Also there was a double page spread in the mail yesterday about people injured by the covid vaccine. Mail has a circulation or around 1 million so this info is hitting significant numbers of people.
How about BA pilots? I heard they were particularly susceptible?
The crazy bit is that - like MMR - there are simple, massive studies, that demonstrate the vaccines are safe and effective.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
Confidence interval for a proportion (under various assumptions, but let's go with it here - on sample size at least it's ok for the biggest 5) is p +/- z * (p(1-p)/n)^0.5 where p is the proportion, z is 1.96 for 95% CI and n is the sample size.
So for the above (95% CI from random googled calculator, rather than by hand, but supposedly using same method): Lab 35% (28-42%) Con 20% (14-26%) SNP 19% (13-25%)
Given Scotland is a different voting environment, do the assumptions allow for any differences of representativeness the subsample might have?
In other words, a 'North' (England) subsample might be thought a subset of an overall representative UK sample and come in at +/-7%, but an electorally different Scottish subsample might need to have wider margins?
Confession: I suspect Sunak is really rather good at being PM
If only he’d been in charge of Brexit from the start. SIGH
Brexit done by competent people would have been fascinating.
It would either look like 'BRINO' (EFTA or similar) or would have been rock hard, but likely with an extended transition, and a real strategic plan for making up for the acknowledged (as they would have to be by anyone competent) costs of that by finding opportunities from diverging regulations etc.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
The problem with using subsamples to infer things about the population is not so much the small sample size but that the subgroups are not stratified. The polling companies try to make sure their main results match up on the most important variables with the voting population. Lets say these variables are location, age and sex. These are only stratified marginally, ie the location will have roughly the right spread as will age, but not location and age together. This means that the Scotland subsample could be much less representative of the Scottish population than we would normally expect.
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
They all know that I'm based in California, used to work at Goldman Sachs, and run a start up insurance company.
It's very flattering to know there's a file on me somewhere in St Petersburg.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
Confidence interval for a proportion (under various assumptions, but let's go with it here - on sample size at least it's ok for the biggest 5) is p +/- z * (p(1-p)/n)^0.5 where p is the sample proportion, z is 1.96 for 95% CI and n is the sample size.
So for the above (95% CI from random googled calculator, rather than by hand, but supposedly using same method): Lab 35% (28-42%) Con 20% (14-26%) SNP 19% (13-25%)
Brilliant, ta. The maths is WHOOSH over my head, but I get the gist
See also pro_rata's point (which I thought I'd made in my original post but clearly had not) and my reply. Unless the subsample is representative then it's large MoE bollocks rather than large MoE truth.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
About 7% for the larger figures; 6% for Con and SNP, 5% for LDs [using 2 x standard error; standard error = sqrt (p*(1-p)/n)]
So a 95% chance (for each) that the real result falls in the following ranges: Lab: 28-42% Con: 14-26% SNP: 13-25% LD@ 6-16%
Tucker Carlson also sacked from fox news after taking on big pharma.
This - almost certainly - is the reason for the exit of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
In this short monologue he asks the viewers to consider the level of evil that 'the networks' would have engaged in if they were actively promoting drug company products as safe and effective when the evidence (including the clinical trials) showed something else entirely i.e. that the mRNA "vaccines" were damaging (to some) and ineffective for just about everybody that received them.
Remember that it's not just the US media networks that engaged in this activity. The @BBCNews has acted as the UK government's chief propagandist for the vaccines and has played its part in refusing to allow free speech on its government funded platform. The exercise of free speech would have challenged the government's policies, questioned the authoritarianism and suspension of civil rights, and exposed the degree of vested interests in government 'health' regulatory bodies.
In the same way that @RobertKennedyJr has been the subject of character assassination in the United States, @ABridgen has been effectively de-platformed by the big-pharma-owned media and establishment here.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
Confidence interval for a proportion (under various assumptions, but let's go with it here - on sample size at least it's ok for the biggest 5) is p +/- z * (p(1-p)/n)^0.5 where p is the proportion, z is 1.96 for 95% CI and n is the sample size.
So for the above (95% CI from random googled calculator, rather than by hand, but supposedly using same method): Lab 35% (28-42%) Con 20% (14-26%) SNP 19% (13-25%)
Given Scotland is a different voting environment, do the assumptions allow for any differences of representativeness the subsample might have?
In other words, a 'North' (England) subsample might be thought a subset of an overall representative UK sample and come in at +/-7%, but an electorally different Scottish subsample might need to have wider margins?
YOu used to get banned for posting such dribble
I suggest we report the original poster to someone senior within PB. Maybe TSE?
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
Sadly not old chap. I think they see you as a conspiracy theorist and therefore kindred spirit. A kind of less successful Dan Brown meets David Icke.
Perhaps. Yet they are always keen to flatter me, and I am virtually the only one they will actually name, often apropos of nothing. Eg in this case I have never mentioned Wall Street, Pfizer shares etc. Yet i am recruited to the cause?
I am afraid they - or the CEO of the Putinbots - do seem to think I am influential. Or at least worth citing for some reason
My bet is that some computer simply trawls the site and works out which contributors get mentioned the most by others, and I’m near the top. An algorithm decides
Tucker Carlson also sacked from fox news after taking on big pharma.
This - almost certainly - is the reason for the exit of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
In this short monologue he asks the viewers to consider the level of evil that 'the networks' would have engaged in if they were actively promoting drug company products as safe and effective when the evidence (including the clinical trials) showed something else entirely i.e. that the mRNA "vaccines" were damaging (to some) and ineffective for just about everybody that received them.
Remember that it's not just the US media networks that engaged in this activity. The @BBCNews has acted as the UK government's chief propagandist for the vaccines and has played its part in refusing to allow free speech on its government funded platform. The exercise of free speech would have challenged the government's policies, questioned the authoritarianism and suspension of civil rights, and exposed the degree of vested interests in government 'health' regulatory bodies.
In the same way that @RobertKennedyJr has been the subject of character assassination in the United States, @ABridgen has been effectively de-platformed by the big-pharma-owned media and establishment here.
Hancock yesterday was calling for antivax disinformation to be included in the online safety bill. Its a very bad look for Hancock if he doesnt want to allow free and fair debate.
It's a bad look for people to be circulating anti-vax propaganda that could cost lives, but the anti-vax crazies don't seem overly concerned with their public image.
More interested in their bank balances, like John Campbell - who went from providing decent information on the pandemic in year one to leaning hard into the invermectin stuff, pushing conspiracy theories, and full-on antivaxxer disinformation since then. Well, since interest in the pandemic started waning, anyway. In doing so, he went from £152k in his profit and loss account after the first year (when he was largely accurate and interest in the pandemic was highest) to over £800k in his profit and loss account after going antivaxxer.
If you don't mind selling your soul, antivaxxing is very profitable.
Telling people what they want to hear is profitable, shocker*.
Very sad. There are lots of people - probably including some of our erstwhile trolls - who didn't believe the what they spouted, but needed to pay the bills.
Also there was a double page spread in the mail yesterday about people injured by the covid vaccine. Mail has a circulation or around 1 million so this info is hitting significant numbers of people.
1) is pineapple on pizza an ICC registered war crime? 2) if an airplane crashes, because the COVID vaccine killed the pilots, on the Ukraine/Russian border, on which side do you bury the survivors. 3) what is the greatest distance the turret of a Soviet era tank has been lobbed by internal explosion?
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
There are a lot of "points of pride for an Englishmen" that should long have been in the dustbin of history; imo this is one of those. Attachment to Agatha Christie - Bertie Wooster World is not worth the many downsides.
The novelistic world this, like other pasts, creates is a great relaxation and good fun, as a number of recent publishers are discovering to their immense profit. Just as Sherlock Holmes and Trollope is the stuff of a short and glimmering age after the coming of the railways but before the mass motor car (and before WWI and its apocalyptic horrors), so the popular novels (especially crime) of 1925 - 1955 in their own way are doing the same.
Evelyn Waugh on Wodehouse:
Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
The ironic thing is that Waugh was speaking de haut en bas, whereas in fact Wodehouse is by far the greater writer. As posterity is beginning to prove
Yes. Good point. Is the day approaching when Wodehouse can be reevaluated as someone who as well as being a comic genius, was another genius too - who actually had a vision of things as 'all manner of thing shall be well' and stands in company with Mozart's Figaro, Chaucer's Prologue, The Four Quartets, and Austen's Emma.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
There are a lot of "points of pride for an Englishmen" that should long have been in the dustbin of history; imo this is one of those. Attachment to Agatha Christie - Bertie Wooster World is not worth the many downsides.
The novelistic world this, like other pasts, creates is a great relaxation and good fun, as a number of recent publishers are discovering to their immense profit. Just as Sherlock Holmes and Trollope is the stuff of a short and glimmering age after the coming of the railways but before the mass motor car (and before WWI and its apocalyptic horrors), so the popular novels (especially crime) of 1925 - 1955 in their own way are doing the same.
Evelyn Waugh on Wodehouse:
Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
The ironic thing is that Waugh was speaking de haut en bas, whereas in fact Wodehouse is by far the greater writer. As posterity is beginning to prove
Wodehouse must have a claim to bring the finest comic novelist in the English language. I don't think there's any writer whose books are more pleasurable to read.
THE finest, without question
Indeed I’d make him of the greatest English novelists, full stop. Making people laugh out loud with mere print is incredibly hard, and he can still do it many decades after his death. Remarkable
Uh oh, another Cambridge educated lawyer is accused of being a bully.
Officials from the Department of Health have “raised concerns” about Steve Barclay’s alleged conduct towards civil servants, the Guardian has been told.
Sources said the civil servants had informally complained to Chris Wormald, the department’s permanent secretary, about the way they believe they and colleagues have been treated by the health secretary.
They said senior civil servants in the department had privately referred to “bullying” and other “bad behaviour” by Barclay towards his staff since he joined the Whitehall department in July last year. The alleged conduct is denied by Barclay’s allies.
The department said it had not received any formal complaints over the behaviour of its ministers, but did not deny being alerted to concerns informally in the way sources described.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
About 7% for the larger figures; 6% for Con and SNP, 5% for LDs [using 2 x standard error; standard error = sqrt (p*(1-p)/n)]
So a 95% chance (for each) that the real result falls in the following ranges: Lab: 28-42% Con: 14-26% SNP: 13-25% LD@ 6-16%
Same answers - not often you get two people to agree on stats! :wink
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
About 7% for the larger figures; 6% for Con and SNP, 5% for LDs [using 2 x standard error; standard error = sqrt (p*(1-p)/n)]
So a 95% chance (for each) that the real result falls in the following ranges: Lab: 28-42% Con: 14-26% SNP: 13-25% LD@ 6-16%
Are all values within each range equally likely? Or are the middle ones more likely, like a normal distribution?
Also there was a double page spread in the mail yesterday about people injured by the covid vaccine. Mail has a circulation or around 1 million so this info is hitting significant numbers of people.
1) is pineapple on pizza an ICC registered war crime? 2) if an airplane crashes, because the COVID vaccine killed the pilots, on the Ukraine/Russian border, on which side do you bury the survivors. 3) what is the greatest distance the turret of a Soviet era tank has been lobbed by internal explosion?
Don't be stupid, there is no Ukrainian/Russian border, because Ukraine doesn't exist.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
About 7% for the larger figures; 6% for Con and SNP, 5% for LDs [using 2 x standard error; standard error = sqrt (p*(1-p)/n)]
So a 95% chance (for each) that the real result falls in the following ranges: Lab: 28-42% Con: 14-26% SNP: 13-25% LD@ 6-16%
Same answers - not often you get two people to agree on stats! :wink
To paraphrase Zack from The Big Bang Theory
'That's what I love about mathematics, there is no one right answer.'
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
The previous one mentioned me a lot so I don't think it's that.
On the subject of Russian trolls, I am extremely disappointed that we've been downgraded to only rate very boring ones, who do nothing more than spout standard antivax propaganda.
A month or so ago, we had a really smart one, who - sure - had the gmx email address and posted from an ever changing blacklisted IP. But who would contribute intelligently on a range of topics, and would subtly drop in Kremlin talking points.
It really felt like we'd arrived: we'd attracted the best-of-the-best that Russian troll farms could produce.
But now we rate only second or third rankers.
It is truly a sad day for the site.
They may react to the environment.
You can cultivate a bot hareem -> top notch alpha trolls
You get short shrift here -> fast penetration attempt and run away beta trolls.
I wonder if the problem is that we have destroyed all the T90M grade trolls (who thought they were actually T14)
We are now reduced to the T55 trolls, with the dodgy fuel pump and three rusty shells.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
The elderly are very likely to have bus passes, though. Or to postal vote.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
Tucker Carlson also sacked from fox news after taking on big pharma.
This - almost certainly - is the reason for the exit of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
In this short monologue he asks the viewers to consider the level of evil that 'the networks' would have engaged in if they were actively promoting drug company products as safe and effective when the evidence (including the clinical trials) showed something else entirely i.e. that the mRNA "vaccines" were damaging (to some) and ineffective for just about everybody that received them.
Remember that it's not just the US media networks that engaged in this activity. The @BBCNews has acted as the UK government's chief propagandist for the vaccines and has played its part in refusing to allow free speech on its government funded platform. The exercise of free speech would have challenged the government's policies, questioned the authoritarianism and suspension of civil rights, and exposed the degree of vested interests in government 'health' regulatory bodies.
In the same way that @RobertKennedyJr has been the subject of character assassination in the United States, @ABridgen has been effectively de-platformed by the big-pharma-owned media and establishment here.
Nothing to do with the fact that he has cost his employer the thick end of a cool billion with more to come?
He really didn't though - the network execs were mandating they 'respect' their audience by pushing likes and not challenging them.
Yes it's what he wanted to do too, but his bosses were fully invested.
I did like a take that one reason he has been axed is his intental communications whinging about the stock price and so on, with Murdoch likely to look at that and go "Er, what's that to you, mate? You're a talking head, this is my company to worry about".
Confession: I suspect Sunak is really rather good at being PM
If only he’d been in charge of Brexit from the start. SIGH
Brexit done by competent people would have been fascinating.
It would either look like 'BRINO' (EFTA or similar) or would have been rock hard, but likely with an extended transition, and a real strategic plan for making up for the acknowledged (as they would have to be by anyone competent) costs of that by finding opportunities from diverging regulations etc.
Sunak is a much smarter guy and better politician than Starmer, but because the Tories have fucked up so bad - and they really really have - we are going to be replacing a good PM with a probable duffer. Oh well
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
It isn't great, but it is a short term thing. Anyone that gets turned away will come back next time fully equipped to vote. Perhaps there's even a plus in that voting becomes a more important matter.
Everyone asserts that there is little voter fraud in the UK, but really it's currently almost impossible to know. I'd go for fingerprints, but then I've got nothing to hide - well generally - I did once enjoy a pizza with forbidden fruit!
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
I see the government has reached its target for 20,000 new police officers, a pledge made in the 2019 manifesto.
That's pretty shocking. Govt makes good on manifesto pledge is not something you see every day.
If only the police's reputation wasn't in the gutter this might have positive polling implications for the Cons. It still might.
They’re measuring inputs, rather than outputs.
20,000 more officers working on trivial motoring offences and policing ‘hate crime’ on Twitter - while house burglaries, car thefts and street robberies lead to little interest - isn’t going to go down well with the general public.
There are not 20,000 more officers. If I fire 20,000 cops, then reluctantly hire 20,000 cops over a 12 year period, that is not 20,000 more cops.
20,000 -20,000 +20,000 = 0
Basic mathematical error. The correct answer is of course 20,000
Duh yes, I meant zero increase. There are not 20k more officers however you cut it.
Depends on your starting point.
Reality.
A place Braverman has at best a nodding acquaintance with…
The natural starting point would be when the pledge was made not some random date in the past.
The fact that they (sorta) acknowledged they made a mistake and pledged to reverse it is a good thing.
Don’t you prefer pupils who learn from their mistakes and put it right?
I am genuinely touched you think she’s learning from a mistake, rather than desperately correcting a wholly avoidable cockup.
Tucker Carlson also sacked from fox news after taking on big pharma.
This - almost certainly - is the reason for the exit of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
In this short monologue he asks the viewers to consider the level of evil that 'the networks' would have engaged in if they were actively promoting drug company products as safe and effective when the evidence (including the clinical trials) showed something else entirely i.e. that the mRNA "vaccines" were damaging (to some) and ineffective for just about everybody that received them.
Remember that it's not just the US media networks that engaged in this activity. The @BBCNews has acted as the UK government's chief propagandist for the vaccines and has played its part in refusing to allow free speech on its government funded platform. The exercise of free speech would have challenged the government's policies, questioned the authoritarianism and suspension of civil rights, and exposed the degree of vested interests in government 'health' regulatory bodies.
In the same way that @RobertKennedyJr has been the subject of character assassination in the United States, @ABridgen has been effectively de-platformed by the big-pharma-owned media and establishment here.
Confession: I suspect Sunak is really rather good at being PM
If only he’d been in charge of Brexit from the start. SIGH
Brexit done by competent people would have been fascinating.
It would either look like 'BRINO' (EFTA or similar) or would have been rock hard, but likely with an extended transition, and a real strategic plan for making up for the acknowledged (as they would have to be by anyone competent) costs of that by finding opportunities from diverging regulations etc.
Sunak is a much smarter guy and better politician than Starmer, but because the Tories have fucked up so bad - and they really really have - we are going to be replacing a good PM with a probable duffer. Oh well
Many a good potential Cabinet Minister or PM will have missed their chance because their party was screwed. How many Labour MPs in the 80s might actually have had the potential to be good Ministers? We'll never know. Sunak will at least get 2 years in the history books. It's more than most.
The Illegal Migration Bill getting J Maugham-esque reviews from senior Tories themselves: Geoffrey Cox, Iain Duncan Smith and now Theresa May who describes the govt amendments on modern slavery as a ‘slap in the face’ for those who ‘actually care’ about modern slavery.
IDS was labouring point about ministers creating ‘unintended consequences’, while May says she finds it hard to see the amendment as an example of the good faith she thought ministers were acting with. She warns ‘government will be ensuring that more people will stay enslaved’
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
The previous one mentioned me a lot so I don't think it's that.
No I think it is that (see my later post).You are a commenter who gets mentioned by others, more than most, therefore driving the tone and content of the site
I am now pretty sure this is all done by computers - that’s why they bots are so bad. And they probably digitally comb the site for apparently-more-influential or at least referenced commenters to cite in their suicide comment-missions
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
The young need ID cards to prove their age if they want to drink alcohol. This is either a driving license or a specific POA card, are the latter accepted?
The metropolitan are less likely to have driving license but more likely to have passports after contolling for wealth.
The dominant group in this list is going to be the poor.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
The elderly are very likely to have bus passes, though. Or to postal vote.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
I think you are patronising the poor, the young and even (God forbid) the metropolitan. You are saying they are too stupid to a) understand they need ID and get it, b) present it when needed.
If I were lucky enough to look under 25 I would be ID checked to buy an energy drink or a beer. All of the groups you describe offer ID on a regular basis for various things. It is a vacuous argument to try and suggest there is a subversion of democracy and such a divisive suggestion is Trumpian in itself IMO
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
There are a lot of "points of pride for an Englishmen" that should long have been in the dustbin of history; imo this is one of those. Attachment to Agatha Christie - Bertie Wooster World is not worth the many downsides.
The novelistic world this, like other pasts, creates is a great relaxation and good fun, as a number of recent publishers are discovering to their immense profit. Just as Sherlock Holmes and Trollope is the stuff of a short and glimmering age after the coming of the railways but before the mass motor car (and before WWI and its apocalyptic horrors), so the popular novels (especially crime) of 1925 - 1955 in their own way are doing the same.
Evelyn Waugh on Wodehouse:
Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
The ironic thing is that Waugh was speaking de haut en bas, whereas in fact Wodehouse is by far the greater writer. As posterity is beginning to prove
Wodehouse must have a claim to bring the finest comic novelist in the English language. I don't think there's any writer whose books are more pleasurable to read.
THE finest, without question
Indeed I’d make him of the greatest English novelists, full stop. Making people laugh out loud with mere print is incredibly hard, and he can still do it many decades after his death. Remarkable
Pratchet for me. Astonishingly good until the illness.
Every cricket fan knows Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac. The yellow-jacketed books are the sport’s holy text. But if Wisden is cricket’s answer to the Bible, then another book may be the game’s Dead Sea Scrolls.
Cricket by William Epps charted the beginning of the sport in the late 18th century and is so rare that not even the British Library owns a copy. John Arlott, the celebrated BBC Test Match Special commentator had one, however, and that could be about to become the world’s most valuable book on the sport.
Peter Harrington, a rare book seller in London, will be putting Arlott’s on sale next month as part of the Firsts Rare Book Fair at the Saatchi Gallery.
The sellers describe the book as “virtually unobtainable”, so it does not come cheap. It is priced at £225,000. For context, a complete set of Wisden sold at Bonhams in 2008 for £84,000 (£127,000, adjusted for inflation).
“This is for the cricket fan who has everything, but they won’t have this,” Pom Harrington, the owner of Peter Harrington, said. “It has the claim of being the rarest of all cricket books.”
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
The young need ID cards to prove their age if they want to drink alcohol. This is either a driving license or a specific POA card, are the latter accepted?
The metropolitan are less likely to have driving license but more likely to have passports after contolling for wealth.
The dominant group in this list is going to be the poor.
Yes - from the back of my polling card: "An identity card bearing the Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card)" is the fourth item listed.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
I guess the problem for DeSantis is that Disney had such a valuable power over its special district that it really is worth the company taking this as far and as long as it can. Sure, he gets to bash some woke liberals, but it's still at heart a petty dispute he initiated because he didn't like what a company said about something, and it is grinding on and on and on and for what benefit? Putting Disney corporation back in its box? Whoop de doo.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
I think a lot of people probably agree with the final sentence> Just wondering in and giving your name might seem a bit insecure. But it seems to have been implemented in a slapdash way at the very least.
Though in terms of when to introduce if I were introducing voter suppression measures I'd definitely start with a smaller, less important one.
Confession: I suspect Sunak is really rather good at being PM
If only he’d been in charge of Brexit from the start. SIGH
Brexit done by competent people would have been fascinating.
It would either look like 'BRINO' (EFTA or similar) or would have been rock hard, but likely with an extended transition, and a real strategic plan for making up for the acknowledged (as they would have to be by anyone competent) costs of that by finding opportunities from diverging regulations etc.
Sunak is a much smarter guy and better politician than Starmer, but because the Tories have fucked up so bad - and they really really have - we are going to be replacing a good PM with a probable duffer. Oh well
Many a good potential Cabinet Minister or PM will have missed their chance because their party was screwed. How many Labour MPs in the 80s might actually have had the potential to be good Ministers? We'll never know. Sunak will at least get 2 years in the history books. It's more than most.
I'm not sure many good ministers get overlooked. All parties have quite a few people in their ranks that really even their friends wouldn't want to see in charge of things. Sometimes that judgement is wrong - for whatever reason Steve Baker was a bit sidelined and now seems to be a very enthusiastic and effective minister. Diane Abbot was long sidelined, and I think its clear why.
MPs do sometimes get stuck in the junior minister role though. And that's ridiculous.
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
They all know that I'm based in California, used to work at Goldman Sachs, and run a start up insurance company.
It's very flattering to know there's a file on me somewhere in St Petersburg.
There must be a whole team in a windowless office*, reading and rereading every post on PB. Trying to decipher the hidden codes that we use. Attempting to work out the hidden meanings and encrypted messages that we are sending to agents embedded in the field**.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
The idea that a company has "free speech rights" still strikes me as bizarre.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
That's nothing, Hobby Lobby argued that the company itself was religious, in the sense that it was exempted from certain legal provisions if its owners were religious.
Confession: I suspect Sunak is really rather good at being PM
If only he’d been in charge of Brexit from the start. SIGH
Brexit done by competent people would have been fascinating.
It would either look like 'BRINO' (EFTA or similar) or would have been rock hard, but likely with an extended transition, and a real strategic plan for making up for the acknowledged (as they would have to be by anyone competent) costs of that by finding opportunities from diverging regulations etc.
Sunak is a much smarter guy and better politician than Starmer, but because the Tories have fucked up so bad - and they really really have - we are going to be replacing a good PM with a probable duffer. Oh well
Many a good potential Cabinet Minister or PM will have missed their chance because their party was screwed. How many Labour MPs in the 80s might actually have had the potential to be good Ministers? We'll never know. Sunak will at least get 2 years in the history books. It's more than most.
I'm not sure many good ministers get overlooked. All parties have quite a few people in their ranks that really even their friends wouldn't want to see in charge of things. Sometimes that judgement is wrong - for whatever reason Steve Baker was a bit sidelined and now seems to be a very enthusiastic and effective minister. Diane Abbot was long sidelined, and I think its clear why.
MPs do sometimes get stuck in the junior minister role though. And that's ridiculous.
Well, you need to be good, but not too good, to win the eye of a PM.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
The idea that a company has "free speech rights" still strikes me as bizarre.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
So the New York Times shouldn’t have protection under the First Amendment? That’s was, in fact, one of the very early modern cases on freedom of speech.
Every cricket fan knows Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac. The yellow-jacketed books are the sport’s holy text. But if Wisden is cricket’s answer to the Bible, then another book may be the game’s Dead Sea Scrolls.
Cricket by William Epps charted the beginning of the sport in the late 18th century and is so rare that not even the British Library owns a copy. John Arlott, the celebrated BBC Test Match Special commentator had one, however, and that could be about to become the world’s most valuable book on the sport.
Peter Harrington, a rare book seller in London, will be putting Arlott’s on sale next month as part of the Firsts Rare Book Fair at the Saatchi Gallery.
The sellers describe the book as “virtually unobtainable”, so it does not come cheap. It is priced at £225,000. For context, a complete set of Wisden sold at Bonhams in 2008 for £84,000 (£127,000, adjusted for inflation).
“This is for the cricket fan who has everything, but they won’t have this,” Pom Harrington, the owner of Peter Harrington, said. “It has the claim of being the rarest of all cricket books.”
The result of absurd sustained levels of QE and low and ineffective wealth taxes imo. The uber rich are getting richer and have nothing sensible to spend it on. So things like this and property speculation rather than money being recycled into the economy by people with normal household budgets.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
The idea that a company has "free speech rights" still strikes me as bizarre.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
Yes, in America companies have free speech rights which is why they can donate megabucks to the GOP (or in more recent times the Dems as well but that came later). There was a Supreme Court ruling on it.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
The elderly are very likely to have bus passes, though. Or to postal vote.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
I think you are patronising the poor, the young and even (God forbid) the metropolitan. You are saying they are too stupid to a) understand they need ID and get it, b) present it when needed.
If I were lucky enough to look under 25 I would be ID checked to buy an energy drink or a beer. All of the groups you describe offer ID on a regular basis for various things. It is a vacuous argument to try and suggest there is a subversion of democracy and such a divisive suggestion is Trumpian in itself IMO
Do you think most of the 2m, or 5%, of the electorate without passable ID are stupid?
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
The idea that a company has "free speech rights" still strikes me as bizarre.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
Yes, in America companies have free speech rights which is why they can donate megabucks to the GOP (or in more recent times the Dems as well but that came later). There was a Supreme Court ruling on it.
Indeed. The Citizens United ruling is definitely one of the problems.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
The idea that a company has "free speech rights" still strikes me as bizarre.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
Yes, in America companies have free speech rights which is why they can donate megabucks to the GOP (or in more recent times the Dems as well but that came later). There was a Supreme Court ruling on it.
Ah yes, money equals free speech. What could possiby go wrong?
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
The idea that a company has "free speech rights" still strikes me as bizarre.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
So the New York Times shouldn’t have protection under the First Amendment? That’s was, in fact, one of the very early modern cases on freedom of speech.
Insofar as it's the free speech of its journalists and columnists, sure.
A would-be Tory councillor for Ivybridge who suggested the Holocaust would have been less likely if more Jews had guns has been suspended. Conservative hopeful for the Ivybridge West ward on South Hams District Council Stanley Murphy also argued the the Covid vaccination programme was an experiment on the population and some equality programmes in schools are “communism.”
The comments were made on his personal Facebook page during 2021. Another included claims that if parents spent time with their children at rifle ranges it would be “quality family time and gun control all in one".
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
That last sentence is very poorly constructed. Can be interpreted as Ruddick who is married to Sturgeon. Where the row over membership fits in is anyone's guess.
Nota bene, this is a subsample of 174 so I wouldn't get overly excited, wait for the full Scotland polls.
Genuine questions, what is the accepted MOE for sub samples that small? Or are they so small the MOE is effectively 100% and they can be completely wrong?
About 7% for the larger figures; 6% for Con and SNP, 5% for LDs [using 2 x standard error; standard error = sqrt (p*(1-p)/n)]
So a 95% chance (for each) that the real result falls in the following ranges: Lab: 28-42% Con: 14-26% SNP: 13-25% LD@ 6-16%
Are all values within each range equally likely? Or are the middle ones more likely, like a normal distribution?
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
The elderly are very likely to have bus passes, though. Or to postal vote.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
I think you are patronising the poor, the young and even (God forbid) the metropolitan. You are saying they are too stupid to a) understand they need ID and get it, b) present it when needed.
If I were lucky enough to look under 25 I would be ID checked to buy an energy drink or a beer. All of the groups you describe offer ID on a regular basis for various things. It is a vacuous argument to try and suggest there is a subversion of democracy and such a divisive suggestion is Trumpian in itself IMO
And, again, you are deliberately choosing to ignore my point.
There are numerous ways you could essentially guarantee no personation without disenfranchising voters.
Next Thursday, tens of thousands of people will turn up at polling stations without ID and be turned away.
Some will have ID at home (most people don't carry their passport with them). Some will not have ID.
But they will be turned away. To stop a problem that there is no evidence exists.
Not only that, but it's insanely simple to stop personation without disenfranchising voters. Either (a) let people cast provisional ballots that can be "cured" later in the event that the result is close enough or (b) take Polaroid photos of voters and get them to sign the back. In both cases, you'd avoid personation, and avoid disenfranchising voters.
Because, that's the goal right? That everybody who is allowed to vote should able to do so, right?
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
The one thing you can be sure about: any of those moaning about the vote suppression by requiring ID would be the loudest screamers if somebody had impersonated them to vote for Farage. Or Brexit.....
A would-be Tory councillor for Ivybridge who suggested the Holocaust would have been less likely if more Jews had guns has been suspended. Conservative hopeful for the Ivybridge West ward on South Hams District Council Stanley Murphy also argued the the Covid vaccination programme was an experiment on the population and some equality programmes in schools are “communism.”
The comments were made on his personal Facebook page during 2021. Another included claims that if parents spent time with their children at rifle ranges it would be “quality family time and gun control all in one".
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
As it may well dissolve in the near future is it time to start laying the SNP for any coming election?
It is something I discussed in a header last weekend, that independence supporters (circa 45%) will want to vote for somebody, if not the SNP then somebody.
The moment they lose the Short money then they cannot function properly, which will have consequences.
Because it sounds reasonable in theory, that's why even Labour voters back it, but in practice it is going to prevent some numbers from voting who otherwise would, with limited personation prevented. It's not balanced.
Because it sounds reasonable in theory, that's why even Labour voters back it, but in practice it is going to prevent some numbers from voting who otherwise would, with limited personation prevented. It's not balanced.
There is also a big difference between being for and against mandatory voter id and being for or against mandatory voter id being introduced in the way it has been.
Also there was a double page spread in the mail yesterday about people injured by the covid vaccine. Mail has a circulation or around 1 million so this info is hitting significant numbers of people.
How about BA pilots? I heard they were particularly susceptible?
The crazy bit is that - like MMR - there are simple, massive studies, that demonstrate the vaccines are safe and effective.
With MMR, the Yokohama study demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism.
Of course there are. I have some sympathy with the argument that the government shouldn’t have delisted the monovalent vaccines, but it’s clear that vaccination is a good thing
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
As it may well dissolve in the near future is it time to start laying the SNP for any coming election?
It is something I discussed in a header last weekend, that independence supporters (circa 45%) will want to vote for somebody, if not the SNP then somebody.
The moment they lose the Short money then they cannot function properly, which will have consequences.
My feeling is they will find a way to retain the short money unless there's more to this than shambles and conflict of interest.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
As it may well dissolve in the near future is it time to start laying the SNP for any coming election?
It is something I discussed in a header last weekend, that independence supporters (circa 45%) will want to vote for somebody, if not the SNP then somebody.
The moment they lose the Short money then they cannot function properly, which will have consequences.
My feeling is they will find a way to retain the short money unless there's more to this than shambles and conflict of interest.
Maybe, but it will be a long time before their bank balance returns to former heights.
I mean, that is a printing error isn't it? (Or rather drafting error as noneoftheabove notes). They wouldn't intentionally tell people they are giving their own leaflets to they don't need ID, that would be very self defeating.
As I've said before my concern is that turnout is broadly fine for local elections, and the Tories are smashed, so it will be argued the system worked fine and is no big deal.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
As it may well dissolve in the near future is it time to start laying the SNP for any coming election?
It is something I discussed in a header last weekend, that independence supporters (circa 45%) will want to vote for somebody, if not the SNP then somebody.
The moment they lose the Short money then they cannot function properly, which will have consequences.
My feeling is they will find a way to retain the short money unless there's more to this than shambles and conflict of interest.
Seems likely it would sit there until they sort themselves out and then they they will get backdated payments or something. In the meantime they can limp on with people knowing it will get there eventually.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
As it may well dissolve in the near future is it time to start laying the SNP for any coming election?
It is something I discussed in a header last weekend, that independence supporters (circa 45%) will want to vote for somebody, if not the SNP then somebody.
The moment they lose the Short money then they cannot function properly, which will have consequences.
My feeling is they will find a way to retain the short money unless there's more to this than shambles and conflict of interest.
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
The previous one mentioned me a lot so I don't think it's that.
No I think it is that (see my later post).You are a commenter who gets mentioned by others, more than most, therefore driving the tone and content of the site
I am now pretty sure this is all done by computers - that’s why they bots are so bad. And they probably digitally comb the site for apparently-more-influential or at least referenced commenters to cite in their suicide comment-missions
I mean, that is a printing error isn't it? (Or rather drafting error as noneoftheabove notes). They wouldn't intentionally tell people they are giving their own leaflets to they don't need ID, that would be very self defeating.
I mean, that is a printing error isn't it? (Or rather drafting error as noneoftheabove notes). They wouldn't intentionally tell people they are giving their own leaflets to they don't need ID, that would be very self defeating.
As I've said before my concern is that turnout is broadly fine for local elections, and the Tories are smashed, so it will be argued the system worked fine and is no big deal.
Please don't spoil the "Evil Tories are engaged in voter suppression strategy" meme by using logic.
Funnily enough, the more I see the hysteria around this the more I think the real sinister behaviour on this is from the opponents. Let us cynically paint a party as being corrupt (without real foundation) and further erode trust in democracy, and then when the inevitable lower turnout comes from voter apathy then rinse and repeat.
Once again I state; it should not be a problem for honest people to prove who they are in order to take part in a democratic vote.
I see the government has reached its target for 20,000 new police officers, a pledge made in the 2019 manifesto.
That's pretty shocking. Govt makes good on manifesto pledge is not something you see every day.
If only the police's reputation wasn't in the gutter this might have positive polling implications for the Cons. It still might.
They’re measuring inputs, rather than outputs.
20,000 more officers working on trivial motoring offences and policing ‘hate crime’ on Twitter - while house burglaries, car thefts and street robberies lead to little interest - isn’t going to go down well with the general public.
There are not 20,000 more officers. If I fire 20,000 cops, then reluctantly hire 20,000 cops over a 12 year period, that is not 20,000 more cops.
20,000 -20,000 +20,000 = 0
Basic mathematical error. The correct answer is of course 20,000
Duh yes, I meant zero increase. There are not 20k more officers however you cut it.
Depends on your starting point.
Reality.
A place Braverman has at best a nodding acquaintance with…
The natural starting point would be when the pledge was made not some random date in the past.
The fact that they (sorta) acknowledged they made a mistake and pledged to reverse it is a good thing.
Don’t you prefer pupils who learn from their mistakes and put it right?
I am genuinely touched you think she’s learning from a mistake, rather than desperately correcting a wholly avoidable cockup.
Your interpretation is a little uncharitable but not incorrect… but I thought the sacking and rehiring predated her so she’s not really to blame/deserving of much credit?
BBC news at 6 seemed to want to link removing “not proven” with improving treatment for race victims in Scotland. Anyone in Scotland able to point out onto me what I’m missing, because logic suggests that all “not proven” verdicts have reasonable doubt and so would be “not guilty”. I have always been jealous of the “not proven” verdict.
A majority is simply the largest number of people wrong about any given issue at any given time.
As @noneoftheabove has stated, there's a problem and there's the proposed solution.
@JohnLoony may think otherwise but I've yet to see overwhelming evidence there is a serious problem with in-person voting at polling stations.
The fundamental is we should be encouraging people to vote, not discouraging them. Methods of identification need to be sensible and meet the requirement of identification versus the requirement of consistency. There are big holes in what has been proposed and an all-party group should be urgently put together to examine this to see what can be agreed as a concensus across all parties.
The area where I do think we need action is postal voting where there has been documented evidence of fraudulent practice. The dilemma for those of us wanting to encourage voting is it isn't possible for some to get to a polling station but that cannot be an excuse for disenfranchising anyone. However, we have seen how the votes of individuals have been stolen or misrepresented and that has to be eradicated - again, a lot of that is practice within parties and can be mitigated by a broad cross-party agreement on a code of practice for postal voting particularly where care homes and large family groups are concerned as well as and let's be honest about it, those for whom English isn't a first language.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
NEW: Disney sues DeSantis and oversight board after vote to nullify agreement with special taxing district, accusing the Republican 2024 presidential prospect of weaponizing his political power to punish the company for exercising its free speech rights.
BBC news at 6 seemed to want to link removing “not proven” with improving treatment for race victims in Scotland. Anyone in Scotland able to point out onto me what I’m missing, because logic suggests that all “not proven” verdicts have reasonable doubt and so would be “not guilty”. I have always been jealous of the “not proven” verdict.
I saw this bit on the BBC write up of the story. I'm no legal expert, obviously, but even though those found not guilty do declare themselves to be proven innocent and completely cleared, I was under the impression even not guilty doesn't 'prove' that, never mind 'not proven'.
Critics of the verdict also say it can stigmatise an accused person by appearing not to completely clear them and that it can fail to provide closure for victims.
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
Didn't someone on here point that out over a week ago.
Probably, but then the site this afternoon has been full of posters, myself included, pointing out things that we have all pointed out to each other many times over. Very standard.
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
The previous one mentioned me a lot so I don't think it's that.
No I think it is that (see my later post).You are a commenter who gets mentioned by others, more than most, therefore driving the tone and content of the site
I am now pretty sure this is all done by computers - that’s why they bots are so bad. And they probably digitally comb the site for apparently-more-influential or at least referenced commenters to cite in their suicide comment-missions
We should be jointly proud!
My cheeks have gone pink.
Could be a case of Gammonitis, I'd get that checked out.
I see the government has reached its target for 20,000 new police officers, a pledge made in the 2019 manifesto.
That's pretty shocking. Govt makes good on manifesto pledge is not something you see every day.
If only the police's reputation wasn't in the gutter this might have positive polling implications for the Cons. It still might.
They’re measuring inputs, rather than outputs.
20,000 more officers working on trivial motoring offences and policing ‘hate crime’ on Twitter - while house burglaries, car thefts and street robberies lead to little interest - isn’t going to go down well with the general public.
There are not 20,000 more officers. If I fire 20,000 cops, then reluctantly hire 20,000 cops over a 12 year period, that is not 20,000 more cops.
20,000 -20,000 +20,000 = 0
Basic mathematical error. The correct answer is of course 20,000
Duh yes, I meant zero increase. There are not 20k more officers however you cut it.
Depends on your starting point.
Reality.
A place Braverman has at best a nodding acquaintance with…
The natural starting point would be when the pledge was made not some random date in the past.
The fact that they (sorta) acknowledged they made a mistake and pledged to reverse it is a good thing.
Don’t you prefer pupils who learn from their mistakes and put it right?
I am genuinely touched you think she’s learning from a mistake, rather than desperately correcting a wholly avoidable cockup.
Your interpretation is a little uncharitable but not incorrect… but I thought the sacking and rehiring predated her so she’s not really to blame/deserving of much credit?
When we talk about sacking and rehiring, are we talking about the fuzz or Braverman?
That Bridgen response to expulsion is full of classic guilty person tropes. I'm innocent but wont appeal, you found against me so you must be biased and corrupt, etc.
Good times
To be fair to Bridgen (yes, yes) it is not clear whether he is being thrown out for antisemitism or for spreading Covid conspiracy theories, or just for being a dickhead. The correct answer, as any fule wearing a tin-foil hat know, is to pile the pressure on SKS over Diane Abbott.
Must everything always be a ploy or a conspiracy? I think Bridgen was thrown out because the Conservatives went through their processes, looked at the evidence and concluded he was unacceptable in the party.
I don’t think Bridgen and Abbott are particularly comparable.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
The elderly are very likely to have bus passes, though. Or to postal vote.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
I think you are patronising the poor, the young and even (God forbid) the metropolitan. You are saying they are too stupid to a) understand they need ID and get it, b) present it when needed.
If I were lucky enough to look under 25 I would be ID checked to buy an energy drink or a beer. All of the groups you describe offer ID on a regular basis for various things. It is a vacuous argument to try and suggest there is a subversion of democracy and such a divisive suggestion is Trumpian in itself IMO
And, again, you are deliberately choosing to ignore my point.
There are numerous ways you could essentially guarantee no personation without disenfranchising voters.
Next Thursday, tens of thousands of people will turn up at polling stations without ID and be turned away.
Some will have ID at home (most people don't carry their passport with them). Some will not have ID.
But they will be turned away. To stop a problem that there is no evidence exists.
Not only that, but it's insanely simple to stop personation without disenfranchising voters. Either (a) let people cast provisional ballots that can be "cured" later in the event that the result is close enough or (b) take Polaroid photos of voters and get them to sign the back. In both cases, you'd avoid personation, and avoid disenfranchising voters.
Because, that's the goal right? That everybody who is allowed to vote should able to do so, right?
Will many who actually bother to vote in local elections (I.e. the more motivated out there) be without voter ID? I’d expect some correlation between no id and less likely to vote.
BBC news at 6 seemed to want to link removing “not proven” with improving treatment for race victims in Scotland. Anyone in Scotland able to point out onto me what I’m missing, because logic suggests that all “not proven” verdicts have reasonable doubt and so would be “not guilty”. I have always been jealous of the “not proven” verdict.
Some of them will go to Guilty, I'd have thought. If you take the middle option out both the remaining 2 options will be utilized more often.
The fact that there was only 1 prosecution for voter impersonation does not mean that it is not a problem. The whole point is that we don't know how much it happens, or what size of problem it is, because a lot of it goes undetected. Only hysterical revolutionaries fail to understand this basic common sense fact.
So you consider the disenfranchisement of potentially hundreds of thousands of voters to be a proportional response?
This is Trumpian politics.
Noone has been disenfranchised save for those who are too stupid to have any form of ID. If they don’t have ID, why not?
Passports are £93. Driving licenses you commit a criminal offence if you don't keep the address up to date or renew your photo every 10 years - not great if you are a lodger or flat sharer changing address a couple of times a year.
Life is different for different people. The 2m are not stupid (well some are, some aren't just like the rest of us), but they have different lives to a pb regular.
More to the point, for years it was a point of pride that an Englishman (I think was a peculiarly English thing) need never present “papers” to the authorities. I like that old idea. And as noted above, there’s many ways to skin this cat without going back on it.
In the sense of if you're just walking along the street, yes.
That's different from having to show ID to do a particular thing, like travel abroad, drive, pick up a parcel or - yes - vote.
You don’t have to have your driving licence with you when you drive.
No, but if you're stopped by the police and you don't have it you might need to take it to a police station later, so...
I can't understand why people are getting worked up about this. People know what ID is. Voting is an important, not frivolous activity. ID is needed for a lot less important activities than voting. Those that say that Tories have used this as voter suppression are suggesting that the non-Tory vote is more stupid than the Tory one. At one time I might have agreed with that suggestion. Not so sure now.
I agree with the bit in bold.
So why is there no meaningful safeguard for postal voting, which has been the subject of the *only* widespread and serious electoral fraud in this country since the Irish constituencies of the election of 1918?
I agree with you that there should be safeguards for postal voting. Postal votes should be extremely limited IMO. IIRC it was greatly expanded under the Blair government.
As I say, the suggestion that non-Tory voters are somehow less likely to know how to use ID than Tory ones is ludicrous. This is just a new cause celebre for Labour and LD supporters that is without any logic, and is divisive and corrosive in itself
I don't think it's conspiritorial to note that there are three different groups who are particularly likely not to have photo ID to hand:
- the young (because they haven't need it yet) - the poor (because they can't afford a car and don't travel abroad) - the metropolitan (because they don't need to drive)
None of those demographic groups are particularly friendly to the Conservatives.
And I hate to bang this drum again, but there are lots of additional safeguards one could add if you were worried about personation, but didn't want to disenfranchise voters. One could allow provisional ballots to be cast; or one could take Polaroids of people who wished to vote without IDs. Or one could make sure that polling cards had photos on them.
All easy enough to implement, and would ensure that you don't have a situation where potentially hundreds of thousands of people will be turned away on polling day to solve a problem that there is scant evidence exists.
I guess you could add the elderly and also "leavers" into that group of people who might not have ID (obvious Venn diagram there) whom, we are told, are more likely to vote Conservative. It is possible that some of these will either not be bothered to vote, or possibly forget that on these *local* elections they need ID. If it is the former they can't also can't be bothered to register, and no doubt there will be those who will screech that this is because of so-called voter suppression. If the Tories really were motivated by this they would have introduced ahead of the more important GE. They haven't.
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
The elderly are very likely to have bus passes, though. Or to postal vote.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
I think you are patronising the poor, the young and even (God forbid) the metropolitan. You are saying they are too stupid to a) understand they need ID and get it, b) present it when needed.
If I were lucky enough to look under 25 I would be ID checked to buy an energy drink or a beer. All of the groups you describe offer ID on a regular basis for various things. It is a vacuous argument to try and suggest there is a subversion of democracy and such a divisive suggestion is Trumpian in itself IMO
And, again, you are deliberately choosing to ignore my point.
There are numerous ways you could essentially guarantee no personation without disenfranchising voters.
Next Thursday, tens of thousands of people will turn up at polling stations without ID and be turned away.
Some will have ID at home (most people don't carry their passport with them). Some will not have ID.
But they will be turned away. To stop a problem that there is no evidence exists.
Not only that, but it's insanely simple to stop personation without disenfranchising voters. Either (a) let people cast provisional ballots that can be "cured" later in the event that the result is close enough or (b) take Polaroid photos of voters and get them to sign the back. In both cases, you'd avoid personation, and avoid disenfranchising voters.
Because, that's the goal right? That everybody who is allowed to vote should able to do so, right?
I can see major problems with both of your "solutions": a) would cause serious administrative headaches and possible legal challenges
b) almost certainly discriminatory and non-GDPR compliant
A much more simple and fair solution is to ...er.... use ID like almost every other aspect of society requires. Maybe Labour does suspect there is a problem but don't want to address it.
Genuine question... what do other western democracies do with respect to voter ID?
One of the key problems is Pfizer stock is trading at yearly lows as the stock market has rallied this year. Wall Street isnt renowned for sentimentality so it suggests there may be a problem as even Leon i think acknowledged a few weeks ago.
Blimey, @Leon, you are even famous in Putin's bot factories!
They always seem quite keen on me. The Russian bots. “Leon always speaks sense” Etc
I guess they have identified me as AN INFLUENCER
The previous one mentioned me a lot so I don't think it's that.
No I think it is that (see my later post).You are a commenter who gets mentioned by others, more than most, therefore driving the tone and content of the site
I am now pretty sure this is all done by computers - that’s why they bots are so bad. And they probably digitally comb the site for apparently-more-influential or at least referenced commenters to cite in their suicide comment-missions
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
Comments
In the US, county death rates and vaccination rates are highly correlated. The fewer people vaccinated, the more deaths.
With MMR, the Yokohama study demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the MMR vaccine does not cause autism.
It would either look like 'BRINO' (EFTA or similar) or would have been rock hard, but likely with an extended transition, and a real strategic plan for making up for the acknowledged (as they would have to be by anyone competent) costs of that by finding opportunities from diverging regulations etc.
It's very flattering to know there's a file on me somewhere in St Petersburg.
[using 2 x standard error; standard error = sqrt (p*(1-p)/n)]
So a 95% chance (for each) that the real result falls in the following ranges:
Lab: 28-42%
Con: 14-26%
SNP: 13-25%
LD@ 6-16%
I am afraid they - or the CEO of the Putinbots - do seem to think I am influential. Or at least worth citing for some reason
My bet is that some computer simply trawls the site and works out which contributors get mentioned the most by others, and I’m near the top. An algorithm decides
I used the MOE calculator here to get a rough MOE, on the right hand side click margin of error calculator.
https://savanta.com/knowledge-centre/
Very sad. There are lots of people - probably including some of our erstwhile trolls - who didn't believe the what they spouted, but needed to pay the bills.
* See US cable news channels for evidence of this
2) if an airplane crashes, because the COVID vaccine killed the pilots, on the Ukraine/Russian border, on which side do you bury the survivors.
3) what is the greatest distance the turret of a Soviet era tank has been lobbed by internal explosion?
Indeed I’d make him of the greatest English novelists, full stop. Making people laugh out loud with mere print is incredibly hard, and he can still do it many decades after his death. Remarkable
Officials from the Department of Health have “raised concerns” about Steve Barclay’s alleged conduct towards civil servants, the Guardian has been told.
Sources said the civil servants had informally complained to Chris Wormald, the department’s permanent secretary, about the way they believe they and colleagues have been treated by the health secretary.
They said senior civil servants in the department had privately referred to “bullying” and other “bad behaviour” by Barclay towards his staff since he joined the Whitehall department in July last year. The alleged conduct is denied by Barclay’s allies.
The department said it had not received any formal complaints over the behaviour of its ministers, but did not deny being alerted to concerns informally in the way sources described.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/26/health-department-officials-raised-concerns-about-steve-barclays-behaviour
The idea that people should be allowed to vote without being able to prove they have the right to, seems to be irrational.
'That's what I love about mathematics, there is no one right answer.'
We are now reduced to the T55 trolls, with the dodgy fuel pump and three rusty shells.
Neverthless, you are missing my fundamental point, which is that it is perfectly possible to implement safeguards against personation without disenfranchising voters.
Yes it's what he wanted to do too, but his bosses were fully invested.
I did like a take that one reason he has been axed is his intental communications whinging about the stock price and so on, with Murdoch likely to look at that and go "Er, what's that to you, mate? You're a talking head, this is my company to worry about".
Everyone asserts that there is little voter fraud in the UK, but really it's currently almost impossible to know. I'd go for fingerprints, but then I've got nothing to hide - well generally - I did once enjoy a pizza with forbidden fruit!
https://twitter.com/scontorno/status/1651260005247594497
SCOTUS is about to face their Kobayashi Maru situation, choose to back big business or back the GOP.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1651246867164921870
The Illegal Migration Bill getting J Maugham-esque reviews from senior Tories themselves: Geoffrey Cox, Iain Duncan Smith and now Theresa May who describes the govt amendments on modern slavery as a ‘slap in the face’ for those who ‘actually care’ about modern slavery.
IDS was labouring point about ministers creating ‘unintended consequences’, while May says she finds it hard to see the amendment as an example of the good faith she thought ministers were acting with. She warns ‘government will be ensuring that more people will stay enslaved’
https://twitter.com/IsabelHardman/status/1651241169156816896
I am now pretty sure this is all done by computers - that’s why they bots are so bad. And they probably digitally comb the site for apparently-more-influential or at least referenced commenters to cite in their suicide comment-missions
We should be jointly proud!
The metropolitan are less likely to have driving license but more likely to have passports after contolling for wealth.
The dominant group in this list is going to be the poor.
Its owners and managers as individuals, yes - but the company as an entity?
If I were lucky enough to look under 25 I would be ID checked to buy an energy drink or a beer. All of the groups you describe offer ID on a regular basis for various things. It is a vacuous argument to try and suggest there is a subversion of democracy and such a divisive suggestion is Trumpian in itself IMO
Cricket by William Epps charted the beginning of the sport in the late 18th century and is so rare that not even the British Library owns a copy. John Arlott, the celebrated BBC Test Match Special commentator had one, however, and that could be about to become the world’s most valuable book on the sport.
Peter Harrington, a rare book seller in London, will be putting Arlott’s on sale next month as part of the Firsts Rare Book Fair at the Saatchi Gallery.
The sellers describe the book as “virtually unobtainable”, so it does not come cheap. It is priced at £225,000. For context, a complete set of Wisden sold at Bonhams in 2008 for £84,000 (£127,000, adjusted for inflation).
“This is for the cricket fan who has everything, but they won’t have this,” Pom Harrington, the owner of Peter Harrington, said. “It has the claim of being the rarest of all cricket books.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/for-the-cricket-fan-who-has-everything-william-epps-s-rarest-history-of-first-games-0pkg2lf9n
Though in terms of when to introduce if I were introducing voter suppression measures I'd definitely start with a smaller, less important one.
MPs do sometimes get stuck in the junior minister role though. And that's ridiculous.
*If they are lucky
**Registered on ConHome
SNP ‘cold calls’ auditors as accounts deadline looms
Failure to file on time could cost the party £1 million
The SNP’s acting chief executive has been sending “cold-call” emails to auditors as the party stands on the brink of losing more than £1 million because of its failure to find someone to sign off its books.
In another sign of panic at the nationalists’ headquarters, a template note with the subject line “Audit enquiry” was sent to a firm this morning, weeks before key deadlines have to be met.
“We are urgently seeking a statutory auditor to comply with our obligations to the Electoral Commission as well as an audit of our Westminster group at the House of Commons,” the email said. “Would you have any capacity to assist in either of the above?”
It was sent by Susan Ruddick, who is acting chief executive of the SNP following the resignation of Peter Murrell, who is married to Nicola Sturgeon, in a row over party membership numbers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-cold-calls-auditors-as-accounts-deadline-looms-0lcpcpfxb
A would-be Tory councillor for Ivybridge who suggested the Holocaust would have been less likely if more Jews had guns has been suspended. Conservative hopeful for the Ivybridge West ward on South Hams District Council Stanley Murphy also argued the the Covid vaccination programme was an experiment on the population and some equality programmes in schools are “communism.”
The comments were made on his personal Facebook page during 2021. Another included claims that if parents spent time with their children at rifle ranges it would be “quality family time and gun control all in one".
https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/devon-tory-election-candidate-suspended-8386337
63% / 28% support voter ID
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1651232260220235779?t=KVh05bRtOCYlvhewMMC4xQ&s=19
There are numerous ways you could essentially guarantee no personation without disenfranchising voters.
Next Thursday, tens of thousands of people will turn up at polling stations without ID and be turned away.
Some will have ID at home (most people don't carry their passport with them).
Some will not have ID.
But they will be turned away. To stop a problem that there is no evidence exists.
Not only that, but it's insanely simple to stop personation without disenfranchising voters. Either (a) let people cast provisional ballots that can be "cured" later in the event that the result is close enough or (b) take Polaroid photos of voters and get them to sign the back. In both cases, you'd avoid personation, and avoid disenfranchising voters.
Because, that's the goal right? That everybody who is allowed to vote should able to do so, right?
Could well win- no Labour like last time but same candidate - but my money is on Dommett and Munoz.
The moment they lose the Short money then they cannot function properly, which will have consequences.
And majority support for voter ID in every demographic except 18-24, though that still has plurality support by 48-34.
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1651223463313526791
As I've said before my concern is that turnout is broadly fine for local elections, and the Tories are smashed, so it will be argued the system worked fine and is no big deal.
As previously claimed.
Shorter than the Anglo-Zanzibar War.
Funnily enough, the more I see the hysteria around this the more I think the real sinister behaviour on this is from the opponents. Let us cynically paint a party as being corrupt (without real foundation) and further erode trust in democracy, and then when the inevitable lower turnout comes from voter apathy then rinse and repeat.
Once again I state; it should not be a problem for honest people to prove who they are in order to take part in a democratic vote.
As @noneoftheabove has stated, there's a problem and there's the proposed solution.
@JohnLoony may think otherwise but I've yet to see overwhelming evidence there is a serious problem with in-person voting at polling stations.
The fundamental is we should be encouraging people to vote, not discouraging them. Methods of identification need to be sensible and meet the requirement of identification versus the requirement of consistency. There are big holes in what has been proposed and an all-party group should be urgently put together to examine this to see what can be agreed as a concensus across all parties.
The area where I do think we need action is postal voting where there has been documented evidence of fraudulent practice. The dilemma for those of us wanting to encourage voting is it isn't possible for some to get to a polling station but that cannot be an excuse for disenfranchising anyone. However, we have seen how the votes of individuals have been stolen or misrepresented and that has to be eradicated - again, a lot of that is practice within parties and can be mitigated by a broad cross-party agreement on a code of practice for postal voting particularly where care homes and large family groups are concerned as well as and let's be honest about it, those for whom English isn't a first language.
Didn't someone on here point that out over a week ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad_Co.
Critics of the verdict also say it can stigmatise an accused person by appearing not to completely clear them and that it can fail to provide closure for victims.
I don’t think Bridgen and Abbott are particularly comparable.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/26/if-the-police-wont-stop-the-eco-bullies-the-public-will/
b) almost certainly discriminatory and non-GDPR compliant
A much more simple and fair solution is to ...er.... use ID like almost every other aspect of society requires. Maybe Labour does suspect there is a problem but don't want to address it.
Genuine question... what do other western democracies do with respect to voter ID?