Why won’t Ed Miliband commit to a deal with the SNP in advance? The explanation is incredibly simple. Here are the last three Scottish polls – Survation for the Daily Record, TNS Global, and Ipsos MORI. As expected they both show a monster LAB>SNP swing. But the interesting bit is this: there are a lot…
Read More why Ed Miliband won’t commit in advance to the SNPOK so, we’ve had the Tories’ big idea, Right to Buy in clown shoes, denounced at the same time by the Southwark Renters’ Maoist reading group and the Confederation of British Industry. Truly, the coalition was the golden era of the harebrained scheme and the half-baked thinktank. But let’s try to keep a straight face.…
Read More so who is meant to be getting the extra £3.9bn in LHA?Randy McDonald, and probably others, seem to have found the Afzal Amin piece baffling, so I thought I’d draft a brief explainer as follows. Afzal Amin, potential Tory MP and ex-army officer, tried to incite the EDL to stage a provocative demonstration in his heavily Muslim constituency during the campaign, while also inciting a group…
Read More More questions on the Biryani Project.Circling back to this post, here’s Alex Massie on a similar theme. I would point out that if being in a coalition, in general, would be Cleggifying, being in a coalition with the Tories would be the absolute ne plus ultra of Cleggification. The fast support the SNP gained over the referendum campaign would fade…
Read More My offer to you is…Nick Clegg.Did you think Boris Johnson sucked? Try Ivan Massow, doyen of hipster Toryism (he was the nice version of Michael Portillo before Michael Portillo was the nice version of Michael Portillo) and prospective candidate for mayor of London. Somehow, the mayoralty has become a strange attractor for people who combine vacuous celebrity and a particular…
Read More You thought London mayoral candidates couldn’t get worseAs a spin-off from #defenduss, Martin O’Neill circulated this report by a US thinktank, which demonstrates that final-salary pensions are actually cheaper to provide than the defined-contribution sort. The point is simple, but far from trivial – as Max Sawicky is fond of saying about US Social Security, a defined-benefit system is insurance, not mere…
Read More the wider relevance of #defenduss. defined contribution is the new sugarI started planning this post asking why Palestinian rockets seemed to be steadily increasing in range, but not improving in accuracy. Although nobody publishes circular-error probable figures for these things, various indicators suggested that they were still essentially random weapons. For example, there were no or few reports of them hitting valuable infrastructure or politically…
Read More Wild speculation on a highly controversial subjectSo yer big french pushbike sportsday. Having run away from the London ‘Lympics, you may be surprised to learn I was back in Yorkshire for it. The explanation is simple – it went through the village I grew up in twice, a unique distinction. As our old neighbour’s slogan goes, so good it’s coming twice.…
Read More Big Sportsday 2.0: YorkshireI have recently been reading a lot of books. Ironically, this was in part because I left a Kindle on a plane and had to get the app instead – having the books so temptingly close caused very rapid consumption. Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai by Robert Bickers, is the personal history…
Read More The personal history of a Lancashire fascistSo, it’s well known that I’m an obsessive about Create Streets, the flaky Tory wanktank that wants a whole succession of gimmes for developers who are in no sense their mates, except when they are. Single Aspect notes that the Urban Design Group is having a thing on Wednesday the 23rd of April, i.e next…
Read More Your chance to meet Create Streets.