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It is even questionable whether we will ever be able to celebrate “Freedom Day” – politicalbetting.c

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  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,599

    Incidentally, if they were really interested in creating something new and different there's loads more they could have tinkered with, such as making boundaries 5 and 10 runs, instead of 4 and 6, or scoring runs on the basis of a timer of how long the ball is airborne.

    They could have metricated the game even further - 10 players. They could have got rid of lbws - players are hardly going to block out time with their pads.

    Completely pointless otherwise as a power grab.

    Apparently FIFA are considering big changes to the rules of football, eg:

    30 minutes per half
    Unlimited subs
    Kick ins not throw ins
    Sin bin for a yellow card
    Stop clock when ball not in play
    No
    No
    No
    No
    Yes

    is my vote
    Stopping the clock when ball not in play but not reducing to 30 mins is effectively moving to 65-70 mins per half. Games will be close to 3 hrs long including half time. Extra time, where the ball is rarely in play would be another full hour.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,080

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    According to this smoothed version of the data, its 1% "decline" since June, but literally for 5 months that Tories have always been in the 42-43% range. Basically flat as a pancake MoE stuff throughout.

    https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/

    Where as if you go and look at effect of Big Dom scandal, it is absolutely clear trend.
    I think that a change of 1-2% in a smoothed trend is a real signal, albeit a small one, rather than random margin of error fluctuations.

    Not surprising that the impact is smaller than over Cummings, because Hancock went in the end, and the government have bent in response to public opinion in general.

    We also know that the public generally blame other members of the public when Covid goes wrong, rather than the government, so not a surprise that they've escaped the blame for the Delta wave.

    (In general I prefer the LOESS smooth to the kalman filter, because it produces, well, a smoother smooth, but it does have endpoint issues so the recent Tory decline might well be closer to the 1% from the kalman filter).
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    edited July 2021
    Those thinking they'd escape Johnson:

    Watch the coronavirus press conference live on our channels at 5pm.

    https://twitter.com/10DowningStreet/status/1417095093325115398?s=20
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,069

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    And then the question is, what's the distribution of not-Conservative votes? If (and it is still if) we're returning to the 1992-7 scenario of anti-Conservative voters lining up behind whoever is best placed in their constituency, the Conservatives can lose a lot of seats without any change in the national vote totals. Between 1983 and 1992, the Conservative vote share only fell by about half a percentage point.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,080

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    By the Tories have lost share you mean they've reverted in July to the same share they had in February, March, April and May?

    Looks to me like June was an outlier, but otherwise its been remarkably flat.

    Since the end of January almost every single poll share for the Tories has been 42% +/- 3% MoE, the only exceptions are a small number of 46% outliers two of which were in June.
    They've gone down after going up. This is the nature of things.

    I don't think you can discount the going down by arguing the going up was always temporary.

    The point is that people have said there's been no change in support despite the negative stories. There has been a change in support.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,947

    Interesting article on a possible gap in enthusiasm between the SNP hierarchy and indepencence activists:

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19451082.mark-smith-great-indy-silence-snps-people-problem/?ref=twtrec

    Yawn.

    Unionist poster highlights anti-SNP message in a Unionist newspaper. How novel.

    At some point Unionists will realise that they have to stop appealing to their core vote and start talking to normal Scots.
    Even more important, stop appealing to an inchoate anti indy constituency who don't even have a vote; luckily they don't show the slightest sign of it. Of course the likes of the Herald probably depend on traffic from Outraged of non Scottish place, though tbf the National seems to have a similar following. Same stable so I guess that probably is their business model.
    Just to report I got the same Telegraph offer as you. The 85% discount. Exceedingly generous. I also got - for the 5th time in as many days - my FINAL CHANCE to get a years worth of Speccy for the price of 3 months. No free pen or anything but, again, pretty generous.

    It's got me thinking. Straws in the wind perhaps. Can't give away the Telegraph or the Spectator. GB News tanking. The backlash against the backlash against the Knee. PB's Leon growing ever more circumspect in what he commits to posterity. Could we be seeing Peak Nonsense in the rear view mirror? I think we could.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 41,947
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Brilliant from TFL - though thought they might have said "wear a mask":

    https://twitter.com/christiancalgie/status/1417069030960160772?s=20

    I’m at the gym. For the first time in 16 months there is zero social distancing. Zero masks. Every machine available

    It feels bloody good. The sun shines

    Later I shall be at the pub, I shall give a sitrep on Hospitality
    Apocalyptic doom mongering by 8pm with a dash of racial profiling, I can see all the signs.
    I’m starting at 2.30 at the Red Lion and Sun in Highgate, so expect incoming a little sooner. 6pm?
    I could turn up there too. I could make it for 2.30 quite easily. You won't know I'm there though. Not unless I make my presence known.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,480

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    “Churchillian undertones”

    This man is a total fraud. Churchill wouldn’t have tolerated a buffoon like him for five minutes.

    He tolerated one (Duff Cooper) for nearly thirty years.
    The visceral loathing of Boris is blinding people from reality. I feel sure Boris doesn't mind. Playing g the man rather than the ball ends in failure. Ask the Ref.....
    Is there visceral loathing of Boris? There are rational objections to the Prime Minister's disregard for truth, disregard for convention, disregard for the law. Some, including Conservatives, will object to his politics. Others, again including Conservatives, will have reservations about his apparently chaotic style.

    But since Boris does keep winning elections, it is hard to see there are widespread visceral or reflexive horrors.
    Mrs Foxy certainly loathes Johnson viscerally, makes my dislike of the oaf seem quite mild. I fear for the telly when his gunning face pops up in another piece of fancy dress. At least we are spared that for the next 10 days while he lies low in his mansion.
    It’s not “his” mansion. It belongs to the taxpayers. F…ing ridiculous. Fair enough, the prime minister might need a town residence, but definitely not a country one. If and when HMG need to host a conference or similar they can hire somewhere.
    Not sure why he has to isolate there. What about the Flat which we provide in Downing Street?
    Indeed, he would have time to appreciate his new wallpaper.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177

    Amidst the utter shambles of this ludicrous shower in charge, Simon Heffer is railing in the Telegraph about The Hundred. He thinks that the MCC could, and should, have put a stop to it.

    I love Simon Heffer in the way that I love flared trousers or mullet hair (neither of which you'd ever catch him sporting). He's reactionary about everything contemporary. A fortnight ago he was lambasting all forms of sculpture made since World War Two. I bumped into him once in London. He was suited walking on his own across the Jubilee footbridge on a warm day. A forlorn figure, he looked the perfect picture of malcontent. He has a particular chip about Etonians.

    I'm not a massive fan of T20 and expect to avoid The Hundred, but I can see what a fantastic injection the former has given the game especially via the IPL which is sensational. Unlike the English, Indians seem capable of percolating the shorter format into their test side.

    Simon Heffer is not alone in being a Telegraph columnist reactionary. You can follow more of them for 3 months @ £2 on a special offer. Despite some amusingly off-beam articles, and occasional downright nastiness, the journalism is often excellent and invariably interesting. Unlike The Times which, in my opinion, somehow contrives to make the centre of politics extremely dull.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/19/strong-mcc-could-have-killed-hundred-alas-powerless-servile/

    The Hundred is attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist / provide supply for which there isn't demand.

    Its like soccerball saying we want to increase attendances at Division Two, what we need is yet another competition, we will call it the Johnson Paint Trophy...what do you mean nobody turns up to watch it.
    You will, I hope, forgive me for suggesting that a lump of old white men complaining on here about the newer formats is not quite at the sharp end.

    The IPL has been a sensational success. As has T20 generally. The same oldies moaned back then, and were proven wrong, as Jonathan Agnew has since acknowledged.

    Mind you, there's not a lot of point moving from 120 balls to 100 balls and if the ECB thought T20 wasn't exciting enough, they should attend the post-covid IPL.

    I prefer Test cricket myself but that doesn't blind me to the brilliance of T20 and probably this new format.
    T20 is great...there is zero point then having yet another tournament which is minimally different. As I say it is like having the Johnson Paint Trophy in football. What we have done is taken the existing cups and altered the rules a bit, some different teams...what do you mean you don't want to pay £20 and rather watch the FA Cup.
    Repeat after me - If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.

    They are looking for new fans, and a terrestrial audience will help.

    I'm with you - there is nothing wrong with T20, other than the sheer repepitive boredom of six after six after six. For me its McDonalds every day. Day 1 is nice, day 2 ok, then it loses its appeal in a way that test cricket never does.
  • MaffewMaffew Posts: 235
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Brilliant from TFL - though thought they might have said "wear a mask":

    https://twitter.com/christiancalgie/status/1417069030960160772?s=20

    I’m at the gym. For the first time in 16 months there is zero social distancing. Zero masks. Every machine available

    It feels bloody good. The sun shines

    Later I shall be at the pub, I shall give a sitrep on Hospitality
    Apocalyptic doom mongering by 8pm with a dash of racial profiling, I can see all the signs.
    I’m starting at 2.30 at the Red Lion and Sun in Highgate, so expect incoming a little sooner. 6pm?
    I could turn up there too. I could make it for 2.30 quite easily. You won't know I'm there though. Not unless I make my presence known.
    Funnily enough I'm going to be 10 minutes from there after work for my first Freedom(TM) martial arts class. We've been told to bring our sparring kit for the first time since about February 2020 (contact stopped a bit before it was officially banned). Maybe I should turn up afterwards too.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177
    edited July 2021

    Incidentally, if they were really interested in creating something new and different there's loads more they could have tinkered with, such as making boundaries 5 and 10 runs, instead of 4 and 6, or scoring runs on the basis of a timer of how long the ball is airborne.

    They could have metricated the game even further - 10 players. They could have got rid of lbws - players are hardly going to block out time with their pads.

    Completely pointless otherwise as a power grab.

    Apparently FIFA are considering big changes to the rules of football, eg:

    30 minutes per half
    Unlimited subs
    Kick ins not throw ins
    Sin bin for a yellow card
    Stop clock when ball not in play
    30 mins ball in play per half is a good rule. Sin bins are also a good rule but dont think it should be all yellows, more the orange ones. Don't like unlimited subs, kick ins instinctively I dont like but probably worthy of a trial.
    Kick-ins just become free kick/corner equivalent, pretty much any where in the final third. Not a great idea. Throw-ins are not broken. I do like the idea of a stopping clock. It works in other sports (such as rugby). I also like the idea of sin bins, as often a yellow card is no real punishment (think Euro's final, the pull back on the neck of the England player - 10 mins off would have had more significance that a yellow card).
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,700
    F1: a weird record has been made.

    Norris is McLaren's top driver, ever, in terms of consecutive points finishes. Also the only driver to score in every race this year.

    https://twitter.com/F1/status/1417074592338882564
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,848
    To add my anecdata to the mix just returned from the big tesco's store. A firm that still insists wearing masks is mandatory in store. Estimate that maskless has increased from about 10% last week to 40% today and they have removed the guy on the door asking you to wear a mask as you go in. Supect by this time next week the enmasked will be the minority.

    Also a huge amount of people smiling at each other for a change
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 60,216
    LNER:

    Hi, we have made the decision to operate under English guidance, with regards to social distancing on cross border services, to provide consistency to customers. Therefore, customers may be seated next to each other when travelling from 19 July onwards.

    https://twitter.com/LNER/status/1416844949769830403?s=20

    The state of some of the replies.....
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,700
    Mr. Pagan, it seems the dream era for ninja fetishists is ending.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,993
    Candy said:

    Pulpstar said:


    It's really infuriating that the Gov't doesn't just tell the truth and say we don't have supply to do group x (Non vulnerable 12 - 17), so we're delaying a decision till we can start this group instead of providing succour for antivaxxers.

    It's not just about supply. There is a risk assessment as well.

    Children are not at risk from covid. At the same time the vaccines do have tiny risks - blood clots for AZ, heart enlargement for Pfizer and capillary leak syndrome for Jansen.

    For over 18's the risk of covid > risk of the vaccines.

    For under 18's the risk of the vaccines > risk of covid.

    The only reason places like France are offering the vaccine to 12 year olds is to get their vax numbers up.

    But it's unethical to vax children just to save adult anti-vaxxers. Better to try to jab the refuseniks (which the govt is doing - if you look at the daily stats on the govt website, quite a lot of over 50s are getting their first jabs still).
    That's not actually true.

    There is a risk to children from covid. It's just very low.
    Sometimes we seem to gloss one very small risk as being the same as another (because both are "very small") or even ignore one and not the other. Even though one very small risk may be hundreds of times smaller than the other.

    The chance of death from covid for a child is particularly tiny, but the chance of hospitalisation is real, but very small (probably between 1-2 in a thousand, given the rates of hospitalisation we've seen in children to date).

    The risk to children from myocarditis with Pfizer looks to be below a hundredth of that - two orders of magnitude lower.
    It's also noticeable that the risk of myocarditis to children from covid looks to be on the close order of 2%. This figure is a lot higher than the hospitalisation rate, because myocarditis generally doesn't result in a hospital visit unless the person with it engages in strenuous activity at the wrong time.
    The myocarditis, in both cases (whether virus-induced or vaccine induced at under a hundredth the rate) usually sees full recovery in a short time, anyway (other symptoms of covid may not clear as quickly or completely).

    In short - if it is viewed that "children are not at risk from covid", then the orders-of-magnitude lower risk from the vaccine cannot realistically be cited as a risk, either.

    If the extremely low risk of transient myocarditis from the vaccine is seen as a risk of significance, then the hundreds of times greater risk to the child from covid should be seen as a pretty significant risk as well.

    One cannot have the far smaller one seen as significant while the larger one is deemed nonexistent.

  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    By the Tories have lost share you mean they've reverted in July to the same share they had in February, March, April and May?

    Looks to me like June was an outlier, but otherwise its been remarkably flat.

    Since the end of January almost every single poll share for the Tories has been 42% +/- 3% MoE, the only exceptions are a small number of 46% outliers two of which were in June.
    They've gone down after going up. This is the nature of things.

    I don't think you can discount the going down by arguing the going up was always temporary.

    The point is that people have said there's been no change in support despite the negative stories. There has been a change in support.
    It depends how meaningful the going up was. If it was an outlier within Margin of Error then a reversion to mean absolutely can be discounted.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,774

    Amidst the utter shambles of this ludicrous shower in charge, Simon Heffer is railing in the Telegraph about The Hundred. He thinks that the MCC could, and should, have put a stop to it.

    I love Simon Heffer in the way that I love flared trousers or mullet hair (neither of which you'd ever catch him sporting). He's reactionary about everything contemporary. A fortnight ago he was lambasting all forms of sculpture made since World War Two. I bumped into him once in London. He was suited walking on his own across the Jubilee footbridge on a warm day. A forlorn figure, he looked the perfect picture of malcontent. He has a particular chip about Etonians.

    I'm not a massive fan of T20 and expect to avoid The Hundred, but I can see what a fantastic injection the former has given the game especially via the IPL which is sensational. Unlike the English, Indians seem capable of percolating the shorter format into their test side.

    Simon Heffer is not alone in being a Telegraph columnist reactionary. You can follow more of them for 3 months @ £2 on a special offer. Despite some amusingly off-beam articles, and occasional downright nastiness, the journalism is often excellent and invariably interesting. Unlike The Times which, in my opinion, somehow contrives to make the centre of politics extremely dull.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/19/strong-mcc-could-have-killed-hundred-alas-powerless-servile/

    The Hundred is attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist / provide supply for which there isn't demand.

    Its like soccerball saying we want to increase attendances at Division Two, what we need is yet another competition, we will call it the Johnson Paint Trophy...what do you mean nobody turns up to watch it.
    You will, I hope, forgive me for suggesting that a lump of old white men complaining on here about the newer formats is not quite at the sharp end.

    The IPL has been a sensational success. As has T20 generally. The same oldies moaned back then, and were proven wrong, as Jonathan Agnew has since acknowledged.

    Mind you, there's not a lot of point moving from 120 balls to 100 balls and if the ECB thought T20 wasn't exciting enough, they should attend the post-covid IPL.

    I prefer Test cricket myself but that doesn't blind me to the brilliance of T20 and probably this new format.
    T20 is great...there is zero point then having yet another tournament which is minimally different. As I say it is like having the Johnson Paint Trophy in football. What we have done is taken the existing cups and altered the rules a bit, some different teams...what do you mean you don't want to pay £20 and rather watch the FA Cup.
    Repeat after me - If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.

    They are looking for new fans, and a terrestrial audience will help.

    I'm with you - there is nothing wrong with T20, other than the sheer repepitive boredom of six after six after six. For me its McDonalds every day. Day 1 is nice, day 2 ok, then it loses its appeal in a way that test cricket never does.
    I am not a fan of cricket, and I can’t see that it is for me, either.

    Is it going to be the ChangeUK of sport?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,080

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    By the Tories have lost share you mean they've reverted in July to the same share they had in February, March, April and May?

    Looks to me like June was an outlier, but otherwise its been remarkably flat.

    Since the end of January almost every single poll share for the Tories has been 42% +/- 3% MoE, the only exceptions are a small number of 46% outliers two of which were in June.
    They've gone down after going up. This is the nature of things.

    I don't think you can discount the going down by arguing the going up was always temporary.

    The point is that people have said there's been no change in support despite the negative stories. There has been a change in support.
    It depends how meaningful the going up was. If it was an outlier within Margin of Error then a reversion to mean absolutely can be discounted.
    The point of looking at the smoothed average is that the outliers are averaged out.

    The increase in Tory support was likely real and not caused by random poll fluctuation - though I haven't done the formal statistics on that.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited July 2021

    Amidst the utter shambles of this ludicrous shower in charge, Simon Heffer is railing in the Telegraph about The Hundred. He thinks that the MCC could, and should, have put a stop to it.

    I love Simon Heffer in the way that I love flared trousers or mullet hair (neither of which you'd ever catch him sporting). He's reactionary about everything contemporary. A fortnight ago he was lambasting all forms of sculpture made since World War Two. I bumped into him once in London. He was suited walking on his own across the Jubilee footbridge on a warm day. A forlorn figure, he looked the perfect picture of malcontent. He has a particular chip about Etonians.

    I'm not a massive fan of T20 and expect to avoid The Hundred, but I can see what a fantastic injection the former has given the game especially via the IPL which is sensational. Unlike the English, Indians seem capable of percolating the shorter format into their test side.

    Simon Heffer is not alone in being a Telegraph columnist reactionary. You can follow more of them for 3 months @ £2 on a special offer. Despite some amusingly off-beam articles, and occasional downright nastiness, the journalism is often excellent and invariably interesting. Unlike The Times which, in my opinion, somehow contrives to make the centre of politics extremely dull.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/19/strong-mcc-could-have-killed-hundred-alas-powerless-servile/

    The Hundred is attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist / provide supply for which there isn't demand.

    Its like soccerball saying we want to increase attendances at Division Two, what we need is yet another competition, we will call it the Johnson Paint Trophy...what do you mean nobody turns up to watch it.
    You will, I hope, forgive me for suggesting that a lump of old white men complaining on here about the newer formats is not quite at the sharp end.

    The IPL has been a sensational success. As has T20 generally. The same oldies moaned back then, and were proven wrong, as Jonathan Agnew has since acknowledged.

    Mind you, there's not a lot of point moving from 120 balls to 100 balls and if the ECB thought T20 wasn't exciting enough, they should attend the post-covid IPL.

    I prefer Test cricket myself but that doesn't blind me to the brilliance of T20 and probably this new format.
    T20 is great...there is zero point then having yet another tournament which is minimally different. As I say it is like having the Johnson Paint Trophy in football. What we have done is taken the existing cups and altered the rules a bit, some different teams...what do you mean you don't want to pay £20 and rather watch the FA Cup.
    Repeat after me - If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.

    They are looking for new fans, and a terrestrial audience will help.

    I'm with you - there is nothing wrong with T20, other than the sheer repepitive boredom of six after six after six. For me its McDonalds every day. Day 1 is nice, day 2 ok, then it loses its appeal in a way that test cricket never does.
    To me there's nothing boring or repetitive about T20. Its not just 6 after 6, indeed in a few of the recent IT20s one of the sides has been bowled out.

    The big issue for me with The Hundred is I don't see how its meaningfully different to T20s. Plus I much prefer International over Domestic Cricket and International T20s are a thing, but is International Hundred going to be a thing? I just don't see it, as its just too close to T20.

    In which case, why not put the effort that has gone into The Hundred to make domestic T20 work?

    T20, ODI and Test are all very different from each other. But what distinguishes The Hundred from T20? How is it significantly different?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177
    IanB2 said:

    Amidst the utter shambles of this ludicrous shower in charge, Simon Heffer is railing in the Telegraph about The Hundred. He thinks that the MCC could, and should, have put a stop to it.

    I love Simon Heffer in the way that I love flared trousers or mullet hair (neither of which you'd ever catch him sporting). He's reactionary about everything contemporary. A fortnight ago he was lambasting all forms of sculpture made since World War Two. I bumped into him once in London. He was suited walking on his own across the Jubilee footbridge on a warm day. A forlorn figure, he looked the perfect picture of malcontent. He has a particular chip about Etonians.

    I'm not a massive fan of T20 and expect to avoid The Hundred, but I can see what a fantastic injection the former has given the game especially via the IPL which is sensational. Unlike the English, Indians seem capable of percolating the shorter format into their test side.

    Simon Heffer is not alone in being a Telegraph columnist reactionary. You can follow more of them for 3 months @ £2 on a special offer. Despite some amusingly off-beam articles, and occasional downright nastiness, the journalism is often excellent and invariably interesting. Unlike The Times which, in my opinion, somehow contrives to make the centre of politics extremely dull.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/19/strong-mcc-could-have-killed-hundred-alas-powerless-servile/

    The Hundred is attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist / provide supply for which there isn't demand.

    Its like soccerball saying we want to increase attendances at Division Two, what we need is yet another competition, we will call it the Johnson Paint Trophy...what do you mean nobody turns up to watch it.
    You will, I hope, forgive me for suggesting that a lump of old white men complaining on here about the newer formats is not quite at the sharp end.

    The IPL has been a sensational success. As has T20 generally. The same oldies moaned back then, and were proven wrong, as Jonathan Agnew has since acknowledged.

    Mind you, there's not a lot of point moving from 120 balls to 100 balls and if the ECB thought T20 wasn't exciting enough, they should attend the post-covid IPL.

    I prefer Test cricket myself but that doesn't blind me to the brilliance of T20 and probably this new format.
    T20 is great...there is zero point then having yet another tournament which is minimally different. As I say it is like having the Johnson Paint Trophy in football. What we have done is taken the existing cups and altered the rules a bit, some different teams...what do you mean you don't want to pay £20 and rather watch the FA Cup.
    Repeat after me - If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.

    They are looking for new fans, and a terrestrial audience will help.

    I'm with you - there is nothing wrong with T20, other than the sheer repepitive boredom of six after six after six. For me its McDonalds every day. Day 1 is nice, day 2 ok, then it loses its appeal in a way that test cricket never does.
    I am not a fan of cricket, and I can’t see that it is for me, either.

    Is it going to be the ChangeUK of sport?
    Possibly. They have invested hugely in this. TBH my approach would have seen them sacrifice some revenue to insist on some terrestrial T20 and test match action, with the proviso that whoever shows it must show it in its entirety. Less of an issue nowaday, but back in the day the Beeb used to love cutting away to the racing...
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    By the Tories have lost share you mean they've reverted in July to the same share they had in February, March, April and May?

    Looks to me like June was an outlier, but otherwise its been remarkably flat.

    Since the end of January almost every single poll share for the Tories has been 42% +/- 3% MoE, the only exceptions are a small number of 46% outliers two of which were in June.
    They've gone down after going up. This is the nature of things.

    I don't think you can discount the going down by arguing the going up was always temporary.

    The point is that people have said there's been no change in support despite the negative stories. There has been a change in support.
    It depends how meaningful the going up was. If it was an outlier within Margin of Error then a reversion to mean absolutely can be discounted.
    The point of looking at the smoothed average is that the outliers are averaged out.

    The increase in Tory support was likely real and not caused by random poll fluctuation - though I haven't done the formal statistics on that.
    Having a smoothed average moving from 42 to 43 then back to 42 could be entirely caused by random poll fluctuation.

    Its not like it went from 42 to 46 to 42. It went up one, then down one, that's almost rounding error levels of movement let alone margin of error.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,177

    Amidst the utter shambles of this ludicrous shower in charge, Simon Heffer is railing in the Telegraph about The Hundred. He thinks that the MCC could, and should, have put a stop to it.

    I love Simon Heffer in the way that I love flared trousers or mullet hair (neither of which you'd ever catch him sporting). He's reactionary about everything contemporary. A fortnight ago he was lambasting all forms of sculpture made since World War Two. I bumped into him once in London. He was suited walking on his own across the Jubilee footbridge on a warm day. A forlorn figure, he looked the perfect picture of malcontent. He has a particular chip about Etonians.

    I'm not a massive fan of T20 and expect to avoid The Hundred, but I can see what a fantastic injection the former has given the game especially via the IPL which is sensational. Unlike the English, Indians seem capable of percolating the shorter format into their test side.

    Simon Heffer is not alone in being a Telegraph columnist reactionary. You can follow more of them for 3 months @ £2 on a special offer. Despite some amusingly off-beam articles, and occasional downright nastiness, the journalism is often excellent and invariably interesting. Unlike The Times which, in my opinion, somehow contrives to make the centre of politics extremely dull.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2021/07/19/strong-mcc-could-have-killed-hundred-alas-powerless-servile/

    The Hundred is attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist / provide supply for which there isn't demand.

    Its like soccerball saying we want to increase attendances at Division Two, what we need is yet another competition, we will call it the Johnson Paint Trophy...what do you mean nobody turns up to watch it.
    You will, I hope, forgive me for suggesting that a lump of old white men complaining on here about the newer formats is not quite at the sharp end.

    The IPL has been a sensational success. As has T20 generally. The same oldies moaned back then, and were proven wrong, as Jonathan Agnew has since acknowledged.

    Mind you, there's not a lot of point moving from 120 balls to 100 balls and if the ECB thought T20 wasn't exciting enough, they should attend the post-covid IPL.

    I prefer Test cricket myself but that doesn't blind me to the brilliance of T20 and probably this new format.
    T20 is great...there is zero point then having yet another tournament which is minimally different. As I say it is like having the Johnson Paint Trophy in football. What we have done is taken the existing cups and altered the rules a bit, some different teams...what do you mean you don't want to pay £20 and rather watch the FA Cup.
    Repeat after me - If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.
    If you are a fan of cricket, the hundred is not for you.

    They are looking for new fans, and a terrestrial audience will help.

    I'm with you - there is nothing wrong with T20, other than the sheer repepitive boredom of six after six after six. For me its McDonalds every day. Day 1 is nice, day 2 ok, then it loses its appeal in a way that test cricket never does.
    To me there's nothing boring or repetitive about T20. Its not just 6 after 6, indeed in a few of the recent IT20s one of the sides has been bowled out.

    The big issue for me with The Hundred is I don't see how its meaningfully different to T20s. Plus I much prefer International over Domestic Cricket and International T20s are a thing, but is International Hundred going to be a thing? I just don't see it, as its just too close to T20.

    In which case, why not put the effort that has gone into The Hundred to make domestic T20 work?

    T20, ODI and Test are all very different from each other. But what distinguishes The Hundred from T20? How is it significantly different?
    Each to his own. I just cannot get that fired up about T20 on a regular basis. Its fun, but they have over emphasised one aspect of the game - batting - over bowling. Bowlers are on a hiding to nothing, on batting paradises. Even the balls they use have little or no swing about them - you might get a bit for an over or two.
    If you like it fine - enjoy. I prefer the longer game.
    As for the hundred - yep there is a sense that they wanted an IPL but could only do it by making it different. Just another T20 wasn't going to cut the mustard. So yes, its essentially a rain affected T20, down a few overs, with some silly rule changes.
    Incidentally, cricket max was a far more interesting concept. Hitting the ball to certain areas got double the runs. Now there was an idea.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,774
    A Spanish woman who has lived in England for 44 years has been sacked from her job in a care home because she is unable to prove she has the right to work in the UK, in a case illustrating the difficulties experienced by EU nationals as employers grapple with post-Brexit right-to-work regulations.

    The 45-year-old woman, who arrived in Britain as an 11-month-old baby and who has never left the country, said she has tried more than 100 times to get through to the Home Office-run helpline in the past three weeks, but has never been able to speak to an adviser.

    She has applied for EU settled status, but her application is stuck somewhere in the backlog of over 500,000 cases the Home Office has yet to process. She is the main breadwinner, with two children to support, and said her dismissal has left her struggling to buy food.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,080

    justin124 said:

    justin124 said:

    oh dear, 2000+ more cases of the Johnson Variant in Wales from today's figures...

    Why is it not the Drakeford variant there?
    because he didn't keep the borders with India open, that was Johnson, keep up please.
    When did Drakeford close the border with India?
    He couldn't that's a UK issue, moron.
    He had the power to stop all travel in and out of Wales, as he has done previously. Instead he decided to "monitor" the situation while cases numbers were low. But of course once you think you might have a problem, you have a massive problem.
    I think the majority of UK people realised we had a problem when the clown was elected.
    And yet 13% lead in the polls....I know I don't understand it either, but there you go.
    Though this is Yougov - which just a few weeks back recorded a Tory lead of 18% - Con 46% Lab 28%.. We shall have to see what other pollsters now come up with, but it will not be surprising to see Labour's 31% vote share with Yougov matched by circa 35% elsewhere.
    We can all cherry pick a poll. YouGov is Tories +2 on last poll. We have had similar leads in other recent polls over the past few days. 9% I think is the least, 13% the most. All had Labour in low 30s.

    My take is the lead is probably 9-10% and that is basically the same it has been for months now.
    Comres last week had Con 40% Lab 35% - a pollster which has now joined Survation in recording UK data. The GB equivalent would be Con 41% Lab 36%.
    And your point, again anybody can cherry pick an outlier....In same way there has been what 2-3 polls with 13% lead? A 12% lead. etc. In fact was there a 14% lead recently, I can't remember off the top of my head?

    The point is over the course of several months the Tories hardly varying from that 42% level, lead being around 9-10%.
    People react too much to individual polls here, when the random variation between polls makes any such analysis impossible. I think the graph on the wiki page does a decent job of synthesizing the polling data.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

    We can see that since the start of June the Tory share has declined by almost 2 percentage points, so it does look like there is an erosion of support in response to recent negative stories.

    But Labour haven't benefited. It's the Lib Dems who are surging. Whether this proves more durable than the surge in 2019, or is reflected in votes and seats at the next general election, is harder to tell. We can argue that either way.

    But it's hard to argue the government haven't recently lost support.
    By the Tories have lost share you mean they've reverted in July to the same share they had in February, March, April and May?

    Looks to me like June was an outlier, but otherwise its been remarkably flat.

    Since the end of January almost every single poll share for the Tories has been 42% +/- 3% MoE, the only exceptions are a small number of 46% outliers two of which were in June.
    They've gone down after going up. This is the nature of things.

    I don't think you can discount the going down by arguing the going up was always temporary.

    The point is that people have said there's been no change in support despite the negative stories. There has been a change in support.
    It depends how meaningful the going up was. If it was an outlier within Margin of Error then a reversion to mean absolutely can be discounted.
    The point of looking at the smoothed average is that the outliers are averaged out.

    The increase in Tory support was likely real and not caused by random poll fluctuation - though I haven't done the formal statistics on that.
    Having a smoothed average moving from 42 to 43 then back to 42 could be entirely caused by random poll fluctuation.

    Its not like it went from 42 to 46 to 42. It went up one, then down one, that's almost rounding error levels of movement let alone margin of error.
    It's a rounding error level of movement for a single poll, but not for an average of the polls.

    The chance of all the polls having errors in the same direction is minuscule. That's the whole point of taking an average.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,639
    kinabalu said:

    Interesting article on a possible gap in enthusiasm between the SNP hierarchy and indepencence activists:

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19451082.mark-smith-great-indy-silence-snps-people-problem/?ref=twtrec

    Yawn.

    Unionist poster highlights anti-SNP message in a Unionist newspaper. How novel.

    At some point Unionists will realise that they have to stop appealing to their core vote and start talking to normal Scots.
    Even more important, stop appealing to an inchoate anti indy constituency who don't even have a vote; luckily they don't show the slightest sign of it. Of course the likes of the Herald probably depend on traffic from Outraged of non Scottish place, though tbf the National seems to have a similar following. Same stable so I guess that probably is their business model.
    Just to report I got the same Telegraph offer as you. The 85% discount. Exceedingly generous. I also got - for the 5th time in as many days - my FINAL CHANCE to get a years worth of Speccy for the price of 3 months. No free pen or anything but, again, pretty generous.

    It's got me thinking. Straws in the wind perhaps. Can't give away the Telegraph or the Spectator. GB News tanking. The backlash against the backlash against the Knee. PB's Leon growing ever more circumspect in what he commits to posterity. Could we be seeing Peak Nonsense in the rear view mirror? I think we could.
    'Circumcised' surely is the right term for Leon's works of art?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,639
    HYUFD said:

    Interesting article on a possible gap in enthusiasm between the SNP hierarchy and indepencence activists:

    https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19451082.mark-smith-great-indy-silence-snps-people-problem/?ref=twtrec

    Yawn.

    Unionist poster highlights anti-SNP message in a Unionist newspaper. How novel.

    At some point Unionists will realise that they have to stop appealing to their core vote and start talking to normal Scots.
    Most 'normal Scots' do not want an indyref2 for at least 5 years ie after the next UK general election. In fact only 42% want one within the next 5 years even despite the SNP Holyrood majority.
    https://news.sky.com/story/elections-2021-scottish-voters-less-enthusiastic-about-independence-referendum-in-next-5-years-sky-news-poll-12296485

    Sturgeon realises that hence she is not pushing for one, much to the annoyance of the nationalist hardcore some of whom may start to shift to Alba

    Bingo!!

    I'm up to 3/4 groats now.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,209

    LNER:

    Hi, we have made the decision to operate under English guidance, with regards to social distancing on cross border services, to provide consistency to customers. Therefore, customers may be seated next to each other when travelling from 19 July onwards.

    https://twitter.com/LNER/status/1416844949769830403?s=20

    The state of some of the replies.....

    Cheeky barstewards they should stop every one of their trains over the border and arrest any arse not wearing a mask.
This discussion has been closed.