Suedehead2

I'm delighted that Burnham has stuck to his support for a reform of the electoral system. I hope that the Lib Dems and Greens join his proposed commission. When Farage founded Reform UK his stated aim was electoral reform, but he has been rather quiet on the issue recently. It will be interesting to see whether they join the commission. Clearly, the Tories won't. Ideally, the process will result in a recommendation for a system that Labour, Lib Dems and Greens can all support. If Reform support it as well, it is likely that parties supporting it will receive over 50% of the vote at the next election, making implementation without a referendum easier to justify. I can't see the EU agreeing to allow us to rejoin while we have an electoral system that could see a party with a commitment to leave get a Commons majority with less than one-third of the vote. Therefore, I see electoral reform as a higher priority than Rejoin.

In the seasons covered by the charges Tottenham missed out on the Champions League by one place three times.

This week's ramblings can be found from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

For the third week in a row, there was a tight race at the top of the singles chart this week. However ,one of last week’s contenders has been removed from the battle. Streams of Hugel, Imarl Angel and Ultra Nate’s Movin’ To The Sun have been declining for the last three weeks. This means that it is moved on to the Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR) and the value of the song’s streams are halved. Sienna Spiro’s Great Expectation held a narrow lead in the midweek updates and duly gets a third week at number one. The last song to have a single run of exactly three weeks at number one was Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In and we know what eventually happened to that. In Wednesday’s update Ella Langley’s Chasin’ Texas was ahead of Stella Lefty’s Boston by a little over 100 chart sales. Langley held off the challenge to spend another week at number two while Lefty takes advantage of Hugel’s banishment to move up to number three. Adela climbs eleven places to number four with Nicole Kidman. Dua Lipa’s Training Season remains at number five. Olivia Rodrigo’s The Cure completes an all female top six at number six. Three of those top six have titles which are also the name of a charting act. Prospa and Cloonee entered the chart with Free Your Mind in April this year, eventually taking the song to number six. Almost six months on, it is still in the chart. Now the acts have collaborated again, albeit with the roles reversed. They have also brought on board singer-songwriter Tristan Henry to create Good Girl. The song, which is somewhat lacking in originality, is at number 29. Hugel and Solto return at number 37 with Jamaican (Bam Bam). two much older songs which have already spent time in the top forty this year are back for another go. Robyn’s Dancing On My Own is at number 35 and Mr Brightside is back. The Killers’ signature song is at number 40. Filippino/British singer Beabadoobee remains best known for her role on Powfu’s Death Bed (Coffee For Your Head) which featured her song Coffee. While Powfu seems to have disappeared without trace, Beadaboobee has had three top ten albums, including a number one with 2024’s This Is How Tomorrow Moves. Her success continues with album number four, Pylon, which also tops the chart. The Essential Michael Jackson is at number two for the twelfth ime this year. Olivia Rodrigo remains at number three with You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love. Sienna Spiro’s Visitor is at number four, one place ahead of Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving which returns to the top five after a six-week absence. In one of the weird coincidences that show up occasionally, two of the most successful bands of the 1980s - Queen (whose success began in the mid-1970s) and Duran Duran - both had a drummer called Roger Taylor. Even while working with Queen, the older Roger taylor was recording solo material, releasing his first album in 1981. None of his solo albums performed particularly well until his sixth collection, Outsider, reached number three in 2021. Now he has a second top ten solo album with Violence Insane In A Beautiful World (an incredibly clumsy title) at number six. An orchestral Queen’s most famous song Bohemian Rhapsody was played at a BBC Proms concert last year to mark the song’s half-century. Taylor came on stage to bang the gong at the end. Five of Miley Cyrus’s last six albums all reached the top ten. She has dropped her surname for her new album Bass Persuades. It enters at a relatively modest number thirteen. Another mononymous American, Beck, is at number fifteen with Ride Lonesome. There is still no sign of an end to the stock of unreleased David Bowie material.The Shel Talmy Recordings is a collection of songs recorded in 1965 when Bowie was still a teenager and known as Davie Jones. This new collection lands at number seventeen to give Bowie a 72nd top forty album. Two Liverpudlian acts complete the list of new entries. Echo and the Bunnymen were formed in 1977 and had their greatest success in the 1980s with fabulous singles such as The Cutter, Seven Seas and The Killing Moon. They are at number nineteen with their thirteenth studio album (the first for twelve years) Apples For Isaac. Fellow Scousers Cheap Thrills are at number 23 with their debut album Keep Cheap.

Good question.

Exactly. That was the broadcasters' excuse for excluding the Lib Dems from so many panels between 2015 and '24.

The Lib Dems are the largest third party in the Commons for over a century. That ought to mean they get plenty of news coverage. It's not easy to tell whether the abysmal lack of coverage is down to the party or just a dreadfully biased news media.

An increase in the personal allowance would benefit millions of people., That would be the best way of increasing Capital Gains Tax which would affect far fewer people. It is worth remembering that the last government to make CGT rates the same as income tax rates was a Tory government.

I won't be

Blame auto-correct!

Friday 18th September Brentford 2-2 Chelsea (20:00) Saturday 19th September Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Aston Villa (12:30) Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Arsenal Everton 2-0 Ipswich Town Newcastle United 1-1 Hull City Nottingham Forest 2-0 Coventry City (17:30) Sunday 20th September AFC Bournemouth 2-2 Liverpool (14:00) Leeds United 2-1 Crystal Palace (14:00) Manchester City 2-0 Sunderland (14:00) Fulham 2-2 Manchester United (16:30)

After an unfortunate absence last week, the chart commentary is back and can be found in the Blogs section and from the Forums Index page.

With no recent release making any impact near the top of the chart or threatening to be the new Rein Me In, there was another close race for number one in the singles chart. In Wednesday’s update the top four were separated by roughly 1,600 chart sales. I could have chosen to prepare a separate commentary for each possible top four. However, there are 24 different combinations, so I didn’t. The leader in Wednesday’s update was Sienna Spiro’s Great Expectation which climbed to the top last week and it was still there when the final calculations were made today (Friday). The 20-year-old Londoner had her first top forty hit last year with Die On This Hill. She had one further top forty hit in 2025 and, so far, has had a further four this year. One of the factors determining what fraction of a sale is given to a stream of a song is the type of account held with a stream from a paid-for account having more value than one from a free, advertising-supported account. The numbers two, three and four on Wednesday were so close that their respective positions may well have been determined by what proportion of streams of each song were from a paid-for account. Ella Langley’s one-week number one Choosin’ Texas is at number two.Hugel, Imarl Angel and Ultra Nate remain at number three with Movin’ To The Sun. Stella Lefty’s Boston remains at number four. Dua Lipa’s 2-25 hit Training Season climbs to number five, one place short of its original peak. This week’s top five singles have spent an average of five months in the top 100. Nicole Kidman joins the list of people to have had a hit single and to be the title of a hit single joining the likes of Clint Eastwood. Adela’s song Nicole Kidman is a new entry at number fifteen. TLC’s No Scrubs, a number three hit in 1999, re-enters at number 23. British jazz group Ezra Collective won the Mercury Prize in 2023 but were still deemed eligible for the BBC’s Sound Of 2025 list. Also in 2025 they won Group Of The Year at the Brit Awards. A number one album, however, eluded them with their best performer being a number seven peak with 2024’s Dance. No One’s Watching. That changes this week as their fourth studio album, Here Because Of Hope, sits proudly at the top of the chart. Ezra Collective are the first UK jazz act to have a number one studio album. Most of the rest of the top five are albums that have been around for a while. The Essential Michael Jackson is at number two. Olivia Rodrigo is still at number three with You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love. Sienna Spiro’s Visitor is at number four. The announcement of new tour dates next year and the release of a documentary about last year’s reunion tour sees their albums getting a boost. The Time Flies compilation returns to the top five at number five while (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is at twelve. Definitely Maybe re-enters the top forty at number seventeen. Don't Look Back In Anger, the name of the documentary film, returns to the singles chart at number 30. The list of break-up albums gets a new member this week with the release of Bloc Party’s Anatomy Of A Brief Romance. Singer and songwriter Kele Okereke has described it as an unusually personal album. Reviews of the album have not been great, but it still manages to enter at number six making it six top ten studio albums in seven releases for the band. Roxanne Emery, recording as RØRY, achieves a new high in the albums chart by entering at number eight with Bloodletting, There is another album by someone who uses a single word pseudonym at number eleven. When he was born in Brighton, the man now known as Bonobo was given the name Simon Green.His first four albums all failed to chart but Distance In Static now makes it four top forty albums in a row. The fount of all knowledge that is Wikipedia describes Green Lung as “a stoner / doom metal band”, whatever that is. Their fourth album Necropolitan earns them a UK chart debut at number 25.

Reform are trying to defend the massive donations from two people in two days by comparing the money with the amount Labour has received from millions of members over a period of several years. In the meantime, their leader in Wales (appointed by Farage) has stood down after being arrested. One of his predecessors remains in jail after being convicted of treason.

The Good Friday Agreement specifically allows for a poll if there is consistent support on both sides of the border for a united Ireland. As far as I am aware, that hasn't happened yet.