Thankfully we do not have too many by-elections being held because the sitting MP has been murdered. Back in 1990 other parties did NOT stand aside after the killing by the Provisional IRA of Eastbourne MP, Ian Gow, and the LDs went on to take the seat in the October 1990 by-election.
Comments
3,000 UKIP
1,000 for the other assorted (Even further right wing) loons
Oh no, not only are they looking to drop Modern Pentathlon from the Olympics, but even if it gets back in they are removing the most hilarious part of it, the showjumping! Seeing horses refuse to jump was great entertainment.
(Boxing and Weightlifting are also at risk because they are dodgy AF)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/59160490
https://twitter.com/scotfax/status/1489118123420749824
Be interested if our resident PB SNPers are sold on this. Don't think they've commented so far?
Don't have a lot of time for Gorgeous George but enjoyed this tweet:
George Galloway
@georgegalloway
·
33m
If #Scots think #England will pay their pension in the event of #independence then no greater testimony to the collapse of Scotland’s once famous education system could exist. Not to mention our once infamous reputation of a tight-grasp of monetary matters.
(Edit: yep, several other people immediately thought along the same lines quicker than I could post this!)
Its awful for the murdered MP and his family and friends. But the by-election is about who represents the constituency, not how sorry we all are. It should be contested. By all means do it with civility (as always should be the case) but make your case.
(a) HMG has always said it's a contributory scheme - you pay in, you get
(b) HMT said it would cover HMG obligations in the events of independence
(c) in 2014 HMG, I think the DHSS or whatever dept dealt with pensions, was confirming the position when asked.
(d) we're all familiar with former UK citizens being paid their OAP after they emigrate to another country
Of course,it's a Ponzi job, and in reality negotiations would quite possibly trump that. But HMG did make promises more generally.
£20 a month on the mortgage and £50 on the energy....
As you were..
I have no idea how this works, readers should DTOR.
But once it happened in B&S, that's it forever more. The precedent is set and no way is it going to be broken.
A win is a win and that will boost Boris. The main winners tonight though may end up being UKIP, as the main non Tory alternative even 20-30% for them would see them making headlines tomorrow on their hardline 'stop the boats' and anti immigration message. Remember in 2015 UKIP got 17% in Southend West so they have potential voters there
If an MP dies of disease, or a car crash, or a house fire, have a contested election. If they're assassinated, don't.
Even if the Scottish Government had a valid argument (and they don't as there is no pot of invested money to split) events outside their control would result in pensions ending up being their issue very, very quickly.
Please look at Wikipedia for verification, I can't link from this non sophisticated phone!
Absent such agreement, though, then I would expect you'd be right that the precedent will be held to again next time.
Chairman: “I can therefore confirm that, following a meeting of the Raith Rovers board, the player will not be selected by Raith Rovers and we will enter into discussions with the player regarding his contractual position."
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19895851.raith-rovers-fan-raises-10-000-rape-crisis-scotland/
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19896261.david-goodwillie-raith-rovers-apologise-signing-rapist/?ref=ebbn
She stood on the "Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket" - and it would appear everyone else in the constituency played along with the joke.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/wales/4523583.stm
(Badly written as the second paragraph suggests she won only one vote across four constituencies, although later clarified)
Aside: I didn't know you could stand in multiple seats. What happens if you win more than one?
Average bill to rise from £1277 to £1971
M Lewis
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1489182114188824580
Boxing has been pushing its luck for decades. It has ignored innumerable warnings from the IOC to clean up its act and can hardly complain if the ultimate sanction is imposed.
Don't know about weightlifting but I guess you can't compete seriously without chemical assistance.
It just doesn't work regardless of how the Scottish can hope it does
But if you have sufficient renewables capacity, then it is manageable without excessive cost. There's been a lot of back and forth on this; here's recent example:
Response to 'Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems'
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319895138_Response_to_'Burden_of_proof_A_comprehensive_review_of_the_feasibility_of_100_renewable-electricity_systems'
…So what would it cost to maintain an open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) fleet to cover, for example, Germany's peak demand of 80 GW? For the OCGT we take the cost assumptions from [117]: overnight investment cost of 400 €/kW, fixed operation and maintenance cost of 15 €/kW/a, lifetime of 30 years and discount rate of 10%. The latter two figures given an annuity of 10.6% of the overnight investment cost, so the annual cost per kW is 57.4 €/kW/a. For a peak load of 80 GW, assuming 90% availability of the OCGT, the total annual cost is therefore 5.1 billion €/a. Germany consumes more than 500 TWh/a, so this guaranteed capacity costs less than 0.01 €/kWh. This is just 7.3% of total spending on electricity in Germany (69.4 billion € in 2015 [118]).
We are not suggesting that Germany builds an OCGT fleet to cover its peak demand. This is a worst-case rhetorical thought experiment, assuming that no biomass, hydroelectricity, demand response, imports or medium-term storage can be activated, yet it is still low cost. Solutions that use storage that is already in the system are likely to be even lower cost. However, some OCGT capacity could also be attractive for other reasons: it is a flexible source of upward reserve power and it can be used for other ancillary services such as inertia provision, fault current, voltage regulation and black-starting the system. A clutch can even be put on the shaft to decouple the generator from the turbine and allow the generator to operate in synchronous compensator mode, which means it can also provide many ancillary services without burning gas…
I did learn in my reading that in India, candidates are limited to standing in two constituencies, which strikes me as strange - if limiting it, why not limit it to one?
Can't say that they tempt me to Southend!
https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/sir-david-amess-southend-west-6561112
From the Psychedelic Movement candidate:
"The title of Aldous Huxley’s second book on the psychedelic experience was “Heaven & Hell,” I think that equally sums up Southend. Southend is sunsets on the Thames and its dog-mess on the pavements. Acid-trips in Belfairs Wood and knife-crime on the seafront.
Bike-rides along the Brook and a football-team that wrecked itself through delusions of grandeur. Boutique shops and corporate eye ache adverts. Southend has some of the nicest people in the world and plenty of aggressive morons. We’re candyfloss and we’re phlegm. We’re witches and witch-trials."
At worst once trident is impounded they will see sense.
But a bit of a non-issue, surely, in that it would all be part of the negotiations about divvying up reserves and debts. Take on the pension liability and Scotland gets more of the reserves. A negotiating tool depending on each side's expectation of the future liability weighed against immediate cash.
I'd both be sorry to see Scotland go and horrified at the time and opportuity cost of the negotiations at least from a rUK perspective (as I see no real upside for rUK from a break up of the Union) but the reality is that all this will be dealt with in the negotiations.
Putting aside that it's written by economists affiliated to the AEIR (who were behind the GBD) and non-peer-reviewed, there are some HUGE issues:
- It claims to be a meta-analysis, but fails to follow meta-analysis requirements (no objective Risk of Bias measurement, no heterogeneity value)
- They claim to be doing difference-in-difference estimation, and that they have therefore checks whether each study they select uses diff-in-diff but the studies they cite at absurdly high weightings don't use this or even mention it.
- They go through studies and end up claiming that this one or that one have conclusions that are non-intuitive. Their own conclusions are that neither border closures nor lockdowns have any discernible effect. Which implies therefore that Australia and New Zealand were just lucky and their border closures and lockdowns didn't help in any way, which I would see as quite non-intuitive
- It uses as criteria for quality of studies whether they are written by social studies (including economics) or others (including epidemiologists). This means that they weight an obscure study by economists in a journal flagged as a predatory one with a weight of 7,390 (so it swamps all of the other ones in its table, which were weighted at 119, 248, n/a, 26, 11, and 256. As it happens, they've interpreted that article as saying there are no effects.
- The one weighted at 11 finds large effects, but it is seen as low quality because it is a study on epidemiology written by epidemiologists (and therefore low quality) rather than economists (which would be high quality)!
- The study that overwhelms the others actually concludes:
"... The findings suggest that the implementation of less strict intervention measures is not effective in reducing the number of deaths, whereas interventions at higher levels of severity reduce deaths.
In addition, the authors of [18] found that the greater the strength of government interventions is at an early stage, the more effective the interventions are in decreasing or reversing the mortality rate. Findings from [19] also suggest that higher government stringency is a key predictor for the cumulative number of cases. Therefore, quick and early action by the government in imposing strict measures is important in slowing down the spread of the virus."
... and ...
"... This finding implies that a combination of interventions related to a strict lockdown environment and public awareness (such as closures of schools and workplaces, cancellations of public events, travel restrictions, keeping the public informed, testing and contact tracing) was most
likely a more effective measure of slowing down the spread of the virus and the related number of deaths."
I doubt that those clinging to what it says have read it or care about these issues. It's just useful for people to have an outwardly credible response for the "research" method of typing into Google "what I want to be true"
*wasn't this what happened when the Irish Free State got independence?
If we assume a divorce rather than a secession then it seems reasonable to assume that the division of assets would include a pension provision. Whether that is a legacy pension payment from rUK to Scottish pensioners or a value transfer of their pension contributions, it would be something.
Mr. B, not properly. I had a £1 free bet which I stuck on Ferrari at 8, but given the substantial rule changes I'm not inclined to bet so early.
Interesting note on the penalty points.
"State pensions are funded from current state revenue. This sophistry would make the Vote Leave campaign blush."
Donald Cameron, Scottish Conservative spokesman on the constitution, said: "For such senior SNP figures, including the Finance Secretary, to be suggesting pension rights will be unaffected in an independent Scotland is astonishing and blatantly inaccurate.
"It is clear that the SNP are all too happy to spread misinformation as they ramp up their plans for another divisive referendum."
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/independence-pensions-row-snp-insists-26125410