The House of Lords revolt on tax credits has got a huge amount of attention. Less newsworthy, because it didn’t succeed, was an attempt in the House of Lords to delay the introduction of individual electoral registration by 12 months beyond the government’s proposed timetable. The implications of that vote, however, may be more far-reaching. What effect will it have?
Comments
(And thanks also to @david_herdson for the previous very interesting article - also my best wishes for your wife's recovery.)
Seems to me the move to individual voter registration has been reasonably well planned & implemented, and I see no reason for delaying the switch.
Whilst it is not unusual for the odd Islamic radical group to claim responsibility for a car crash in an area where they operate, never mind the downing of an airliner associated with a now sworn enemy, its hard to know how genuine such claims are.
What actually makes it murky is some serious contradictory information from Egypt. The Russians were very fast out of the traps on the cause but the official Egyptian line appears to be somewhat countered by other statements from their own officials.
My guess is that the need for individual registration and taking defunct names off the register is to prevent the blatant electoral fraud that had previously been benefitting the labour party. As such the actions of the Lords was disgraceful.
Help tends to flood in as polling day comes closer, but getting volunteers to do early work? Not easy. Ive seen a parliamentary seat change hands due to one good (unpaid) co-ordinator and half a dozen dedicated volunteers.
The idea that the competition might have hundreds of new members, even if they were only willing to deliver a couple of hundred leaflets each, its enough to swamp a constituency.
Anyway, Momentum is organised on a county level. This county used to have four seats it would consider pretty safe. It now has two that are fairly safe and one that is a nailed on loss, all the seats it has ever held in the county could certainly be classed as 'working class'.
Their first meeting, organised by social media. Fifteen members. Hmmm.
Is the Corbyasm a phenomena in only certain parts of the country?
That field level electronic advertising is distracting though. You would never see that here.
But there's a tiny mistake - a couple of Redbridge wards are in the Chingford & Woodford Green constituency.
On the other hand you could extend the contiguous Labour block to include Brent, Ealing and Hounslow councils as well.
It is dangerous to speculate, but I expect that the upset ocurred at high altitude and the aircraft probably lost control at the start of that decent. The potential data from the monitoring Flight Radar site very much depends on the quality of radar coverage in the area the a/c was in and I am not sure it is very good!
http://www.debka.com/article/24987/ISIS-claims-downing-Russian-airliner-in-Sinai-in-reprisal-for-Moscow’s-Syria-air-strikes
Anecdotally, it would appear that security at Sharm El Sheik is not the best in the world, meaning that getting hold of flight plans or access to the cargo hold are not wholly impossible scenarios.
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/mexico-pre-qualifying.html
Thank you for your reply. I have to admit I'm not sure how you could cram everything that would be needed into a 35 hour week at that level, although I admire you greatly for it. I flatter myself I can work very efficiently - I completed a PhD including a vast amount of archival research in various locations in three years while holding down no fewer than five part-time jobs to pay for it, while everyone with funding (and therefore no jobs) took at least four years. But I can't quite see how I would get all the work I have to do, done, without working the hours I am at the moment.
That being said, a lot of the stuff I am doing is hopefully one-off. So, I am having to rewrite pretty much all schemes of work because of the changes to exams: A-level History and GCSE RE this year, GCSE History next year (I've also been changing the KS3 curriculum to match, which is extra work but that should be this year only and then we will have a really good KS3 curriculum for both subjects). I am also having to prepare new resources to match and support them. I am further being more and more heavily involved by the SMT in quality monitoring across several subjects. In a way that's quite flattering, although it isn't that I am being singled out - several of us are doing it - but it does mean a lot more work.
So if your story is a sign it gets easier, that is good news. Because I must admit I have been wondering whether I can bear to feel this exhausted all the time, much though I enjoy large parts of the job, and have been pondering other options.
It'd probably be dreadful in that Corbyn and co could get elected, but it just seems to me to be the better way of doing things if you're going to make the awful mistake of allowing the people to decide.
I saw but didn't comment on the discussion the other night about the US debates. Testing policy questions perhaps weren't asked. It got me to thinking though about whether there should be some sort of hurdle in terms of understanding that those who seek elected office should need to get by. Perhaps a further top up test could be applied if that politician wished to be available to be a finance minister for example.
Trump could finish up as the most important person on the planet. I think he's a moron. I'd be slightly more comfortable if he'd passed some sort of basic test. (In his case a demonstration of shoelace tying would help)
Anyway this clearly isn't a new suggestion - I suspect the Greeks covered it fully. As we don't do such a thing, what are the big arguments against?
I just hope there aren't too many safety cars, as Homeland starts at 9pm (race start is 7pm UK time).
Or an in-flight decompression, followed by a descent to lower levels that was interrupted by break-up before they could get a message out.
Remember the emergency checklist:
Aviate, navigate, investigate, communicate, secure.
One of my hobbies is reading rail/air/marine accident reports, and there have been all sorts of weirdness in the way planes break up or fail at altitude, and the way debris spreads. It's early days, but it would be interesting to know if the reported descent rate was from primary radar returns on wreckage or on-plane transponder.
Rupert Murdoch (or James Murdoch) spring to mind as similar cases.
I wasn't clear in my post, I was referring to the ability for them to glide after an engine failure in particular, rather than any failure.
ISIS are basically saying Islam kills. It's becoming increasingly hard to maintain the idea Muslims are not a dangerous sect. To their own believers mainly. Some sort of general religion-wide 'be nice' message is clearly in order. If the Muslims of the world did just 1 day of being nice to everyone then it'd undo a thousand years of dopeyness.
90-9575-80 miles, otherwise, more likely, it would go down more rapidly.It might also depend on whether the pilot thought a dive might help in some way. I can't think how it would, although on old WWI aircraft a stopped propellor could be re-started by wind pressure during a steep dive, but I know very little about modern commercial aircraft so I suppose there could be something.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3297628/Theresa-public-s-choice-lead-EU-campaign.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34688245
They actually have a guy running up and down the sideline with a handheld camera - have they never heard of a Chapman Crane?
It's pathetically vindictive in its backwardness.
Quarter of an hour until radio coverage of qualifying begins.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/31/care-homes-crisis-dwarf-steel-industry-problems-four-seasons-terra-firma
That said, they usually get it right before too long, pretty much, given the expertise there and the iterative process they go through as more data become available.
Oh that we could say the same about our conclusions on the upper house, AV, etc, etc, etc...
A worrying time, for all sorts of reasons.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/31/turkey-elections-stability-security-
As polls are not allowed immediately before elections in Turkey, and there's been lots going on domestically, I've literally no idea how big the difference between the ruling AKP and the opposition CHP will be. Will it be enough to deny Erdogan and the AKP sole power again? And if so, will Erdogan go for a third election within a year, or try for an unprecedented coalition with the CHP?
Edited extra bit: it's also possible that Raikkonen will not qualify. I think he had engine problem in P3.
Saw on the news the other day how his government thugs closed down two TV stations that had been critical of his party.
The Govt did lose the vote 15 mins earlier on the Lab amendment to the LD fatal motion - by 10 votes.
15 mins later (literally - there was no debate at all in between - the LD motion was moved 10 seconds after the result of the vote on the Lab amendment) - the Govt won the vote on the LD fatal motion - by 11 votes.
21 Peers disappeared at the crucial moment - including 11 Lab and 2 LD.
Every single Con Peer who was there stayed for the second vote - indeed 2 more voted on the 2nd vote.
Mildly surprised, even so, he can't go out for qualifying, but perhaps there's a safety issue regarding things like brake temperatures.
They didn't sit on their hands in the last Parliament when they got the previous Boundary review cancelled.
No question - this was a straightforward cock-up.
The Con whips have done an astonishing job this week - the turnout of Con Peers on both Mon and Tue was absolutely extraordinary.
Very efficient whipping by the Tories though. We can let attrition take care of the number of Lib peers. Does anyone have a histogram of their ages?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34688851
If the mobile phone industry does not come up with somewhat security protocols on an industry wide basis following this, we should all refuse to pay them until they do.
2,000 PB regulars bank accounts said to have been raided. Over 45p stolen!
I suspect the worldwide audience is turning off in their millions. (Probably not the case though)
The Texas race was greatly entertaining, but the general predominance of Hamilton/Mercedes and the unfairness of the finance/engine development/governance, as well as losing classic European tracks to go racing (sometimes in dodgy places with dreary tracks) is losing the sport popularity. That, and shifting to pay TV.
Must admit, I've been considering not bothering with the blogs (for F1) next year. I'm not fussed by audience/number of clicks, but I miss 2012 when the first seven races had seven different winners.
Edited extra bit: and Tom Clarkson is bloody irritating.
We have the best striker in the world playing on the left flank.
F1 *is* serious stuff.