Qassändra

Surely they'd be going for NORWAY if anything

Yes, I reckon Miss Li's going to give it a shot too. Surprised she hasn't sooner after writing Don't Stop Believing.

Oh YES I had heard that. Still, we normally have at least a FEW MORE names by now to be getting on with. Though given the rigmarole behind the scenes over David Lindgren and the now PHANTOM CO-HOST I'm guessing it isn't exactly plain sailing at the moment CHEZ SVT

I'd be well up for Eric Saade coming back with a transparent rewrite of Bieber/BloodPop - Friends.

Are we ever NORMALLY this close to artist announcement without there being any rumours whatsoever in the tabloids?! I'm feeling BEREFT! Anyway, time for the ALL-IMPORTANT ANNUAL WISHLIST *.* - SaraHa to return with her Blame It On The Disco to Kizunguzungu's Stay the Night, preferably commencing the perf by DESCENDING ONSTAGE ATOP A GIANT PINEAPPLE - Wiktoria with a literal B*Witched song - A politicised Dolly Style return to avenge the death of Statements - Molly Sandén and Danny to finally take their desperation to win Melodifestivalen to its obvious logical conclusion and enter a duet. Said duet must either effectively be a 2018 take on Carola & Andreas Johnson - One Love (with the exact same levels of barely concealed on-stage hatred) or Danny paying tribute to his If Only You animé lesbian years but with Molly on BVs instead of Therese - Owe Thornqvist - Kalla nätter - Ace Wilder continuing her track record of each of her entries chronologically tracking the different stages of twentysomething lifestyle (Busy Doin' Nothin' = the just-graduated JSA years, Don't Worry = first job but failing miserably at life, Wild Child = professional stability but so disgusted at what you've become you've taken up a habitual drug problem) and coming back with a mildly obnoxious post-spiritual retreat "I understand the world now and also do yoga on Wednesdays" Holland & Barrett tropical house anthem (co-written by Mariette) - SOLO ANINIA - ISA to inherit the earth with a banger finally worthy of her - Benjamin Ingrosso and Pernilla Wahlgren IN THE SAME HEAT - either with a visibly terrified Ben duetting on a Somethin' Stupid rewrite as his mum breaks Geiger counters across Scandinavia through sheer toxic smugness, or HEAD TO HEAD in the greatest televisual stand-off since the Sandra Dahlberg vs Bjorn Kjellman Globen or Bust (preferably featuring extensive tabloid coverage beforehand featuring quotes along the lines of "when Christer first drew me against my son I was shocked, but now I think it's fine - Ben can still qualify if he finishes second" and ending in a stiff hug, a rictus grin, and the most watched murder trial in Swedish history)

It's not an artificial 'good time', it's alleviating the severity of a bad time to stop it spiralling and crashing the economy. Doesn't really store up problems in the long run to put the economy on stabilisers at the worst times and pay it down in the good. And as it goes, you kind of can spend more than you earn forever as a nation's budget goes. France has run a deficit every year since the 60s. France still has a larger economy than we do. Households can't benefit from inflation as a way of reducing debt all that often: countries can.

It should be left where it is but I would've put it at 21 if I were starting from scratch.

Which is the quickest way to bugger an economy. If at the same time as families all around the country deciding they need to cut their cloth and spend less the government also decides it needs to spend less, that has a cataclysmic impact - everyone is spending less in the economy, the government has probably just fired a lot of people or at the very least stopped a lot of contracts or stopped buying things that pay a lot of people's wages in the private sector, which in turn depresses consumer confidence and means people are spending less money - which accelerates the depression. That's the exact time you need the government to step in and spend more, and then cut its cloth in the good times.

Did you miss that whole "dementia tax" thing?

The ONS has already said that the story is bollocks - they're still consulting on how they'll do the question.

Which is why it's a particularly cataclysmic omen for the Tories that Labour was more popular with voters in their 30s and 40s at the last election. More and more of them don't have mortgages and are still renting. The crossover age where Tories start to be more popular than Labour was 47 in June.

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Depends what's in it, but my instinct is no given the rise of deadening originalism in the States - namely, hyper-conservative judges insisting that unless the right was spelled out in the original Constitution then the government has no right to confer it.

ASLEF and the RMT have been striking on a regular basis for my entire lifetime. Not sure why you think Corbyn being elected would make a difference on that one.

:basil:

Well, they're all *racism*, just with action to different degrees. Hatred that manifests itself only in me yelling at you is different from hatred that manifests itself in me killing you. It doesn't mean the former is no longer hatred just because the latter exists.

Well, it did literally define slaves as worth 3/5ths of a person.

As Ren says, I doubt they'll ever actually stop running in London. They'll appeal, during which time they can carry on running, make the necessary changes, and carry on.

Since when was Cecil Rhodes the only person people were trying to remove statues of?

People are entitled to defend themselves, but they aren't entitled to kill, for good reason. If someone hit me and I killed them, I wouldn't be able to just pass it off as self defence, and rightfully so.

Unsurprisingly, I'm of the view that yes, racism does cover more than mass murder, bombings, and burning crosses in front of someone's house.

Strawman alert!

For what - higher support for Remain among over-80s or cohort effects? Because people change their mind over time in response to common arguments that become established? Cohort effects aren't *law*, obviously, otherwise there'd never be any change in voting intentions as people aged - they just mean that viewpoints may be less likely to change over time among certain age groups. There's been a pretty consistent campaign in large parts of the media since about 1992 to portray the EU as something which only comes up with stupid rules, lets in immigrants who take all our jobs, and which we get barely any benefit from. Only the Morning Star and the Spectator opposed EEC membership in 1975. Doesn't take an idiot to work out why a consistent, widespread platform for one side of the argument which was rarely directly challenged (given successive governments - yes, even Blair - were happy to go along with the grain of Euroscepticism and accept its premises in the arguments and approach they took to negotiations on things like the EU rebate etc) would bleed through into stronger opposition to EU membership over time.

Obviously you have to take account for the prejudices and teachings of the time, but plenty of past analysis is highly flawed in assuming the worst standards were universal. To take one example, the debate over removing statues of Cecil Rhodes often sees his actions defended for just reflecting the beliefs of the time, when plenty of people at the time found his murder and pillage of countless Africans in pursuit of land and profit repugnant.

And probably have to pay a fair whack more to retain decent access to the EU market. Which ones have been watered down to fit in with EU standards? We already do. You may recall we put them down to 15% in 2008 and up to 20% in 2011. Sure. But given you cited the 70s as a dark time because of union power and British Leyland - primarily issues because of state aid of this kind - it's a bit weird you're suddenly so keen. Woo! We will still be members of the ECHR after we leave the EU, because they're two different bodies unrelated to each other. What do you count as a real racist? Difficult to measure for obvious reasons, but 1.9 million people like the Britain First page on Facebook which pretty regularly comes out with unambiguously racist material. Let's say half of those liked it just for the sentiment rather than a genuine belief - that's still 900,000, a swing which is the difference between a 1.4 million lead for Leave and a 200,000 lead for Remain.