popular ones that it could come from), all the other references are dumb internet phrases. But yeah, the bullets are how they'll twist it because it's hard to find any consistent ideology from an individual like this. Which is definitely turning out to be a pattern from these shooters, isolated males with nothing in their lives besides video games, unsavoury internet communities and conservative family members.

Any politicians have to, though I don't think quite so many British politicians needed to, though it is the biggest story in the world right now. Anyone with any sort of following and/or professional status would be wise to also, if there's any good reason to comment on for them, honestly better to ignore it. I completely agree and there's little chance of fallback coming here but for people on wider social media, the right is hurt, wounded and looking for scapegoats for this, should they not be able to find the killer. Might be best not to give it to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel Really really hope that Horst Wessel is not in fact an apt historical parallel for this event but the reaction of the Trump administration so far is following that playbook.

As were many people across the USA and in large numbers of foreign conflicts who his rhetoric showed no care for and in many cases such as the topic of gun violence, he actively advocated for the same policies that caused their deaths - if you need specific examples he promoted conspiracy theories about George Floyd and denied and obfuscated for Israel on numerous occasions as they kill Palestinians in Gaza. Floyd, the victims of gun violence and Palestinians are all human beings too, and this monster cared not one bit for any of them.

The Democratic lawmakers who were assassinated a few months ago got a tenth of the coverage this will likely get. Kirk's views were abhorrent and his influence among young conservatives was not a positive one. It is ironic he was openly talking about gun violence and downplaying the right-wing support of gun violence in America as he was shot and killed. I would also rather that advanced democracies do not have political violence but America and particularly Republican America and the values that Kirk espoused has enabled this.

Confirmed deceased. Very concerned as to what will be the fallout effects of this, he'll easily be made into a martyr by the American conservative movement.

Trump-supporting conservative commentator Charlie Kirk has been shot at a college event in Utah. This is likely to be a big story.

But as I was saying the literal tens (at most) of people who this affects aren't worth bringing up out of nowhere. 'Won't someone think of the landowners who are being compensated with public money' isn't a huge voting bloc worth NIMBY-ing huge public transport upgrades that affect the whole country over and Labour should rightly ignore them. More broadly, I have no wish to villainise voters, it's the politicians who are really doing evil things, not them, but there is a certain subset of voters who know what the politicians they vote for will do and are willingly and selfishly enabling right-wing populists across the world. Sure, some don't know any better, but the ones who do are effectively lost as far as persuasion and talking to them goes - and as T Boy alludes to, they're very easy to tell apart in online conversations like this, I would be shocked if My Random Music were a supporter of any other party - though I can't quite tell if there's hope for them yet.

Fair bit of blinkered experience you admit to in that post there. To quickly go through them, there were absolutely media attempting to explain a 'balanced' view at the time of the referendum, your political opinions generally show pretty clearly what type of person you are in a way your immigration status does not, and it is really curious that you would make up a person whose house is destroyed by a large infrastructure project and sympathise with them when no one ever mentioned that as an issue (plus where they exist these small amounts of people get compensation) and the amount of people who massively benefit from infrastructure projects being completed is a number of orders of magnitude larger.

I don't exactly like Streeting but there's no doubt he's good on his brief and good at communicating his wants and desires. Notice how health hasn't really been a topic, when it was huge under the Tories, because Streeting is doing good if unspectacular progress there. The YouGov dip for Reform today is encouraging, could be just noise but anything to get those shysters well below 30.