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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%.
When I saw Landmark Yoy Gov Poll I thought it said Lanark You Gov Poll!
DeleteAntidote 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.
You're boring even when you're anonymous Yesindyref
DeleteOn defence 'stuff' - nobody ever commented on UKplc planning to hand over the UK navy to USA a few years ago. Navy objected of course etc etc. But I don't recall UKplc consulting the public on that wee idea.
DeleteBBC 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@6.14 AM
DeleteA blistering, searing analysis. Thank you for sharing.
A Tory and Reform free Scotland, what's not to like?
DeleteAw bless. We don’t know what you are up to. Silly billy.
DeleteDistant speculation about times I'm never likely to see but, how might the SNP fare in the sort of possible independence scenarios we're talking about ?
ReplyDeleteIf I was your average trougher, with an unshakable commitment to my comfortable salary and pension package, how would I see my future in a Scotland that had gained it's independence from the collapse or rejection of UK neoliberal economics and the corrupt politics that had destroyed the credibility of it's traditional political parties ?
I would be going into turbulent, new political times when I was going to be held resposible for, to name just three neoliberal smash and grabs, freeports, selling off of clean energy to extreme, external profiteers and endless evasions to avoid land ownership reform - there are plenty more !
Having made a career of being slightly less bad than the unionist parties I wouldn't fancy my chances of continued feather bedding.
Conclusion - I'd probably continue with "clinging on to nurse" (devolution) "for fear of meeting something worse" ( a more socially inclusive politics).
Just saying.
Farage friendly Find Out Now, Westminster voting intention, field work 26th Nov.
ReplyDeleteUK headlines: RefUK 13% lead, -1% week on week, Labour 15% (-1%).
Scottish sub-sample (134)
Con 8%, Lab 13%, LibDem 15%, RefUK 22%, Green 11%, SNP 29%.
Jeremy Corbyn displays the same legendary, managerial sure footedness that marked his days as leader of Labour.
ReplyDeleteYouGov, “Are Britons willing to vote for “Your Party” ahead of its launch conference?”.
Field work 25 - 26 Nov., population sample 2,119.
Just 12% of Britons would consider voting for “Your Party”, down from 18% in July. (this is the YouGov headline, data tables tell a very different story, with potential voters far exceeding that extremely low number).
Entirely predictable, internecine infighting, and dithering has squandered a third of their potential support.
Regardless of the dubious YouGov headline in absolute terms, the picture in the Scottish sub-sample is diabolically poor for “Your Party”. In relative terms, potential support for “Your Party” in Scotland is half that in England.
An unsurprising conclusion. If “Your Party” offer a safe harbour for refugees from Starmer’s Labour, neoliberal economics, war mongering, and racism, then the SNP already offer that refuge to a large degree.
In fairness to Corbyn as leader of Labour he got more votes than Blair in his third term. Blair also didn't have a faction working against him from inside the party. Now look where they are.
ReplyDelete