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I’m pissed. Not in an alcoholic way for I am still tee-total but in a more angry sense. As I’ve gotten older I believe I’ve become wiser to the world around me. I’ve become more critical of decisions and rather than take them at face-value, tried to look behind the headline to see what the real situation is.

That happened once more again today when I was thinking about the Lib Dems and SNP’s bid at the High Court to get into tomorrow nights ITV debate. The media company have invited the leaders of the Labour Party and the Conservative Party to tell the public why they should be the next Prime Minister. ITV have done this for one of two reasons, one is that they believe that only these two men can get that job or two, that was the only circumstance in which these two men would appear. They knew from 2010 that giving the Lib Dems a platform was potentially an issue.

I surmised to myself that I bet ITV would postpone the debate if Swinson forced to be included because they knew that one or both of the leaders wouldn’t want to share a platform with her. This thought was confirmed in the last line of The Guardian’s write-up of the proceedings:

‘ITV told the court that if the legal challenges succeeded they would postpone Tuesday evening’s election debate.’

So there we have it. ITV made it clear it was Boris v Jeremy or no debate at all. Surely that just sucks and all it does it help keep the two big boys at the top of the tree. This isn’t the America’s Cup where only one boat can challenge the defending champion for victory, this is politics where people should be able to choose who they vote for and public broadcasters shouldn’t get to shape the debate.

Do I think everyone should get a seat at the table? No because as we’ve seen before that actually is no good for anyone. What needs to happen is there be actual procedures in place to decide who gets to stand up on the public airwaves and give us their pitch. Whether that is an average of polls over the past few months or amount of councillors or what, I’ll leave that to other people but for a national party who are fielding enough candidates to win and who are polling in the mid to high teens to be kept out shows the company up for what they are – scared of the bully boys who want to get their own way.

I even think that if Nigel Farage hadn’t of bottled it and stood down his candidates in 317 seats then he should’ve been invited. The Brexit Party won the European elections just six months ago and have been polling in the teens until very recently. So this isn’t just a Lib Dem thing, it is a democracy thing. If ITV and the BBC can only get a debate of Conservatives v Labour then they’ll take it because that is better than nothing in their eyes but in terms of fairness, its a crock of shit.

This is why Sky News should get some appreciation. They didn’t negotiate with Labour and the Tories, they just said we want a three-way debate and here is the date. It forces them to choose whether or not to turn up. Whereas the BBC and ITV just took what they could get. Seeing our public broadcasters acting so scared of the two major parties is depressing to see.

I can understand why Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson are scared of being on a stage with Jo Swinson. They know it’ll legitimise the Lib Dems in the eyes of millions of voters who at the moment are less than enthused by the leaders of the two main parties. Allowing them to pick and choose the time, place and how they debate though gives them all the power and shouldn’t the media be holding them to account rather than be a puppet on their string?

ITV and the BBC have shown the electorate that their number one priority isn’t to give everyone a fair crack of the whip. They just want the inventory. They are playing a huge role in shaping the future of this country and I have no doubt some people there will love that feeling. Others no doubt will be feeling remorseful that they are part of stifling free debate.

Tomorrow night millions will tune into ‘Johnson v Corbyn: The ITV Debate’ and get the feeling that they are the only two players in town. It is a massive leg up for both men against others and is that fair? Some will say that no-one else can form a government so who needs to hear from them but if you keep the other parties quiet then they’ll never make it. Justin Trudeau came from third to win just a few years ago, Emmanuel Macron formed a new party and won just a couple of years back. Change can happen in politics, certainly in volatile times but as long as the media are scared of the incumbents big boys, change ain’t gonna come.

Grump, grump, grump…

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It didn’t come as any surprise when I saw the tweet last night that the former Labour and ChangeUK had announced that he was joining the Lib Dems. The writing had been on the wall for some time and they’ll likely be more dominoes to fall in the coming days. The main reason Chuka wasn’t a surprise was I think he has real ambition in politics and having seen his Labour Party being taken over by the radical left, he needed somewhere that would give him a platform for him to sing from his own hymn sheet.

The story in the Mail on Sunday about him wanting to stand for the Lib Dems in his constituency of Streatham at the weekend had no quotes but obviously came from someone with at least a rough idea into the mind of the 40 year-old. At the point of reading it, I dismissed it due to the lack of on the record quotes but clearly it had some basis of truth but hey, here we are.

Personally I’m relatively laid back about MPs joining the party as long as they are broadly liberal. Chuka has said some extremely nasty things about the Lib Dems in the not so distant past and it is widely believed that he was the instigator of the infamous ChangeUK leaked memo about how to crush Vince Cable’s party. That certainly isn’t a good look and having scepticism along with cynicism about the reasons he’s joined are perfectly valid.

One thing can’t be dismissed however and that he is an excellent orator, good campaigner and the type of person who wouldn’t have looked at the Lib Dems years ago but now realises they are the obvious choice to capture and grow the all important centre ground. The Tories are splitting left almost as fast the Labour are splitting left. The Lib Dems need to grow if they are ever going to recover from post 2010 and to do that you need to attract new voices to the ranks. Holding somebodies past against them forever isn’t fair and if Umunna is fully on board with Lib Dem domestic policies then he’d likely be a fine asset to the party.

One of the biggest questions now is what does he do for the next General Election? Having leapt out of the fire to join the abject failure that was ChangeUK, setting up shop within a political party who could theoretically win his constituency and has other prime London seats available, his political career suddenly isn’t in the free fall that it looked to be not so long ago.

Sticking in Streatham is the clear and most obvious choice. The way in which Helen Thompson, the woman who’d already been selected as the PPC for the seat welcomed him publicly I thought was key. Having MPs join the party is often going to knock local campaigners noses out of joint. Having fought against someone for years and then seeing them waltz in can be infuriating and immensely frustrating.

However there are other options, which are far less palatable on the outside.

In The Guardian today the following was typed:

One Lib Dem source suggested he could stand in Richmond Park, the seat held by the Tories’ Zac Goldsmith but which was won by Cable’s former chief of staff Sarah Olney at a byelection in 2016.

Cable’s Twickenham seat could also become vacant, if the 76-year-old decided to step down at a future general election.

Now I hope to hell heaven that is complete and utter horse shit. Sarah Olney is the right person to be in line to take on Zac Goldsmith the next time voters go to the polls in Richmond Park. Any decision to parachute Umunna in would be extremely counterproductive. The fact Sarah lost her seat by 45 votes in 2017 whilst Vince next door won by going on for 10,000 is a stain on the party. I won’t call it sexist (although I know many others do) but the way that Vince got so much support when he was well on his way to victory whilst Sarah succumbed to a devastating defeat six months or so after having won the by-election is something the party need to ensure never happens again.

Twickenham is also a top seat where if Vince decides to step down, a plan of succession should be put in place and if Chuka wants to apply for it then so be it. What shouldn’t happen if for him to be slid in having had the wheels well and truly greased.

My personal point of view is if any MP from another party (or The Independent Group) want to defect to the Lib Dems and they broadly share liberal values then I’ll happily welcome them with open arms but on one proviso, that they aren’t promised a top seat and instead vow to grow the party where they currently stand (at least in the next election). Should say they stand and lose but apply for another seat next time then that is fair enough but they shouldn’t be given preferential treatment.

The Lib Dems are a pretty broad church and the overwhelming issue that is Brexit is clearly widening the congregation at the moment. Just going after the ‘core liberal’ vote won’t win just like Labour can’t win by harvesting a ‘core Labour’ vote and the same with the Tories. Winning in politics is about appealing to people who wouldn’t usually support you.

Attracting Chuka Umunna may well be a matter of convenience to both parties (for him a chance to keep his political career going and for the party, a chance to add another well known voice and potentially grow the party in a seat that has never returned a Liberal Democrat MP) but if both sides are happy then why not?

So overall I’d like to welcome him to the party. Do I have some concerns? Sure I do but the biggest thing to me is that any talk of him running to Richmond Park gets shut down ASAP. As he says himself, he’s a Streatham kid and he could actually win that seat as a Lib Dem, running for pastures new would not be a good look.

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When you are the self-styled voice of Remain, one of the things you have to do is be consistent in that voting that way is pretty darn important. You don’t see Nigel Farage rail against the European Union and suddenly decide to vote for a party who thinks the EU isn’t all that terrible. When you have a position where you don’t want to compromise, compromising or indeed flat out u-turning is a strange move indeed.

This brings us on to Femi Oluwole, who over the past few days shown that he’s against Labour’s position on Brexit but has given his backing to their Peterborough candidate and decided to vote for them at the EU Elections on Thursday 23rd May.

Now Labour voters who want to Remain will struggle to go to the voting booths in a week or so and enthusiastically vote for the party. Many will do so out of loyalty and sheer habit. However if you are such an extremest and put remaining in the European Union above all other things then surely you couldn’t vote for Labour at this time in good conscience?

Femi took to twitter yesterday and confirmed he’s tactically voting Labour:

He uses the 2014 election results as the backing for his reason. The whole idea that politics haven’t moved on in leaps and bounds since then is absolutely absurd. Holding your nose and voting for the least worst option is something many voters have done in the past but when the party you decide to vote for essentially has a policy of exactly the opposite of what you want then what are you doing?

Labour have had a successful position on Brexit because they’ve been able to have two believable faces. For many they look to Jeremy Corbyn and his desire to move away from the European Union in at least some capacity to show that he is respecting the wishes of the majority of people who voted in the EU Referendum in 2016. For others, they look to people like Tom Watson and Sir Kier Starmer who are advocating a People’s Vote. Two positions that fail to sync up but allows people to believe what they want to believe.

The problem with this position is as people become more polarised, they want more assurances of where political parties stand on the issue. The whole notion of compromise has been flung out of the window as Leavers want to leave no matter what and Remainers the exact opposite. Labour have to pick their lane and run it in now as after two years, people are starting to see through the cracks and distancing themselves from the party’s two positions.

The Brexit Party want out out out. The Lib Dems are saying Bollocks to Brexit. The Tories are mostly saying out but understand that just walking away would be financial suicide. The Green party want a People’s Vote, ChangeUK are a joke and Labour are still trying to dip their toes on both sides of the fence.

Now I have some bias clearly because I’m a member of the Lib Dems but if you go through my archives on this very blog, you’ll see I’m not just some partisan cheerleader for the party. Yet on this issue, the party has a very clear message and has to be one of the best choices for those who feel passionately about Remaining within the EU. Now the Greens and ChangeUK also have stronger Remain leaving tendencies (with the SNP and Plaid Cymru in Scotland and Wales respectively) on that list too. Should you want to vote for any of those parties as a strong advocate of either revoking Article 50 or giving the people a confirmatory vote then that is understandable. If you vote Labour and want either of those things then that doesn’t pass the bullshit test. If you vote Labour on the 23rd and think either of the two things in the previous sentence then you are basically saying that political positions aren’t important, you’ll just vote for the colour rosette you want.

When you see him tweeting about Tony Blair and Nick Clegg in a rather unfavourable light, it does seem to raise the question about where he’s at politically. Is he a person who passionately believes in the European Union (as do Blair and Clegg by the way) or are his leanings more towards Labour (or the Greens) with domestic policy and having them in power actually trumping Brexit as his primary goal?

Lastly as has been widely reported, Ole was on the verge of being a Remain Independent candidate in Peterborough for the forthcoming by-election. He pulled out at the very last minute and has cited his reasons in a column for The Independent here.

None of those reasons are far-fetched and if he doesn’t want to run then he shouldn’t receive any stick but one paragraph just stuck with me:

‘The Labour candidate, Lisa Forbes, would be a far better MP than me – if her party wasn’t still supporting Brexit. She has lived in Peterborough for over 30 years, she’s working class and her policies for fixing the housing crisis are far better than mine (partly because they actually exist). But none of her Labour policies will see the light of day if any version of Brexit happens.’

None of her Labour policies will see the light of day if any version of Brexit happens and yet he’s backing her and her party despite the fact they quite clearly want at least some version of Brexit to happen. The mind boggles.

This is a great example of where Labour are right now. Somehow they are able to attract (or keep – I don’t know Femi’s past voting history) ardent Remain voters despite the fact they want Brexit. If you have a strong belief that Brexit will ruin the country then supporting anyone who advocates it seems be just shooting yourself in the foot on purpose.

What do they say, Turkey’s wouldn’t vote for Christmas but apparently ardent Remainers will vote for Brexit.

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If you are reading this then I suspect there is a decent chance that you know me or at the very least follow me on twitter. In that case you’ll know I’m pretty much a nobody. An insignificant speck that resides on this great vast planet we call the Earth. I have around 1,500 people who follow me on twitter. That isn’t a large number by any means. So in terms of having a social media platform, I have one just like oh so many others, it is just infinitesimal.

This takes me to this past weekend. On Friday night just before I went up the stairs to Bedfordshire, I saw the story in The Sun that Diane Abbott had been photographed drinking from a can of Mojito on public transport. I was seething so much that I couldn’t sleep that night. Oh no, wait a minute, what I actually thought was I can’t believe this is the top story in a newspaper.

The next morning before I arose from my pit that I call bed, I composed a tweet about said story and my thoughts about how it said more about the state of journalism in this country than it did about what the Shadow Home Secretary actually did.

Said tweet is embedded below:

After I hit send, I went about my Saturday morning. Getting up, having a shower, cleaning my teeth, you know the bog standard normal Saturday morning stuff. I left my mobile phone on the floor by my bed blissfully unaware that it was starting to go off repeatedly with notifications.

It got to about half past eight when I finally picked up my phone but still I didn’t notice anything. Strolling downstairs I opened the patio door, took a camping chair into the garden and opened up my laptop to read the overnight news and sort out my fantasy baseball team.

As I opened said laptop, the last page I’d been looking at before closing it down the night before was apparently my TweetDeck. My notification block was streaming with updates. It was quite bewildering. In that hour to an hour and a half between writing the tweet and first seeing my TweetDeck, it had 81 likes. Crazy I thought.

Then as the morning progressed that stream became a torrent. By now I’d noticed and my phone was buzzing constantly next to me. 500 likes, 100 likes, 250 retweets and still going. Every so often someone that I recognised hit the RT button and the notifications would speed up even more. People were replying to my tweet at a far greater rate than I could even consider reading them, let alone reply to their replies.

Most people either wanted to tell me off for buying said newspaper (which I didn’t, the tweet expressively said I had read it online), lambast me for regarding it as journalism or just agreeing with me. A handful did contact me to tell me that laws are laws and she deserves to face further action from the authorities.

The thing that stood out though wasn’t the vast array of opinions but just how much time having a semi successful tweet could take out of you. It makes you appreciate what famous or at least semi famous people have to content with regarding social media. I chose not to interact because I had other things to do on Saturday and didn’t want to be tied to my tiny screen all day. Even by the early evening when the other half and myself went out for dinner, my phone was still beeping away at a rapid rate of knots.

Now I know I could’ve switched off all notifications from that tweet (well I know now…) but it was an interesting insight into how all-encompassing social media can be. Both on Saturday and Sunday nights the notifications were still coming in at a pace so I turned my phone on to silent so I wouldn’t get interrupted.

It is now Tuesday afternoon and my phone has stopped doing its thing. My tweet has been liked and retweeted out. My subsequent pithy comments are once more generally being ignored and rarely interacted with. Normality has returned but for one small moment in time, I wrote something that would appear on over half a million people’s timelines around the world. It wasn’t even that successful in the grand scheme of things but it once more it shows just how powerful this medium is.

If a nobody like me can have his bleary eyed Saturday morning thoughts shown in front of over half a million sets of eyes then imagine just how influential other people are. If that doesn’t scare you then I don’t know what will. The fact we are all exposed to the random thoughts and whims of oh so many people leads me to think this is why we are where we are today. With one third of young Americans apparently not convinced the Earth is round, with a President who lied his way to power, with the Leave campaign having lied their way to victory on the side of a bus. Truth and honesty doesn’t seem to have a place in the world of instant spin and murky truth.

Shit.

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Whilst reading ESPN the other day I came across a link talking about Phil Hellmuth Jr. winning yet another World Series of Poker bracelet and it started taking me back. You see many years ago I would watch a TV show called Late Night Poker, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. It was the first time that Poker had been shown on TV in the UK and it quickly became a late night hit amongst young people.

The under the table cameras brought a unique insight into what was going on and it brought in a brand new wave of poker enthusiasts to the sport. Without these then it would be extremely difficult for poker to ever succeed as a spectator sport, who would want to watch several people sitting around a table and only know what was going on when the cards were turned over? There is a big difference between playing poker and watching it on TV.

Players who appeared on this show, which started nearly nearly two decades ago are still fresh in the mind. The aforementioned Hellmuth won Season 3 and was one of the big stars but people like Devilfish, Ross & Barney Boatman and Ram Vaswani quickly became names and faces that the casual fan would know.

What Late Night Poker did however was slow-play the way in which the viewer would find out exactly what cards all the players around the table had. Instead of just showing all hands on screen, which is the norm nowadays, the producer would only show one or two hands, putting the person at home in the position of trying to work out what they might do if they were in the position of the players whose hand we hadn’t seen.

In 2017, Josh Hesp, a 67 year-old man who runs a caravan park in Bridlington became the second biggest winner from the UK, having secured just over £2,000,000 for his fourth placed finish at the main event. Playing in the Main Event was part of his bucket list and it sure was a change of scenery compared to his local casinos in Hull. Wgilst he didn’t win, this payout is part of the legacy of the original Late Night Poker as its brand of poker, No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em wasn’t very popular in the United Kingdom before the TV show. Since then however it has become the bread and butter version of the card game played across these four nations.

It would help spawn a whole new group of people who would go on to create poker schools or get involved in the internet revolution that has enabled fans of card games, slot games and the like to play from the comfort of their own PC or laptop. One of these website is NetBet Casino. With several video poker options along with a variety of slot games and roulette tables, it is a one stop shop for the online gambler.

Late Night Poker helped create a poker school that I was part of in the early 2000s. The stakes weren’t high, maybe the winner won a bag of doughnuts or a pint from the other players but it was extremely enjoyable. The show was revolutionary and if Channel 4 wanted to bring it back, I’m pretty sure it would be a late night hit once more…

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On Sunday I got a bit riled up. I’d nipped out to the supermarket to grab myself some goodies and dinner. It was a lovely day and the stroll into town was pleasant enough. Nothing in my short trip should’ve fazed me nor tripped me up. Yet well, it did.

Walking towards the supermarket, I noticed a man, woman and two kids walking in front of me. I didn’t think twice about them but moments later, I watched as the dad veered out from the right hand side of the walkway to the left. Immediately I knew exactly what he was going to do. Sipping the last dregs out of his KFC drink, he simply lobbed the cup into the mud by the river. I was aghast and full of rage. So much so that I very nearly yelled out at him.

Why people litter is just beyond me, it truly is. I have never littered and have no understanding of why anyone would. The worst bit wasn’t that he’d thrown his rubbish into the mud but that his two children were both of very impressionable age. If they see their dad acting in such a loutish manner then they’ll believe that acting in that manner is totally acceptable. Not less than five seconds later, he’d have passed a rubbish bin outside the shop.

For a minute or so I was berating myself for not saying something but then what was the best case scenario for doing such a thing? Maybe he would’ve listened, understood and promised to do better in future, therefore showing his kids a valuable lesson that littering is not ok. That alas would not be a realistic outcome.

The realistic best case scenario would be a string of obscenities followed by the word off. Another very plausible outcome would’ve involved a punch or two heading in my direction and that certainly was what I wanted and nor would that have been good for the watching kids.

Walking home I decided that I’d made the best decision but isn’t it a sad indictment of society that people are scared to intervene when people are acting boorishly? Carrying your rubbish to a bin isn’t exactly a hardship and you can’t go a couple of minutes without passing one around shops. Those who treat the planet with such clear and obvious disdain are really rather selfish. Whilst the planet struggles with what mankind is doing to it, he’ll be fine as he’ll be long gone before the effects are fully felt but what about his children and their children?

This blog has very little point bar wondering why some people act the way they do. I just don’t understand it…

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