Vox populi, vox Dei – politicalbetting.com
Vox populi, vox Dei – politicalbetting.com
73% of Britons support the assisted dying bill as it stands, ahead of its final Commons vote tomorrowSupport: 73% (no change from 19-20 Nov 2024 to 15-16 May 2025)Oppose: 16% (+3)yougov.co.uk/health/artic…
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A study by MIT academics detected reduced brain activity in students who used AI tools for help with writing essays" (£)
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/using-chatgpt-for-work-it-might-make-you-more-stupid-dtvntprtk
It would really concentrate the minds of politicians if they knew they were just a simple vote away from the needle.
Hopefully after a good few years of it operating without the roof caving in then it can be amended to a far more liberal application.
Anyone claiming they oppose this bill due to a lack of safeguards wouldn't accept any bill.
I get the reverse - support the principle, but oppose in practice, e.g. if thinking there should be assisted dying but the bill has too many issues - but who thinks assisted dying is, in principle a bad thing, but nonetheless supports it happening in practice?
Banning things you don't approve of leads to all manner of negative outcomes.
Many of which you may approve of even less.
It is a terrible shame that many of the opponents of abortion are also so vehmently against -say- sex education or support for single parents.
Think of money as time.
One million seconds = 11 days.
200 million seconds = six years.
Also Beth Rigby of Sky on Iran:
'I have just spoken to the French ambassador to the UK - who very rarely does anything on camera - to talk about the need for de-escalation in the Israel-Iran conflict amid growing concerns the US will get involved.
It's a moment of great jeopardy for all European allies, our prime minister, and all European leaders pushing for de-escalation.
The message from the French ambassador today is to step back and de-escalate.
There will be talks in Geneva tomorrow between Iranian officials and Europe's leading politicians - David Lammy, as well as the foreign ministers of France, Germany, although no country formally confirming.
It is all an attempt to find a solution.
The big question is: will Donald Trump listen?'
Has there ever been a time when the leaders of Europe, including Starmer have ever looked so out of their depths and impotent ?
The only players in this are Trump and Netanyahu and the danger for these leaders is they will look utterly helpless if US and Israel do take out
Iran's nuclear capability
Presumably those polled were asked to read the provisos in the polling question.
As previous thread, my best guess is Trump signs off on a whole load of missiles to shore up Iron Dome, because even Netanyahu can see that blowing up a mountain will not stop missiles landing in Tel Aviv.
Talking to Iran will embolden them to dig in
To take a different topic, I support abortion in principle and in practice (within limits) but I don't think it's a choice I would ever have made for myself (being a man this doesn't apply - I don't think it's a choice I would have ever wanted a partner to make, while respecting that her wishes would overrule mine).
And there was a good case for the US to bomb the facility.
But of course what would he know.
Ref 31 (+1)
Lab 23 (-1)
Con 16 (=)
LD 12 (-1)
Green 11 (=)
Hardly unknown
What makes this special: it looks like some kind of very high spec BMW. Almost a super car. And there’s two fire engines and several cop cars. For one crash?
And they are dismembering the vehicle in the street. Huge tools ripping open the engine etc. Why on earth would they do that?
Why not just lift and tow it?
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, about the situation in the Middle East and condemned Israeli attacks on Iran, a top Russian official said Thursday.
Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that “both sides have identical approaches — strongly condemning Israel’s actions that violate the U.N. charter and other norms of international law.” He added that the two leaders say the issue of Iran’s nuclear program “does not have a forceful solution.”
In its summary of the phone call, Chinese state media reported that Xi said a ceasefire was imperative and that “the parties to the conflict, especially Israel, should cease fire as soon as possible to prevent the situation from escalating in turn and resolutely avoid the spillover of war.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/19/israel-iran-strikes-live-us-trump/#link-GMOT72MYJBAB7MEMWXFVUX6LWY
The problem is that every time you bomb them, you make it even more clear to the Iranian leadership that they need nuclear weapons, because that's the only way they can ensure they don't get bombed again in the future.
So, the question becomes, is it possible to permanently prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Or are we just slowing them down.
My gut is that we're doing the second.
Does anyone (aside from @Roger) believe that Iran doesn't want to build a nuclear weapon?
MPs are set to vote next week to decriminalise abortions that take place outside of set rules - in 2023 we found that 52% of Britons agreed that women should not face criminal prosecution in such cases
Results link in next tweet
https://x.com/yougov/status/1932705753560646106?s=61&t=c6bcp0cjChLfQN5Tc8A_6g
There's a pretty clear majority in the House in favour of the principle, and I don't think enough MPs who support the principle but might have concerns with the particulars of the bill will want to risk it failing as a result. They might suggest the Lords can address concerns, which is a bit of a flippant approach, or conclude the negatives of the bill are not significant enough, but I think it will get through easily enough.
(There have been cases where there's been a crash, and a passing motorist has let a victim sit in their car. Only for the victim to complain of back/neck injuries, and therefore the roof being cut off a perfectly good car. I've no idea what the insurance says about that...)
Drugs? Guns?
For any other coastal walkers - do the south coast in winter, and the north coast in summer...
But if every five years they are put back five years I can live with that and, more importantly, is worth doing.
For some unknown reason I was listening to a bit of James O'Brien this morning and he was wittering on about MAD and how Iran wouldn't bomb Israel even with a nuke because it would invite retaliation.
Perhaps ignoring the well documented difference in approach to dying for your cause between some elements of Islam (those in charge for example) and the West.
Tories unmoved with FoN since 8 May. Do they actually change their panel??
Or an increase in unemployment for those not as immune to such things. Another appalling euphemism from those who don’t feel the pain.
Once again the Bank is too slow in cutting interest rates making growth harder. Add in the malign policies of Reeves and we are struggling to get any growth at all.
But there's an expert on such matters on PB...
Mind you, having recently experienced the Faroes even St Andrews seems balmy, at least conceptually
Couldn’t live there tho. London is bad enough in winter
Ultimately, you need about 40kg of 80+% enriched U235, and some shaped explosive charges.
It really isn't beyond the ability of any middle income country.
The difficult bit is enriching the uranium, which requires centrifuges to seperate the lighter uranium isotopes from the heavier ones. You need hundreds of the buggers, each of which enriches a bit of uranium by just a few percent.
Messing with the centrifuges has been a core tenet of Israeli and US actions for two decades (see Stuxnet).
But the fundamental problem is that Iran keeps adding to it stockpile of enriched Uranium. If you believe the Israelis, they now have more than 400kg of 60+% enriched uranium. That's not enriched enough for a bomb*, but it's not far off.
And unless you actually deplete the amount of enriched uranium, then you never really push them back in time. I guess that's my issue: how do we reduce the amount of enriched uranium they have, because if we don't reduce that, then all we're doing is hoping and praying for regime change before they get those 40kg of 80+% enriched uranium.
* @Malmesbury notes it is enough to achieve a chain reaction, but the yields would be very low compared to an 80+% bomb.
Questions, questions...
I jest, but I can see some activist or mandarin proposing it right now.
There was a report on jockeys saying they'd be straight on TwiX after a bad ride. Bernard Ingham used to lament that John Major insisted on reading the newspapers that had turned on him, rather than the filtered press reports that Mrs Thatcher had favoured.
As always my 50% levy on long distance air travel, golf clubs, Glyndebourne, river cruises and expensive London hotels is still available for any adventurous chancellor wishing to reduce the amount of money sloshing around.
Universal Credit says 38% of the 6.3mn UC claimants have jobs. That's a lot of subsidised employment.
Now getting enriched uranium, that is another matter. That is the difficult bit. And then you need some way of delivering it.
Abortion is absolutely shit for the woman. Some bounce back from it okay, but for many it is a trauma that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
I'm not for a minute arguing against it, but it's not a neutral thing in any way.
@FindoutnowUK
🟦 Reform UK: 31% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (-1)
🔵 Conservatives: 16% (-)
🟠 Lib Dems: 12% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 11% (-)
Changes from 11th June
[Find Out Now, 18th June, N=2,628]"
https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1935729120669007926
80% of Labour voters and 72% of LDs back assisted dying, while only 64% of Reform voters and 71% of Conservative voters do.
Interestingly only 64% of 18-24s in favour though
https://yougov.co.uk/health/articles/52413-support-for-assisted-dying-unmoved-by-the-debate?utm_source=website_article&utm_medium=bluesky&utm_campaign=52413
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=16&LAB=23&LIB=12&Reform=31&Green=11&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
Better getting people some work, even if subsidised, than have them sitting at home all day on benefits if of working age
And the difficult bit isn't lack of knowledge it is the resources neede to produce the fuel.
Your argument is like saying you don't know how to build a car because drilling for oil and turning into petrol is difficult.
PS I couldn't do it, but then I can't put a bird box on a wall.
No. Abortion is a terrible thing. But sometimes it is the least worst alternative for the woman concerned and I believe that she has the right to make that choice, at least to the point the foetus is viable. But it’s a long long way from neutral.