Iz 🌟

nein tbf that's interesting to see, that in its amalgamation it's accounted for most things except the advantage that high votes gives (IMO what makes the contest not feel like exactly the sort of consensus choice that AI tends to favour) and possibly the amount of alt voters in the contest; e.g. there's no way on this earth that Terra is finishing anywhere near bottom 5. will need to think of real odds now

"I'm the objective one in this conversation, I'm not pro or anti anything, my views are the default ones. Also I hate the Labour party with every fibre of my being and will never trust them on anything". Mate, time to check your own biases. It's okay to believe in something, but try and augment that with a reliable picture of how the world looks and what parties are actually doing on your pet issues and how they have moved the needle over the long term, I was always fair to the Conservative government, even if I personally hated most of their key figures and they were normally doing things that I disagreed with, they sometimes had good policy in some areas. Being as such, the only major thing I'm expecting to happen on Thursday is a shift away from Conservative councils. Labour won't even be in the picture for most of it and even Runcorn won't be that crippling, it could even shock the party into responding.

Not exactly a literally liberal policy (very much an 'in my dictatorship' style policy) but certainly an eye-catching one, I haven't often seen a Lib Dem policy be significant news. But they ARE a nuisance, and people being afraid to speak up about public nuisances is a weakening of societal bonds...

Actually yeah mayoral, to go back to one of the more likely Reform victories that Rooney posted way up the thread, it's likely that Reform will win two mayors in Lincolnshire and Hull. Let's take a look at those candidates. In Lincolnshire, they've drafted Andrea Jenkyns (after a kerfuffle about her residency criteria), who you may remember for being one of the architects of Brexit, a low-level but enthusiastic one, and a key member of the Johnson (to the point she gave a middle finger to crowds as she went to his resignation) and Truss governments. Not exactly a break from the Tories and she lives outside the area, but then Lincolnshire is a pretty conservative area anyway. Sure. In Hull it's even worse, the Reform candidate is Luke Campbell, a local lad who's known for being a boxer and Olympic medalist primarily. Of course that means people from the area will vote for him because they know of him and like him. Does he have any political experience? No, so probably nothing wrong to put him in a devolved mayoral position at first asking, right? He seems to have missed all his hustings appointments, so that's not a good sign. Something Reform clearly have asked him to do, because him speaking would probably worsen his chances.

I mean, what do you expect from someone who calls Labour supporters 'commies'*? Labour are not without fault as a government but the metrics of good governance are slowly turning in the right direction because they've been replacing Conservative do-nothings with people who actually care to tackle the scale of the problem in the mechanisms of government, that's why numbers on NHS, immigration, economy etc, while still far from fixed, are showing promising signs to bear fruit later in the term. Not that Liam S isn't right about far left candidates being well intentioned, but outside of a few truly horrendous grifters, most Labour candidates are well intentioned, just likely more pragmatic about what they can achieve. However I am attempting to keep this thread from running away with arguments about national governance, you can do that in plenty of other threads, because it's literally about the local elections. In that it is fortunate for Labour that they are not defending very much this year and instead it is likely Conservative councils that will choose one of three paths, hold onto a dying party as they always have, give over to a likely hard-working Lib Dem council, or be swallowed by the tides of social media misinformation and elect a bunch of Reform cretins. *fortunately if said area is a large city like London, Manchester, Bristol or Brighton, possibly the only places in the UK even the most detached from reality would describe as 'commie centric', there's no election there this year anyway. Except for mayoral in the case of Bristol.

If you care about your area and its council providing good services, good advice is that you should vote for the best 'fix the church roof' type you see on the ballot paper/leaflets the candidates will likely have been dropping around your ward. While this isn't uniform across parties these are often Lib Dems or independents, though certainly possible to be Labour or Conservatives depending on who's got involved with their local area, Reform candidates are rather more likely to be drooling racists with a dodgy history of being the Facebook weird uncle.

Especially discouraging when people use local governance to 'send a message' to national politics, that's not sending much of a message while you screw up your local council for ages, who'll do far more that affects your lives in their 4 year term. Not looking forward to the amount of Reform councillors who shouldn't be running anything getting their own little fiefdom. My one hope is that Reform just haven't been doing well in council by-elections where you'd think they might if their protest vote was going to translate well into local elections. Still, entirely expecting a series of Lib Dem gains and possibly Green gains all across the south to be dwarfed by the media banging on about 'a record night for Reform' with a smiling Farage on the cover photo, regardless of whether or not they took more councils than the LDs off of the Tories (in part because the big story may well be them winning Runcorn). Possibly biggest outcome of this will be Badenoch's hold weakening.

obviously far too many of my shows in that lower rank but I expected that - I'm rewatching/going through Attack On Titan with Jacob right now and he's loving it (plus I'm remembering just how many GREATEST TV MOMENT OF ALL TIME™ moments it has so if I was doing it now I might rank it higher than I did but that's a given, rankings like this are so transient in time). Also all the anime shows I voted for are all very worth it (and AWW at The Expanse just falling short). Avatar: The Last Airbender, the 2005 show is an honestly perfect story of a hero's journey TV show beginning to end, so well-paced, and all future adaptations of it are taboo, 'may your favourite animated show get a Netflix adaptation' is as ever a curse. Looking forward to the day they try ultimate blasphemy with Pokemon (though I haven't heard too much heresy about the Detective Pikachu film, never watched it though). Severance is a name I am keeping an eye on with interest but not started yet, I'm sure I will love it based on what little I have heard about it. Looking forward to seeing which consensus shows further up the rankings I'm into.

ah, bringing you some late night fever dreams and baroque cacophonies

Only losing New Lexico from my votes means I didn't lose much, though shame to lose such a good piece of Finnish pop. also losing A-Konohagakure and Utopia from the other semi wasn't ideal but overall good to see so many of my favourites through, very nicely hosted semi-results Josh.

YES AELANDOR NOT PUNISHED BY VOTING LATE this is one of their best entries in a while, was hoping it'd do the business

Great to be through so early! thank you everyone x Looking mostly good for qualifiers so far, I have seen a good number of faves through already.

looking forward to this, if only to compare the results against the speculation need 'Fortuna' through though, hope it was comfortably in.

The most disappointing thing is that the ruling, quite apart from being stressed that it was not an excuse to attack any group over another (which the media, TERFs and now politicians are roundly ignoring), was just saying that the text of the Equalities Act was not being superseded by the Gender Recognition Act. This is therefore a sign that the language of the Equalities Act needs updating to cover eventualities such as trans people. If the Labour Party had a fucking spine, they would begin working on that legislation to update the law. Instead, they seem to have forgotten they are a government with a huge majority to actually make law, and they are all folding as they, like most other political parties on this aisle, begin the futile task of chasing an ever-shrinking group of voters, who are all going to vote the most reactionary party anyway.

From the outside, an excellent and kindly pope, the Catholic Church has had a great representative for the last 12 years and we can only hope the next is as focused on the topical issue of inequality across the world. RIP. Surviving to make one last appearance at Easter may well have been on his mind. Will also be interested to see what happens at the conclave.

IGORRR - ADHD Two months ago we sent a shitpost (lovable) J-Pop song, last month we sent a shitpost (lovable) folk-metal song, and this month it's the turn of breakcore out of my genre catalogue to get our current brand of whimsy applied to it. Igorrr were last sent by the esteemed Zechonia way back over 10 years ago, but the French genre-bending musician has done a lot since that entry, delving weird and wonderful soundscapes and videos. ADHD is a similarly weird song, using opera, metal, breakcore and baroque sensibilities to produce a unique and enjoyable listening experience. (a note about the video, and this will be noticed if you use the Youtube playlist, it does use AI, which is something I would normally be against, but it's built from the same base that the animator (Meat-Dept) for the video of their 2020 song Very Noise made, and I'll just share what Igorrr's team and Meat-Dept said about that in the video description and let you make your own mind up on it)

oh it's definitely BABYMETAL Su-metal was 15, which is insane enough to be fronting songs like this with such energy, but Yui and Moa were 13 AND doing support vocals both clean and harsh AND credited on lyrics and music. All from being plucked from what was supposed to be a normal idol path, they all did incredibly (and indeed Su, Moa and Momo are still making incredible music in their 20s). shoutout as it's very borderline, to Ado who released her debut 'Usseewa' on the day before her 18th birthday; a song that is essentially the Japanese 'okay boomer'.

putting in a request for Monday for semi 1 then, I'm not sure I can do Sunday.

Interesting insight, thanks for that RFC! I have been minded to keep an eye on Ashfield, it's an interesting place politically and hopefully something gets in the eye of Lee Anderson. Keeping an eye on Cornwall Council, I don't live there anymore but I was acquainted with some in the Cornish Lib Dems back when I did, and it may well go back into their control.

Frightening stuff. This isn't the end either, these TERF groups are going to use this ruling (which it looks to me like they just read the language of the Equality Act and clarified it according to intent of the drafters, who probably did not consider this) as basis to start mandating anti-trans legislation. It's eroding protections for a vulnerable group, ffs.

</3 early hype to Terra Avium from the opposite semi, I felt like I'd heard of Kashiwa before (he soundtracked a rather well known anime film which is probably it) and this sounds like a stunner! semi 1 listenthrough tomorrow sounds great, very interested to get a lowdown of what looks like quite a memorable semi

I know it would open up an unfortunate precedent about the EU "controlling their member states' politics" but I wish they'd just kick Hungary out of the club for stuff like this. It's a more sinister story than most authoritarian nations around the world because it's happening within the supposed democracy sphere. Orbán and his government need to be gone. This is the sort of thing you'd wish there'd be mass protest for.

Would definitely love more of these, indie contests (both the anything-goes UP and the guitar Nuggets) are the best of the extra contests IMO and though I have been trying to cut back on the amount of extra contests I do I'm always up for something like this. though I do need to organise my thoughts enough to choose what to send here, give me a moment.

Locking this thread for now until such time as something substantial (e.g. BBC breaking news alert) comes out about the case, nothing more to be gained from going over tabloid articles about it.

Sure, and there might be an argument for avenues of profitability, potentially including steel tariffs in the future should this actually go into full nationalisation... but I think it's a limited and relatively unimportant point to make right now, as under a nationalised industry, an interim good like steel isn't facing many of the same price pressures as other goods because it can go on in part to be used by other public bodies, and the company's profitability is secondary to its strategic importance, that's why today's legislation went through, which isn't nationalisation, just the Business Secretary now has control over the plant so that the Chinese owners couldn't shutter the plant and halt its important productions. Plus I'm sure Liam is the type of person who likes to see governments do things, and this is a pretty clear example of the government just doing things very effectively when faced with an emergency; it's the type of action I would expect him to support. It's surprising that that is his angle because tariffs aren't even on anyone's radar on this topic, all the major parties are supporting this move, and nationalisation =/= protectionism. Honestly the greater concern is that it's a strategy that goes against the good work that Miliband was doing to move our energy grid more renewable, if it turns out we're continuing to make steel.