Thistle do nicely, a 16% return in 9 months? – politicalbetting.com
Thistle do nicely, a 16% return in 9 months? – politicalbetting.com
Ladbrokes have put up a market on who will win the most seats at next year’s Holyrood election and it is a stunning achievement for the the SNP to be the 1/6 favourites when by the time of next year’s election they will have been in power for 19 (nineteen) years.
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I don't expect to win, but 12-1 seem very fair odds.
I would never have guessed from the title.
Labour have been in power in Wales for 26 years. Admittedly that's included two periods in coalition.
On the rest - The Pitt/Addington coalition lasted for 23 years (1783-1806) and returned to power in 1807 for another 23 years (until 1830). That's sometimes counted as one 47-year period as Addington/Sidmouth served as Lord Privy Seal from 1806-1807 but probably shouldn't be as the main figures, Portland, Hawkesbury, Castlereagh, Canning and Perceval had gone into Opposition.
I would have thought the longest period in power in the U.K. would be the Ulster Unionists from 1921 to 1972 in Stormont.
Do we have anyone from Monkwearmouth here?
This is my (very) obscure photo for today, from the former parish hall of All Saints, Monkwearmouth. It was a place where the Pentecostal Movement in the UK started, triggered by the Vicar of the parish, a chap called Rev Alexander Boddy. I think this is also the thing referred to as the "Sunderland Revival".
The LH plaque refers to the events in 1907 "when the fire fell" (normal Pentecostal language out of the Book of Acts). "Burnt up the debt" is an allusion to the theological redemption of the debt of sin etc, and also to that that was the point when they paid off the debt on the building. The plaque on the Right refers to the building being purchased for cash by an Elim Pentecostal church in the 1990s. It was Boddy's wife (no sexism here in that respect) who got one of the key early figures in British Pentecostalism, Smith Wigglesworth (first name "Smith") started.
Here's an account of events from "The Revival Library" website, in the vigorous house style from September 1907.
https://revival-library.org/histories/1907-how-pentecost-came-to-britain/
It is at 120 Fulwood Road, Roker, Sunderland. You can see the tablets behind the fence:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/3YXnGm2BE22cq4SA9
I've also kept updating my own comment...
I think it also eminently possible that Cummings is still lying about what those motives were - possibly without even realising it as one of Cummings' most notable features is his ability to deceive himself.
At least you wouldn’t need to worry about collecting winnings.
So you maybe right.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-ukraine-russia-brexit-b2024817.html
I do not expect Labour’s red rose to be the flower of Scotland at next year’s election.
Montrose £200
Roxburgh £500
Atholl £1000
Marchmont £1104 15s 6d
Cromartie £300
Balcarres £500
Dunmore £200
Glencairn £100
Seafield (also Lord Chancellor) £490
Banff £11 2s (cheapskate)
They essentially bartered their votes for enough money to cover their losses over the Darien disaster. The common people were less enthusiastic, and the Treaty was burned in Dumfries.
I find Harley's comment as Secretary of State on the subject of an unpopular linen tax amusing: 'But Mr Speaker, having bought the Scots, did we not also acquire the right to tax them?'
Good morning, everyone.
"Nigel Farage would put women and girls at risk.
NIGEL FARAGE WANTS TO MAKE IT EASIER TO SHARE REVENGE PORN ONLINE"
I presume this is about the OSA, so the inference is that anyone who opposes the OSA wants to make it easier to share revenge porn
Who does the Labour Party think is stupid enough to believe this, even if only about Farage?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Scottish_Parliament_election
Has DC ever mea culpa-ed for foisting him on the British people?
https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-have-britons-reacted-to-age-verification
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-expert/
Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
Quite like the idea of one of those yaks being interviewed by the polis and responding that they're scholars of the Albigensian Crusade and were merely displaying their scholarship.
Best bet at what happens is SNP win shed loads of central belt constituencies again, enough to put Mr Swinney in a very strong position to negotiate retaining power.
Say SNP get 55 seats. Difficult to portray that as losing if your nearest rival has 38.
Slabs best bet is to lower the gap in the constituency vote to very low single figures, they would then start winning central belt constituencies where their vote is most concentrated.
We are a mile away from that just now, things can change but Slab haven't led either vote in almost a year.
Most experts are agreed that the OSA is stupid, counterproductive, easily worked around, dangerous and increases risks.
Nor is there any obvious connection with the three main cases thrown up by OSA's increasingly desperate defenders. Jimmy Savile assaulted girls in the flesh, not online. Peter Kyle's concern about the genuine risk of grooming in online forums has nothing to do with porn sites or age verification. And now revenge porn which was banned 10 years ago.
Taking cyanide prevents obesity getting worse, but that doesn't mean it's a great treatment plan.
Sunday Mail@Sunday_Mail
Here is your first look at tomorrow's Sunday Mail front page, which leads on Alex Salmond’s widow suing the Scottish Government over its botched sexual harassment probe into her late husband.
https://x.com/Sunday_Mail/status/1956822236217925915
For Women Scotland@ForWomenScot
We are taking @scotgov back to court.
We have been left with little choice as the Gov has refused to quash school & prison guidance. Papers have been served & the Gov has 21 days to respond.
https://x.com/ForWomenScot/status/1956801580956610672
"I'm amazed she recalls enough to write an essay, let alone a book. A mendacious, devious liar who tried to frame Alec Salmond, played politics over COVID and is married to a man charged with embezzling money from the party she led. Someone who believes men in a dress ought to be in a woman's prison because of them saying they are a woman"
All I can say knowing less about her than you obviously do is that I've always been a fan and this book hasn't changed that. I've long admired her values and her loathing of racism and prejudice which is evident throughout the book and was in all her appearances. Scottish politics is clearly a bear pit and how she managed to navigate it has to be admired and respected. I have to say despite her tough gal exterior I find it quite moving and for anyone wanting to know more about Scottish politics I can't think of a better place to start
More than 850 jobs at risk as David Montgomery revives swoop on news publisher Reach
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/16/mirror-express-targeted-takeover-sack-third-of-journalists/ (£££)
Botched? In so much as he was acquitted.
SNP is a risk. To make any money at 1/6 you’d have to pile on. I don’t believe, in these volatile times, they are a dead certainty
Reform at 12/1 is generous
The NYT has a piercing essay on the crash in tech/coding/computer science jobs for graduates. You can guess why. The industry is burning on the ground floor, the fire will spread to the rest of the building
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/coding-ai-jobs-students.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The great jobs shakedown is beginning
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10259/
"In light of these representations and the level of public interest, the EHRC published an update on 14 May setting out further details of the consultation process. It said it would run from 19 May to 30 June, rather than for two weeks as originally proposed. It will focus on sections of the code of practice that require updating following the judgment. While the consultation is running, the EHRC will hold Q&A sessions with stakeholders representing affected protected characteristic groups.
The consultation was published on 20 May. It closed on 30 June 2025. The EHRC is currently considering responses to the consultation. It will publish a revised Code of Practice in due course. This will be submitted to the Secretary of State and laid before Parliament before coming into force. "
Edit: to do anything before that only invites challenges from one or other sides.
And I have heard and seen scary things
I say this with no pleasure at all. Quite the opposite. I have two daughters age 19. What will they do?!?
There was a survey earlier this year that showed giving AI to developers made them think they were more productive but when you looked at what they did they were actually less productive.
I suspect the reason why computer science jobs are fewer is that the economy isn't great so a lot of firms aren't investing money (and software isn't a cheap investment, it requires spending a lot of money up front and management finding time for people to identify what they want the system to do)
Hence I can see the SNP easily winning on 30-35% while the other parties win more votes between them but very few constituency seats.
So according to you we are entering a dystopian world where only the Captains of industry can make a living. Everyone else has been replaced by machines.
If only the top two or three percent remain earning, we won't even need baristas and burger flippers for the hoi poloi, as no one will be able to afford burgers and coffee.
I’d offer some startling concrete examples from very recent days, but I am hesitant as I don’t want to get banned. So I guess I can’t
Anyway, good morning everyone
It’s a bright fresh sunny morning here on the rugged frontiers of Primrose Hill. Rather pleasant after the relentless heat (by UK standards)
Her memoir is badly researched and glosses over or totally forgets to mention or address the worst scandals under her stewardship as FM and leader of the SNP as she tries to cynically reinvent her public persona in preparation for her post front line politics career.
You can have your second plebiscite once England has had her first plebiscite on this topic.
And all it takes for the SNP to plunge is for a lot of Indy supporters to think “ok I still want Indy, but THIS is more important for now, Indy can wait”
If THIS is migrants/asylum/woke wars, then Reform become the only option
Not likely in Scotland. But not impossible
My sons were discussing their children's work prospects on a family trip yesterday. Eldest's eldest, with a decent degree in history, is currently working as a barman, although apparently he is highly thought of and has been offered promotion. Does a career in hospitality management beckon?
Younger's eldest is reading subjects (mainly) related to marine biology, although she seems to have no idea where that might lead. She's only in her first year though, so that may well change.
And so it goes on.
“In the early railway age, probably the majority of companies went bust. Britain’s “railway mania” of the 1830s and 40s saw promoters raising fortunes on wild promises. Building railways was hugely expensive, competition was cutthroat, and traffic forecasts were often pure fantasy. Many branch lines to obscure towns never paid their way, and some companies paid dividends out of capital until the money ran out.
The survivors - like the Liverpool & Manchester Railway - thrived, but dozens of smaller lines collapsed or were absorbed by stronger rivals. The same chaos unfolded in America, where the panic of 1837 sent early railroads into bankruptcy with alarming regularity. Railways changed the world, but the business was as risky and volatile as a gold rush.”
Yes they're still doing well, but maybe not quite so well.
Comments about Farage in particular are going to embolden his supporters.
In case we need reminding, it was a backlash to the extreme wokery and gender stuff that got Trump re-elected, and it’s not impossible that the same could happen in the UK. Today’s polling replicated in a GE gives us Farage as PM.
The government got lucky with the Women Scotland case in the Supreme Court, and Starmer’s lawyerly view appears to be that the court has spoken so that’s the end of the matter, but there’s still nearly four years to go and the activists love the woke stuff, as well as other parties to the left of Labour (Greens, Corbynites, Gazans etc.) who are even more extreme on this stuff and think that the only immigration problem is that there isn’t enough of it.
Now wonder labour are floundering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4dMtLPoVjI
"We’ve been hearing from Canadians that “Indian Fatigue” is happening all across [Canada] — and now, it’s no longer just a national concern.
What started as a Canadian conversation has spread to become a worldwide issue. Indian Fatigue — our term for the growing frustration over rapid demographic and cultural changes linked to large-scale immigration from India — is now being discussed in communities across the globe.
In this video, we look at what Canadians are saying and show some recent examples, highlighting how this issue is affecting communities and sparking conversations everywhere. This is a conversation the world can’t ignore."
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/my-daughter-zoe-is-not-a-terrorist-why-has-she-spent-a-year-in-prison
I think this is their high water mark for the time being.
The current problem with AI is that the costs are 3 fold
1) creating the models (very expensive).
2) the running costs of paying customers (someone has just found a cursor user who used $50,000 of compute costs for their $200 subscription). Now that's a worst case scenario but it's incredibly common to discover high usage users are using more than they pay.
3) marketing is about giving limited acceess for free - so a lot people aren't paying anything and a struggling to find reasons to spend money on it
End result is few people can justify the actual costs of their usage - so there is a very limited upside for potential customers.
I've seen a number of expert people who think LLM is probably a $50bn industry (at best) and not the multiple trillion pounds others think it is...
Finally MS are desperately trying to work out a business model that isn't per user or consumption base as that is essential for them to make a profit from this technology and it's proving far harder than they thought (per user isn't selling even at $20 a user per month)..
Could just be The Holibobs Effect
As for today’s teenagers, either trade school or something that relies on human-to-human contact. That or a PhD in machine learning.
He’s a good essay on what the next few years might look like. https://x.com/gregisenberg/status/1956703650744578091
AI might be able to take first world jobs at the moment, but there’s a long way to go when it comes to third world wages.
“The Dawn of the Electrical Age was as chaotic as the Early Railway Age. In the 1880s and 1890s, when Edison, Westinghouse, and their imitators started stringing wires across cities, companies were constantly springing up, collapsing, or being swallowed. Setting up a power plant and network of cables was monstrously expensive, and there was no agreed standard at first (AC vs. DC being the infamous “War of Currents”). Small municipal or speculative firms often overpromised - “light for every home!” - then went bust when they couldn’t raise enough capital, or when customers balked at high prices.
So just like the railways, the early electricity business was a graveyard of little ventures, with a handful of giants emerging from the rubble. This pattern is painfully familiar in technological revolutions - wild optimism, frantic building, frequent bankruptcy, and eventual consolidation into a few dominant firms.”
https://www.wheresyoured.at/how-does-gpt-5-work/
One of those areas where you see the process flow and why it looks great but is really problematic when actually implemented (look at question, forward message to appropriate system, spend x00 tokens ensuring appropriate system understands the context).
Grok
@grok
Based on ONS data for year ending March 2025:
- London (Met Police area): 3.05 sexual offences per 1,000 pop. (26,803 offences; pop. ~8.8M). Foreign-born: 40.6%.
- Tendring district (incl. Clacton-on-Sea, Farage's constituency): 4.25 per 1,000 (633 offences; pop. ~149K). Foreign-born: 6.7%.
London's rate is lower, despite higher immigration. No causal link implied.
7:43 pm · 16 Aug 2025
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https://x.com/grok/status/1956788961290101053
They have now also released a load of docs telling you how you have to be really careful with your prompts when asking for help with coding and it will do the wrong thing if you don't follow them. The whole points of these LLMs is supposed they are getting better and make it easier to write code, not that I have to carefully construct my point with a load of xml tags before it will do the right thing. That is just changing one form of coding into another.
Here's a counterpoint from The Times:
https://archive.is/tYcCk
US Homeland Security News
@defense_civil25
14h
🚨Update: The White House has informed the Ukrainian delegation that Zelensky MUST wear a suit or there will be no meeting! Bravo White House. It’s a formal meeting, and the presidency of the U.S. is an institution that demands the highest level of formality!
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/36324162/scandal-strictly-cops-bbc-external-probe/
Posted mainly for the headline. Look and learn, TSE.