Current Scottish Polls

Yesterday's Scotsman has published this latest poll from YouGov. Obviously we'll have to wait for Friday to find out how close their seat project is to reality. Poll

Constituency vote

SNP: 42%
Lab: 34%
Con: 12%
Lib: 7%

Regional vote

SNP: 35%
Lab: 33%
Con: 12%
Grn: 7%
Lib: 6%

Seat projection for

SNP: 54
Lab: 47
Con: 14
Grn: 8
Lib: 5

Education and inequality

Camden Green Natalie Bennett talks about education, inequality and why the students are right to protest.



I reckon I'm gradually getting better at this camera boy / editing business.

Caroline Lucas on Fees

Yesterday Caroline Lucas MP made two sterling performances on tuition fees. First of all in the House was short and sweet. The constrained debate time and number of MPs wanting to speak makes it a stroke of luck she got to say anything at all.

"The hon. Gentleman rightly spoke about the importance of employers paying their contribution towards higher education. Does he therefore support the University and College Union's proposal for a business education tax that would essentially be a corporation tax on the 4% biggest companies that benefit directly from graduates? That would generate £3.9 billion for higher education and would mean that we could scrap tuition fees altogether."

Tax the richest to enable equal access to education? Seems reasonable to me, thanks to UCU for the plan. The second was a speech to the crowd outside where she got to speak for slightly longer and you can watch it here;



Good stuff. There's also some views on the all important EMA here.

Damn the corruption in football

A fascinating little side story has emerged from the whole World Cup bid thing. England have called off a friendly in Bangkok due next year because the game was only arranged to secure the vote of Worawi Makudi, president of the Football Association of Thailand in England's World Cup bid.

The bugger took our bribe but then didn't vote for us, the corrupt bastard.

It's very interesting to me that many of the people who are denouncing Fifa as corrupt because it didn't go for England's bid a) would be saying no such thing if our bribes had been more effective than Russia's and b) often seem to be the same people who've been critical of the press for exposing corruption.

Personally I don't think you can have it both ways and anyone who tries to stop the press from reporting illegal activities because it doesn't suit Britain's interests is a friend of corruption, not an opponent of it.

Two interesting videos

Both very different, but both worth watching. The first spotted by PunkScience;



The second highlighted by Norfolk Blogger on Tim Farron for President of the Liberal Democrats;

Two byelection results

Interesting byelection result tonight in Oxford, Barton and Sandhills. This was a Lib Dem held seat apparently. More interestingly we beat the Tories when they polled four times our result in May... looks like the CSR may not be popular in those parts.

	Tonight
Labour	837	57.09%	+14.41%
Lib Dem	334	22.78%	-5.29%
Green	119	8.12%	+1.64%
Tory	86	5.87%	-16.90%
UKIP	48	3.27%
Independent	42	2.86%
Total	1466

Update: In Witham South the Greens had a good result with more than twenty percent of the vote. Well done to the candidate Green Party Stephen Hicks. Looks like a bad night for the Lib Dems.

CON 261 (37.0%)
LAB 249 (35.3%)
GREEN 151 (21.4%)
LD 45 (6.4%)

Hero Rats

via Earwicga

The best Simpsons intro ever

It was only by chance I bothered watching this Simpsons intro by Banksy. Do watch it, and do keep watching it to the end. Not for the faint of heart.

Top twenty mis-spelt words

According to this these are the top twenty words that are most commonly spelled incorrectly;

1. Separate 2. Definitely 3. Manoeuvre 4. Embarrass
5. Occurrence 6. Consensus 7. Unnecessary 8. Acceptable
9. Broccoli 10. Referred 11. Bureaucracy 12. Supersede
13. Questionnaire 14. Connoisseur 15. A lot 16. Entrepreneur
17. Particularly 18. Liquefy 19. Conscience 20. Parallel

Yup, I pretty much muck all of them up.

A lesson from history

When the Roman Republic decided that it wanted to dispatch Julius Caesar and his armies to as yet unconquered Gaul they needed to give his job a title. What do you think it might have been?

Protector of the Gauls.

That's right, and in the course of protecting the Gauls Caesar found himself having to kill around one million Gauls, a quarter of a million Germans, a few Brits and he also enslaved around one million of the barbarian peoples.

A more energetic protector of the Gauls you will not find.

In fairness to him he let them keep their oil and he didn't go on to describe himself as a 'peace envoy'.

Jane Austin's Fight Club

Excellent stuff.



Via F-Word, Via Jezabel

Zac Goldsmith interviewed on Channel Four news

This is absolute gold - do watch! New Tory MP Zac Goldsmith was on C4 News to be grilled over his potentially dodgy election expense returns, but in 13 minutes of interview he spends the almost entire time trying to skewer Jon Snow on some minor point of scheduling that no one cares about.

When he does get round to speaking about the issue in hand he utterly bungles it, and it's clear he knows he's on very dodgy ground. In my view he'd have been hard put to come across more like an aristocratic baddie even if he had a duelling scar and a henchman hovering just behind his right shoulder.



Goldsmith is clearly a man who regards the media making legitimate enquiries as total impudence.

JR goes solar?

I've just seen this inspired ad for some US company or other. Ah.... eco-friendly nostalgia.



Glad to know we've got JR on our side...

Philip Hollobone MP is a toad

I'm not impressed by Philip Hollobone's private member's bill aimed at banning the veil in public. Thankfully it's unlikely to gain majority support or much Parliamentary time but people like Hollobone think nothing of fueling the fire of anti-Muslim opinion with stunts like this.

At least he doesn't dress up his suggestion as somehow protecting women by criminalising them, which some do. No, he falls back on the bigot's old faithful "the British Way of Life" which includes regulating what we can wear, apparently.

I must have missed that ancient tradition. I think he must be referring to those old traditions of being bloody horrible to foreigners... perhaps he could clarify.

He justified his Face Coverings (Regulation) Bill by saying "I think it's inappropriate to cover your face in public, whether it's a burka, a balaclava or anything else." Brilliant. Almost every motorcycle crash helmet banned at a stroke. Clearly this is his real agenda - he hates Jerey Clarkson and the 'Stig'.

This is why you need health and safety

This is why you need health and safety at work. What is it with racing and sadomasochism? First we had Mosley with his extended spanking and dungeon settings and now the owner of RPM Motorsport, an ex-motorcycle racing champion Robin Mortimer has been found dead at an S&M club in Belgium, 'Torment Towers'.

Two women, Mistress Lucrezia and Mistress Juno, have been arrested although it looks like the authorities do not suspect that they meant to kill him, which only really leaves the possibility that some sort of violent session got out of hand and was not conducted in a safe manner.

According to the prosectution he may have choked on a rubber ball or died after taking an anaesthetic designed to prolong sadistic sex sessions. Legalised brothels and proper health and safety legislation and it's all so much safer.

Is there something about petrol or high speeds that encourages this sort of thing - or is it just a coincidence?

Tweet of the day

Spotted this one earlier which kind of summed it up for me.

mrmarksteel Great that Diane Abbott's in leadership contest for variety - black, female and left-wing. If only she wasn't also fucking hopeless.

It's going to be a long old Labour leadership contest, with the winner decided at the end of September, so my advice is.... don't get too excited too soon. It's a marathon not a sprint.

Dr Suess Selection Box: Day Six

Vote for what you believe in

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.”

Dr Seuss Selection Box: Day Five

Almost done! Keep it up.

“You're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in.”

Dr Seuss Selection Box: Day Four

Keep it up

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”

Dr Seuss Selection Box: Day Three

Principles in politics

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.”