Saturday 11th & Sunday 12th February 2023

[refitman]

Morning all.

[gilsey]

Good morning.


Curtice.

Tory losses could be greater than any we’ve seen before

where and by how much would Conservative support fall by more than 22 points? According to Electoral Calculus’s modelling, the answer is clear – the higher the Conservative vote last time, the more the party’s support would fall. In true blue Castle Point, the party’s support is projected to have fallen from 77 per cent to 42 per cent, a fall of 35 points – in sharp contrast to the picture in Liverpool Riverside, where it is estimated to have slipped from 7 per cent to 4 per cent.

On average, Electoral Calculus estimate the party’s vote in its 120 strongest seats is now as much as 30 points down on 2019 – and by 27 points in the 120 next strongest. It is those figures that explain why the poll’s estimated outcome of the Tory tally of seats is nearly 100 less than in the conventional calculation.

I'll make one prediction, Sunak won't lose his seat.

[refitman]

Journalists protecting each other

[RogerOThornhill]

Good morning.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Journalists protecting each other

Of course, it really is a modern day mafia (unless you have the initials OJ, of course)

[PaulfromYorkshire]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... en-inquiry

Request to re-open Partygate inquiry

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Bogged: the toilet laws that could spell end of the road for New Zealand’s van lifers

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... van-lifers

This isn't just a problem in New Zealand. There's a small car park near my parent's house with a lovely view of the estuary and sea which has become increasingly popular with people in camper vans and converted vans. The bin there is constantly overflowing with used toilet paper and worse, it's absolutely disgusting and stinks in the Summer. Dog walkers have caught people crapping on the beach. The council had so many complaints they eventually erected a metal bar thing across the road at a height that allows cars through but is too low for vans but it's constantly vandalised. What's most galling is there are perfectly fine, free toilets five minutes walk away so these thoughtless idiots have no excuse. They like to call themselves 'wild campers' despite being in a van, but the whole ethos of wild camping is leaving no trace and if they can't do that I'm with the Kiwis.

[AnatolyKasparov]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... en-inquiry

Request to re-open Partygate inquiry

Ha ha, just in time to stymie BoJo's much hyped "comeback".

[refitman]

Isn't it nice of Labour to stoke the far right sentiments. Gotta get those undecided voters, eh?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well, one always needs to be careful in the language used in discussing this stuff.

But are you seriously saying the present system *isn't* broken and *doesn't* need fixing?

And if it is fixed, the salience of the issue will decline. It suits the likes of Braverman for things to stay much as they are.

[refitman]

Well, one always needs to be careful in the language used in discussing this stuff.

But are you seriously saying the present system *isn't* broken and *doesn't* need fixing?

And if it is fixed, the salience of the issue will decline. It suits the likes of Braverman for things to stay much as they are.

He's framing it as "look at all the nasty foreigners. Vote for us and we'll kick them out the country quicker than the Tories". It's nothing more than racist dog-whistling.

[refitman]

[AnatolyKasparov]

The local MP George Howarth (hardly a massive leftie) did.

[refitman]

That's nice. Lots of individual MPs do things. I'm more interested in how the leadership group of the party react (and Kinnock is definitely part of that group).

[AnatolyKasparov]

You don't think it relevant that the *local MP* said what they did?

Arguably they would have more reason to play the mealy mouthed "understandable concerns" card, rather than less.

[RogerOThornhill]

I saw this a few minutes ago.



People Polling is a new name to me - opened in 2022 - but their website is, how should I put this, a little short on detail and it's only when you look at Companies House that you find that the directors are one Matthew Goodwin and one of his mates at the University of Kent.

So Goodwin puts out results on his own Twitter a/c that have come from the company he controls without actually declaring an interest.

BTW...no small irony given Goodwin's politics and the rhetoric that the Right use that it is based on Upper Street. in Islington.

[AnatolyKasparov]

It has often tended to give bigger Labour scores/leads recently than some other pollsters, which is ironic given the above.

Maybe no wonder that THE POL PROF feels the need to resort to loaded questions so often.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Yay! The wonderful Wet Leg say Fuck the Tories at the Brit Awards. The revolution will not be televised but you'll be able to listen to it on 6 music.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Almost £1bn spent on anti-Covid drug that doesn’t work

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... esnt-work/

Less than two per cent of the 2.23 million courses of the antiviral drug molnupiravir procured by the Department of Health have ever been prescribed to patients, analysis by The Telegraph shows.

The rest are unlikely to ever be used after research found the drug makes no difference to hospitalisation or death rates.

The drug is far more costly than alternatives, at around £450 per course. It has been used so infrequently that it amounts to a cost of £30,000 per patient treated.

In autumn 2021, Sajid Javid, then the health secretary, announced that the Government had bought 2.23 million courses of the “game-changing” antiviral in an attempt to reduce the impact of the omicron variant.

The UK was the first country in the world to licence molnupiravir, which was designed to keep vulnerable people out of hospital by reducing the severity of Covid symptoms. At the time, Mr Javid described the decision as a “historic day”.

When the Government first bought the drug, it made the decision based on the preliminary results of a much smaller trial of 762 patients carried out by the manufacturer, which suggested that it reduced hospital admission by 50 per cent.

However, the second half of that study, known as the move-out trial, suggested the drug was linked to a 25 per cent increase in hospitalisations.

Last month, early findings of a UK-led study suggested molnupiravir may actually cause the Covid virus to mutate, giving rise to new variants.

[RogerOThornhill]

No surprise that all the usual suspects have misinterpreted this as an "OMG! they're putting us in prison!"...

[AnatolyKasparov]

Almost £1bn spent on anti-Covid drug that doesn’t work

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... esnt-work/

Oh dear, this seems just a bit sub-optimal.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

No surprise that all the usual suspects have misinterpreted this as an "OMG! they're putting us in prison!"...

Ah yes, Nick Fletcher MP for Doncaster who claimed the pedestrianisation of the city centre would lead to more antisocial behaviour because drunks would no longer be afraid of being run over by traffic.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Oh dear, this seems just a bit sub-optimal.

To say the least. It looks like Sajid Javid spent nearly a billion pounds of our money on magic beans and we didn't even get a beanstalk.

[AnatolyKasparov]

How d'ya like those apples, Leeds?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Shame both teams have had to release a joint statement condemning the disgusting chants from both sets of supporters. Watching on TV I only heard the Leeds chants and abuse including a new one involving Greenwood. Some of it was coming from children ffs.

Glad to get that result though while I can still support United before the Qatari's buy them.

[RogerOThornhill]

Poor Charlie, makes a film for GB News about grooming gangs and hardly anyone noticed. The fact that when he and his chums were claiming that the "MSM" had ignored the issue and were reminded a number of times that the BBC made a documentary in 2017, as well as a 3 part drama, and a follow-up programme is irrelevant clearly.

Oh, and that the "MSM" reported on virtually every trial and verdict...

[refitman]

Well, Labour are gonna sweep Scotland with picks like this

[refitman]

Lmao

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Knowing

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/

In this one Nicolas Cage plays an astrophysicist who learns that the end of the world is nigh. A young schoolgirl leaves a stream of numbers in a school time capsule and 50 years later he successfully interprets them as portends of doom. This hokum has a decent budget and was directed by the bloke who made 'The Crow' and 'Dark City' but marks the beginning of the end of his career which culminated in the much panned 'Gods of Egypt'.

Despite some lavish, if dated, CGI disasters (which I found oddly amusing for some reason) it's a strangely uncompelling affair. Perhaps that's because Cage puts in a 'serious' understated performance which for me at least made his acting worse than in all the low budget efforts where he's allowed to go apeshit. There's an honesty in that craziness which is missing here, you can tell he's acting.

Despite that it could have been a decent film given the subject matter with a more imaginative script exploring whether we live in a deterministic universe or if we have free will. But no, instead we got dodgy CGI things going boom and Nicolas Cage being boringly sane.

On the Cageometer I'd have to give it a 1/5.

Avoid.

[refitman]

Knowing

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448011/

In this one Nicolas Cage plays an astrophysicist who learns that the end of the world is nigh. A young schoolgirl leaves a stream of numbers in a school time capsule and 50 years later he successfully interprets them as portends of doom. This hokum has a decent budget and was directed by the bloke who made 'The Crow' and 'Dark City' but marks the beginning of the end of his career which culminated in the much panned 'Gods of Egypt'.

Despite some lavish, if dated, CGI disasters (which I found oddly amusing for some reason) it's a strangely uncompelling affair. Perhaps that's because Cage puts in a 'serious' understated performance which for me at least made his acting worse than in all the low budget efforts where he's allowed to go apeshit. There's an honesty in that craziness which is missing here, you can tell he's acting.

Despite that it could have been a decent film given the subject matter with a more imaginative script exploring whether we live in a deterministic universe or if we have free will. But no, instead we got dodgy CGI things going boom and Nicolas Cage being boringly sane.

On the Cageometer I'd have to give it a 1/5.

Avoid.

It's based loosely (in the loosest possible sense of the word) on a Philip K Dick book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Man. I remember my dad had a copy of the anthology it was published in, where I read it as a kid - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/226490.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well, Labour are gonna sweep Scotland with picks like this

[Sky'sGoneOut]

It's based loosely (in the loosest possible sense of the word) on a Philip K Dick book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Man. I remember my dad had a copy of the anthology it was published in, where I read it as a kid - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/226490.

Are you sure? I know the story and the film I just watched bore no resemblance to it whatsoever.

Ah, wait a minute, according to Wiki you've confused it with another Nicolas Cage film called 'Next'. I'll do that one next time.

Cool dad.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Thing is, East Lothian was maybe Labour's most winnable seat north of the border - even before the local Nats descended into chaos with their MP going over to Alba. So even Dougal, with his almost impressive past record of pretty much unremitting failure, might struggle to mess this one up.

But never say never, I suppose

[refitman]

It's based loosely (in the loosest possible sense of the word) on a Philip K Dick book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Man. I remember my dad had a copy of the anthology it was published in, where I read it as a kid - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/226490.

Are you sure? I know the story and the film I just watched bore no resemblance to it whatsoever.

Ah, wait a minute, according to Wiki you've confused it with another Nicolas Cage film called 'Next'. I'll do that one next time.

Cool dad.

Silly me, mixing up my Cage stinkers.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Thing is, East Lothian was maybe Labour's most winnable seat north of the border - even before the local Nats descended into chaos with their MP going over to Alba. So even Dougal, with his almost impressive past record of pretty much unremitting failure, might struggle to mess this one up.

But never say never, I suppose

I would say East Lothian is definitely Labour's most winnable seat in Scotland, unless they decide to stand a deeply unpopular fool with a history of being an arrogant arsehole who took the entire country for granted and handed it to the SNP.

There's shooting yourself in the foot and then there's blowing both your legs off with an RPG.

You're right though. He could still win the seat, many voters have short memories.

But given the amount of shit the SNP will have to throw at him you've got to wonder who so desperately wants him back to risk such a thing.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Well, as I said the SNP have their own problems locally and that could yet clinch it for him.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Silly me, mixing up my Cage stinkers.

It might not be a stinker, unless you've already seen it and are telling me it is. I'll still watch it anyway just for the fact it's a Philip K Dick film adaptation I'd previously been unaware of. I'm a completist and as you know quite happy to watch total crap.

This is the best Philip K Dick film ever made.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Well, as I said the SNP have their own problems locally and that could yet clinch it for him.

Yes we know, my question was why negate that advantage by standing a candidate with such easily exploitable baggage?

Who the hell wants Douglas Alexander back and why?

John McTernan will be back in the fold at this rate.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Fuck the Tories!

[frog222]

There's shooting yourself in the foot and then there's blowing both you legs off with an RPG.

OK that's why we come back

[frog222]

Back from the rabbit-hole of watching many youtubes in an immersive attempt to clarify what I think about Ukraine . The same as SC2 in some ways tho I've always admitted the occasional need for actual fucking fighting.

JF was in Moscow for the attempted coup of 1991 , so he's been around and knows many people . For example he has done an interview with the mighty Northerner Fiona Hill who is very much in demand as anyone following this will know ?

So I shouldn't judge a youtuber by the number of followers

Around 19 mins he's describing how his Donbass second cousins were almost unbelievably brainwashed .

His family had previously invited their eastern cousins to visit their more prosperous life in Lviv, much hospitality was had ! Contacts renewed when he went to Donbass for some big Euro football matches in 2012/3?.

But when 2014 blew up the western family invited the easterners to have refuge with them . The answer --

No, we will not go to Lviv because the Nazis will kill us there "
WTF ?



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Another watch was an interview with dear Operator Starsky . From being an international PR exec he became a frontline PBI infantryman in 2014 and then became a Press Officer when they realised his talents and experience were somewhat wasted being a senior sergeant at the front .

Based just north of Kiev, he was so busy fighting around Hostomel airport on the very first day that even tho being a Press Officer he had no bloody time to film anything with his phone ! ( Even the Regimental Accountants were out there with us !)

They retreated only when they ran out of ammo, to come back not much later . The fight continued for several more days ... certainly not pretty either .










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[Sky'sGoneOut]