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With just over one month of the year left to go, the 2025 Scot Goes Pop fundraiser is still short of its target figure. If you'd like to help keep the lights on during the several months it will take me to find out whether an alternative funding model is viable (realistically it could be a wait of around four months or more), card donations are welcome HERE. Or, if you prefer, direct donations can be made via PayPal. My PayPal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
Many thanks to everyone who has donated so far.
More in Common, Westminster voting intention, field work 22 - 24 Nov.
ReplyDeleteUK headlines; RefUK 9% lead, down 1% on last week.
RefUK support is softening across the board. Dipping below 30% on the best fit curve (Wiki). Labour, and the Tories are effective drawn, and the Green Party of E & W are climbing stratospherically.
Micro Scottish sub-sample (94 unweighted)
Con 12%, Lab 9%, LibDem 12%, RefUK 27%, Green 3%, SNP 34%.
Antidote to 'Disaster Nationalism':
ReplyDelete'Prosperity Nationalism'
James, the SNP will never be given the opportunity to hold any power in England or Scotland this is a fact.
ReplyDeleteIn England or Scotland? They've been in government in Scotland for the last eighteen and a half years.
DeleteThe MOD has once again shelved the deployment of their Ajax, Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs).
ReplyDeleteThe program is now eight years late, and costs have grown to £10 million per vehicle. A production run of 589 vehicles was intended for the UK armed forces, with (now forlorn) hopes of export orders.
The latest postponement of the program was due to yet another incident of the crew being incapacitated by noise, and vibration. This was supposed to have been solved by issuing the crew with ear defenders to wear on top of ear plugs.
Note to MOD boffins: Noise and vibration are intrinsically linked, if you provide localised protection for audiometric organs, the energy will just make itself felt through another channel. The only way to remove the problem is to deal with the route source (which they have been singularly incapable of doing for over ten years now).
At a more fundamental level, the practicality of such AFV systems has been brought into question in eastern Ukraine, where FPV drones costed at < 0.5% of their targets have been taking out tanks, etcetera for over three years now.
When questioned on this, the MOD says their Ajax AFVs will be invulnerable due to different operating conditions. This is an unintended admission that at the very least the aerial theatre of war has to be at least contested, if not owned through air superiority, or ultimately air supremacy.
In other words, when we trained the Ukrainian army in NATO, Manoeuvre Warfare doctrine, gave them lots of lovely tanks, and sent them against the Russians (with their air supremacy) for the much vaunted summer counteroffensive of 2023, we were sending them to their certain deaths with no breakthroughs possible.
As the odious Senator Lindsay Graham is fond of pointing out, we’ll happily fight the Russians to the last Ukrainian.
BBC headline: Palestinian-US teen held by Israel for nine months without charge due in court.
ReplyDeleteReality: Mohamed Ibrahim was fifthteen when he was arrested, and put under military detention. The “court” the BBC refers to is a military tribunal where there are no juries, and the defendant is denied a lawyer. The “court” in question has a 99.7% conviction rate.
Tax rises to fund benefits claimants. This just fuels Reform. Time to cut free and plot our own course.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely it does. Are they thick?
Delete