By popular demand: Flow of the Vote, Scotland edition. Each block represents 25k voters in colour of 2019 vote, based on data from all Scottish polls this year.Much like the Tories GB-wide, the SNP's vote has splintered in multiple directions, Labour the ultimate beneficiary. pic.twitter.com/EDs39TTgzy
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A council leader is facing allegations that he kicked, punched, spat at and throttled women.
Jonathan Nunn, of West Northamptonshire Council, is also accused of threatening or controlling behaviour.
The BBC has heard exclusive accounts from five women. Four had relationships with Mr Nunn between 1990 and 2013.
The 59-year-old told the BBC he "strenuously denies" the allegations and said "domestic abuse is never acceptable".
A long-serving Tory councillor, Mr Nunn was elected to lead the county's newly formed unitary authority in 2021.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-68829156
and don't send me an embargoed copy.Good morning. British #politics continues to delight. Some record breaking numbers out later!!! #declineandfall
https://twitter.com/benatipsos/status/1780830034065760676
8% of people say they are favourable to Liz Truss. Some 24% also believe the devil exists.
https://twitter.com/benatipsos/status/1780837733834854670
"SEC. 505. (a) TRANSFER OF LONG-RANGE ATACMS REQUIRED.—As soon as practicable after the date of enactment of this Act, the President shall transfer long range Army Tactical Missile Systems to the Government of Ukraine to assist the Government of Ukraine in defending itself and achieving victory against the Russian Federation."
https://punchbowl.news/ukraine-funding/
As people elsewhere have pointed out; this might be the first reference to Ukraine achieving victory.
Probably has a poll with Reform and the Tories at the same headline number, or something. But maybe not even that.
However, I think they will hold most of their seats, which will no doubt be presented as a triumph, because they'd have to get really low vote tallies with Labour picking up all the slack to go back to the levels of the 1990s.
is this not about the same as, or very slightly higher than, the % of black Americans who praise slavery when polled?
Liz Truss has met 24% personally? Hmmm.
When I’ve had a few drinks, I’m often tempted to give some very strange answers to opinion polls!
@rolandmcs
"Drug shortages, now normal in UK, made worse by Brexit, report warns"
https://t.co/LjId5maIWU
New @YouGov poll shows voters think Starmer will be a better PM than Truss, Johnson, Sunak.
Worse than Blair. Same or worse than Brown/Cameron.
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1780845859610972583/photo/1
That broadly is what I expect to happen. The SNP may well gain some Tory seats because their vote has fallen even further but I expect them to lose 20-30 seats to Labour.
There are a few other variables. Obviously operation Branchform has the capacity to cause further chaos in the SNP ranks and there is the not so small matter of the SNP being broke and having almost no money at all to fight a campaign. Labour, in contrast, are likely to spend pretty heavily in Scotland given the low lying fruit available to them.
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/patients-face-new-normal-of-medicines-shortages-as-uk-hampered-by-supply-issues-and-impact-of-eu-exit
Certainly there have been increasing problems with drugs being unavailable in recent years, often fairly longstanding generic ones included.
Germany (from 2023):
https://www.euronews.com/health/2023/06/21/a-medicine-shortage-is-behind-the-looming-death-of-community-pharmacies-in-germany
France (from 2023):
https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/shortages-of-4000-medicines-in-france-what-risk-for-this-winter/158745
America:
https://prospect.org/health/2024-04-17-our-uniquely-american-drug-shortages/
etc, etc.
Central Belt looks fairly straight forward. Labour are going to steamroller the SNP. Outside the central belt? Tory vote collapsing faster than the SNP vote but with no real enthusiasm for either of them outside their core vote I expect a lot of entropy. Prospect of various LD gains, Labour in the Western Isles, but won't be as exciting as the central belt.
When we first to develop a vaccine and inoculate our population.
I expect the SNP to be a little more resilient and clock votes in spite of their behaviour rather than lose them because of it.
I still expect a poor night for the SNP and labour to do well
Another morning, another conservative mp losing the whip.
Please end this and hold the GE
On a personal note I still have some health issues to address according to my consultants, notwithstanding my pacemaker but then it is to be expected at 80+.
However, my clinic yesterday was in the cancer centre, though I do not have cancer, and my wife and I sat next to a lovely couple in the waiting room and they said he has been told he has stage 4 cancer and the medics cannot do anything more for him (he is 66) and that he only has a few weeks to live and she has given up her work to be with him for their precious last days
We can argue and debate about politics all day, but when you come in contact with the raw reality in life it is remarkably humbling and makes you just grateful for everything you do have
May their 'God' go with them and everyone who is suffering similar trauma
There are many issues. It’s complex. Can we not resort to the same trivial shit of its all down to being in the EU (pre 2016) and it’s all down to Brexit (post 2016). Seriously Scott, move on.
Meanwhile, the GOP in Congress has been focused on passing articles of impeachment for Mayorkas, who is Homeland Security Secretary and responsible for the US/Mexico border. Yesterday, the Senate voted to not even commence the trial that the GOP in Congress was asking for.
The GOP under Johnson is the most hapless and hopeless party I can recall. Even the current Tory party, even the SNP, are not so hamstrung by internal dissent and sheer lunacy. The malevolent hand of a somewhat distracted Trump plays a large part in this. There is now talk of some Republicans supporting the Democrats in forcing a vote on the Senate bill authorising aid for Ukraine. We can only hope that they do and that it is soon enough.
"The report shows that the EU Exit has not caused the recent spike in medicine shortages..."
That sentence, and others then go on to describe some ways in which Brexit may exacerbate the problem.
Not sure "Its not entirely due to Brexit" is a very fair summary, giving the impression it mostly is.
Not exactly the most important thing, but Mark Menzies's suspension as a Conservative MP means the threshold for triggering a confidence vote in Rishi Sunak has fallen from 53 MPs writing letters to 52
So my guess is either:
- record low Tory vote share (18% or lower)
- record Labour lead (above 30%?)
The problems are worldwide, and covid had a part to play, but started before the pandemic, so that too is not a sole cause. In part it is the general fragility of increasingly international supply chains.
Grant Shapps, whose party has spent weeks suggesting Angela Rayner is a tax-dodging criminal, now says we shouldn't rush to judgement about suspended Conservative MP Mark Menzies
"Just because an accusation is made, or something is written, doesn't mean it is necessarily proven"
"The report shows that the EU Exit has not caused the recent spike in medicine shortages, but it is likely to significantly weaken the UK’s ability to respond to them by splitting it from European supply chains, authorisations and collective efforts to respond to shortages."
Brexit - more specifically the choices we have made after Brexit" is "explicitly" as you put it responsible for making our position worse than the EU nations. Would we have shortages if we hadn't done what we have done since Brexit? Yes, absolutely. But we have made those shortages *worse*.
And not just shortages. "The UK has been slower to approve drugs than the EU for new drugs that are authorised centrally. Of drugs authorised in the year to December 2023, 56 drugs authorised in Europe were approved later in the UK and eight have not been approved. Four were approved faster."
So please. Stop trying to make this black and white where everything or nothing is Brexit, everything is impossible so it must be nothing. It isn't nothing. Read the article again.
They made her Prime Minister.
The latter is behind, for example, AZN building a new plant in Ireland rather than the UK.
Obviously we haven't destroyed bioscience in the UK, but we have made it more difficult commercially.
There's a perhaps similar problem with our capital markets, with small UK drug discovery companies finding raising funds in the UK very difficult (see yesterday's interview with the CEO of C4X Discovery) - though that's an even more complicated issue.
Chickens coming home to roost.
Also what time scale are we talking about? Is it weeks, months or years? Without all this analysis your claims are, as I say, meaningless.
Something similar is happening with chip manufacturing, where massive subsidies are producing a glut of low end or 'legacy' chips, which is likely to drive a lot of western manufacturers out of that end of the business.
Not a problem that bothers us now, but could be when they're effectively the sole producer.
There was a new post yesterday about the First Minister's latest idiocy but today, nothing.
Edit, and its back.
Looks like a more or less straight fight between Labour and SNP at the next Westminster election on this analysis. SNP support is more evenly distributed than Labour, which means a sudden switch from SNP winning most seats to losing most seats on these kind of numbers.
Conservative 75
Others 25
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-navigation-program/technology-readiness-levels/
That is, turning an experiment in a lab into commercial product.
This is (in part) because Everyone Knows that The Smart Money is in property. After 30 years of it being a one way punt…
Liz Truss repeats an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in her book. What is she going to do? Will she apologise? Will she remove it from sale?
What is Sunak going to do? He has the grace of the day or so that Starmer took to deliberate in similar circumstances, but surely the outcome isn't in doubt? Is it?
UK bioscience is one of our strongest sectors, and benefits from considerable government funding. But in terms of reaping the commercial benefits of UK drug discovery for the UK, things are trending for the worse rather than the better.
I've little to no interest in reading the rambling monologues of three individuals who happen to bumble around Dublin on one day in 1904, even if it does contain a handful of great quotes.
It's one book I'm confident I'll never read, and I don't think my life will be any the worse for it.
I doubt for one minute there is an antisemitic bone in her body to be fair to her.
The characters in TTOI were largely incompetent and did malign things, but they gave the impression of believing in something. Even Ollie. Even Cal.
That's a step up from the government we currently have.
Baby steps.
But of course the man in the street is unaware of these impacts.
Today it’s access to medicines - a global problem uniquely enhanced and intensified by Brexit. Add it to the ever-growing pile of problems that are clearly made worse thanks to the fantastical lies of the wreckers and their insane project of self-immolation and ideological fervour.
Absolutism will reign. Pearls will be clutched. Stark reality will be denied. Expert research and opinion blithely dismissed.
The reckoning is coming. The omertà will break. The Tories will receive their kicking. Brexit, to paraphrase Carlin, will be shaken off like a dog shakes off a bad case of fleas. Tick tock.
I mean, us bitter Remoaners might at least shut the fuck up if there were any real Brexit benefits that have improved the lives of normal people you could shove in our faces. But there aren’t any, other than some arcane gibbering about sovereignty. Everything is just worse, thanks to the lunatics and their lies.
https://www.joyceproject.com/
What should not be missed by those without months to spare (sadly I read Ulysses for the third time earlier this year, but I'm retired) is Joyce's short story in The Dubliners, 'The Dead'. Along with Wodehouse's 'Uncle Fred Flits By' and 'The Great Sermon Handicap', 'The Dead' is arguably the greatest short story ever.
In the end the issues were all surmountable but they didn’t half cost a fortune to fix, and there were several permanent losses of regional HQ functions from the UK.
http://m.joyceproject.com/notes/050057goldcup.html
Literary types love Ulysses because they can re-read it every year and discover new aspects, facets and allusions.
It's a bit like The Deerhunter, which people banged on for years was one of the best films ever made and a "must see", whereas I thought it awfully tedious and that the director had disappeared up his own arse.
It all gets a bit Emperors New Clothes where everyone knows they are expected to like it and appreciate it, so all say they do lest they come across like a philistine.
My suspicion FWIW is that drugs companies are slower in processing the years long expensive approvals process for a relatively small market compared with one of their two key markets. That's the main reason why the UK has approved fewer new machines, not because it lacks certification capability.
Glad you enjoyed it, but it's not for me.
(This kind of tracking is not that common, I think - usually these, often as alluvial plots, are based on a current sample - not dead! - and either recall or previously recorded information. This presumably either requires linkage to deaths data, which may be possible from e.g. BES, or is just based on assumptions based on age, SES etc of previous respondents)
ETA: Sorry - BES = British Election Study; SES = socio-economic status
Could be a pb competition. Sum up magnificent works of art in blithe, uninformed, yet pithy soundbites.
Ignorance is nothing to be proud of. Hang your head that you are not going to subject yourself to this masterpiece.
Finnegan's Wake, however...
Will the Cons go bonkerser after the GE or will they try to claw back some sanity. Obvs it will likely be the former but as they form a circular firing squad perhaps the problem will solve itself.
Her support for that other hero of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump is telling.
Doesn't seem keen on democracy either:
https://newrepublic.com/post/176497/speaker-mike-johnson-warned-dangers-living-democracy