Today is Thursday 15th November 2012...

Remember that date. It will live in infamy.

Just eighteen months ago, brave men and women across the United Kingdom raised their hands in defiance, and said: "No. This shall not be." In doing so they saved the lives of 17,984 seriously ill babies, 9,254 heroic British soldiers, and 24,897 very cute kittens. My Auntie Doris was able to have a hip replacement, my cousin Julia kept her job as a nurse, and my mate Charlie is still able to educate the young.

How crazy must we have been to think for even a moment that a preferential voting system was more important than all THAT?

And yet the noble actions of the British people have been in vain. Yet again, we've been betrayed by the political class. The very same politicians who earned our respect and gratitude by leading the charge against the Alternative Vote system have shamelessly introduced a near-identical system for today's Police Commissioner elections in England and Wales - and there isn't a damn thing you or I can do about it. We shall just have to watch in despair as our economy collapses under the weight of the extra pencils required for electors to cast a pointless second preference vote for John Prescott. The public transport system will collapse. Food supplies will run short. Sanitation will be but a fond memory. Many cute kittens will die today.

There is a word for what these politicians have done. That word is 'evil'.

I'm not sure I've ever felt more ashamed to be British than I do right now. It's sad to say it, but independence may be the only answer here - if we can't protect the babies of England and Wales from the insanity of preferential voting, perhaps we can at least protect our own babies.

It's been a while...

There was a time (in 2009, I think) when this blog was primarily a round-up of Scottish subsamples from UK opinion polls of Westminster voting intention. It would be a bit difficult to sustain that now, given that there's a YouGov poll virtually every day. However, I thought you might enjoy the latest one (fieldwork was carried out yesterday and the day before) -

SNP 42%
Labour 31%
Conservatives 18%
Liberal Democrats 5%

Did someone say something about a 'Scomnishambles'?

The poll also shows that Scots are less likely than respondents from any other region of the UK to think that British troops are "winning" in Afghanistan, or that the war is winnable.