UK Polling July 1, 2024

But a few short days to go until the UK poll. So what are the weekend polls telling us? Labour solidly in the 38% to 42% area. The Tories oscillating between 18% and 24% but generally in or around 20%. The Liberal Democrats shedding a percentage point or two as they go into the last few days – say 11%. The Green Party in the mid-single digits. They’ve been bouncing around too. Reform, who could forget them, in the mid-teens, perhaps a little higher, somewhat lower than a smatter of more hyperbolic polls.

There’ll be plenty of time to compare and contrast, but it seems implausible that Labour won’t do well.

Worth considering that Labour has added about 8-10% on its December 2019 showing at the General Election then. Also worth considering that much of that is likely down to the near incredible missteps by the Tories in subsequent years. And bear in mind that as with this polity there’s remarkable volatility. At that last General Election the Tories won 365 seats, Labour just 202. It’s plausible that the Tories may come back at half that Labour level. It could happen. We looked at seat numbers before the weekend. I’ve no idea how this will pan out in those terms. There’s multiple projections floating around. Perhaps the most sensible approach is to say that Labour should do well, the Tories should do badly. We’ll know soon enough.

Left Archive: Anti-Extradition News – Newsletter of the Dublin Anti-Extradition Committee, Imleabhar 2, Uimhir 2, Márta/Aibreán 1992 July 1, 2024

To download the above please click on the following link:

Please click here to go the Left Archive.

This is a significant addition to the Archive, and many thanks to the person who forwarded this document. 

The newsletter of the Dublin Anti-Extradition Committee this four page document is focused on the issue of extradition from the Republic of Ireland at that point in time. 

The front page article looks at the case of Angelo Fusco. The publication outlines his history – that he was ‘sought for offences arising from an SAS attack on house in West Belfast on 2nd May, 1980’ during which a British soldier was killed. One of those in the house – Joe Doherty was later extradited from the United States – despite ‘US courts [ruling] that this costed ‘the classical political offence’ in rejecting British extradition warrants’. 

The article argues:

Angelo Fusco would not have been charged with any political offences were it not for the exceptional political situation which exists in the North. His offences are political offences.

It argues too that:

The Irish government by doing away with the traditional political offence exemption and accepting warrants for Angelo Fusco, is saying hat he and his comrades should have allowed themselves to be killed on the spot by the SAS. It is saying that, even though he has already spent ten years in prison, he should now be returned to the North for years more incarceration.

It offers a list of ‘How You Can Help’ including ‘write/phone your local TDs about the case’. 

Other pieces include an overview of Justice Awareness, a project set up by those who had been involved in the campaigns around the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four amongst other cases. There’s a piece that notes Anti-Extradition Committee video series as a means of countering Section 31. There’s another long article on a visit to Dublin by ‘members of several Belfast justice campaigns’ including the Beechmount Five, Voice of the Innocent and Casement Accused. 

An article looks the Northern Ireland Human Rights Assembly held in London and the information that prisoner ‘Joe Doherty named as [New York St. Patrick’s Day’] Parade Grand Marshal.

Any further general information on the Committee, its foundation, establishment and activities would be very welcome in order to build a complete picture in the Archive.

Meanwhile, in France June 30, 2024

The exit poll is out. There’s another round next week and so far, not great. As noted by Paul Culloty in comments:

Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party emerged ahead in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections, exit polls have shown, but the unpredictable final result will depend on days of horsetrading before next week’s run-off.

The RN was seen winning around 34% of the vote, exit polls from Ipsos, Ifop, OpinionWay and Elabe showed.

That was ahead of leftist and centrist rivals, including President Emmanuel Macron’s Together alliance, whose bloc was seen winning 20.5%-23%.

The New Popular Front, a hastily assembled left-wing coalition, was projected to win around 29% of the vote, the exit polls showed.

And:

The RN was seen winning the most seats in the National Assembly, but only one of the pollsters – Elabe – had the party winning an absolute majority of 289 seats in the July 7 run-off.

Experts say that seat projections after first-round votes can be highly inaccurate, and especially so in this election.

Clear as mud, so. 

Sunday and other stupid statements from this week  June 30, 2024

All examples and contributions welcome.

The Business Post starts with this today:

Fine Gael now largest party as Fianna Fáil jumps four points

It’s the party that has the greatest support in a poll. 

Given the photograph accompanying this commentary, you’d have to wonder what the person who wrote it is talking about after the outpouring of sympathy and anger at the sentencing in the Natasha O’Brien case. But no, apparently the ‘left’ are to blame: “Hand-wringing leftists are in the business of making excuses for thugs. If you want to see an end to leniency in sentencing do not trust the populists one bit. They’re all about hard-luck stories and blaming society for every ill”

Someone suggests that the narrative of a ‘Broken Britain’ is wide of the mark and that in fact Britain is a haven of stability and ‘centrism’. Does that sound complacent and detached from reality? Yes.

The point is that there are scandals – partygate, the betting scandal – which are fun to watch but don’t mean much. And there are crises – the NHS, the cost of living, the crumbling public services – that are serious but not existential and not unresolvable. And then there is the system: in Britain that is first past the post, essentially a two-party system, that transfers powers peacefully and usually in slow cycles. One that keeps radicals at the gates – neither Farage nor Corbyn got the keys to Number 10 – and the politics largely cohering around the centre. In Britain the structure entrenches stability, no matter the scandal and crises that swirl around it.

An exciting time in low Earth orbit – too exciting! June 29, 2024

No end of space news. On Thursday there was this:

A Russian satellite has broken up into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter, US space agencies said.

There were no immediate details on what caused the break-up of the RESURS-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite, which was decommissioned in 2022.

US Space Command said there was no immediate threat as it tracks the debris swarm.

The event occurred around 5pm Irish time yesterday, Space Command said.

It occurred in an orbit near the space station, prompting US astronauts on board to shelter in their spacecraft for roughly an hour, NASA’s Space Station office said.

There’s a number of science fiction stories about the effects of uncontrolled impacts between satellites leading to swarms of debris. 

The reality underlying those stories is thought provoking. 

On one particular day in 2021, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS must have felt a pin-prick of fear and uncertainty. On November 15th of that year, Russia fired an anti-satellite missile at one of its own defunct military satellites, Tselina-D. The target weighed about 1,750 kg, and when the missile struck its target, the satellite exploded into a cloud of hazardous debris.

NASA woke the crew on the International Space Station in the middle of the night and told them to take precautions and prepare for a possible impact. The Chinese space station Tiangong was also in danger, and multiple countries and space agencies condemned Russia’s foolhardy behaviour.

And:

There are already about 6,000 satellites in orbit and a staggering 131 million pieces of debris between 1 millimetre and 10 centimetres in size. The debris travels at about 36,000 km per hour, and at that speed, even a small chunk can damage a satellite or space station. In May 2021, a tiny piece of debris struck the Canadarm2 on the ISS and punched a small hole in it.

…

Russia’s ASAT test in 2021 created a measurable portion of the orbital debris, and the more debris there is, the greater the risk from additional ASATs. The authors of the research article point out how the Kessler syndrome could eventually play out.

The Kessler syndrome? 

The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,^[1][2] collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is numerous enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debristhat increases the likelihood of further collisions.^[3] In 2009, Kessler wrote that modeling results had concluded that the debris environment was already unstable, “such that any attempt to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating sources of past debris will likely fail because fragments from future collisions will be generated faster than atmospheric drag will remove them”.^[4] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.^[3]

That would be potentially catastrophic. The integration of satellites into a range of areas – climate observation, communications and so on, is now so great that any impact on that would constitute a grievous blow to contemporary civilisation, particularly the areas of the planet that are less developed and which rely heavily on these technologies.

This is also the stuff of science fiction, or at least used to be, the news that there’s a problem with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft which has left the two astronauts using it stuck on the ISS. 

Boeing’s public relations crisis is now out of this world: the company’s Starliner spacecraft – and the two astronauts onboard – is currently stuck in space.

After what started as an eight-day mission, US astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have now spent the better part of a month on their space capsule attached to the International Space Station as engineers work out the problems with Starliner.

It remains unclear when exactly the astronauts will be able to make their return to Earth. A Boeing spokesperson told the Guardian they have “adjusted the return of Starliner Crew Flight Test until after two planned spacewalks on Monday, June 24, and Tuesday, July 2” and that they “currently do not have a date for the return, and will evaluate opportunities after the spacewalks”.

It is not an emergency and there’s no risk involved:

Nasa and Boeing officials insist the astronauts are not stranded and that the technical difficulties do not threaten the mission. Nasa said the spacecraft requires seven hours of free-flight time to perform a normal end of mission and it “currently has enough helium left in its tanks to support 70 hours of free flight activity following undocking”.

But it is an embarrassment and perhaps indicative of something stressed on this site on a near continual basis. Spaceflight is difficult. It’s incredibly difficult. Human or automated, this is at the cutting edge of our technological civilisation. 

Sample story June 29, 2024

I didn’t see this at the time it came out in 2019, but:

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones have ended one of the most acrimonious copyright disputes in British pop history, by granting Richard Ashcroft all future royalties from his 1997 song Bitter Sweet Symphony, performed by the Verve.

Ashcroft announced the news on the same day he won an Ivor Novello award for outstanding contribution to British music. In a statement he said:

 

This remarkable and life-affirming turn of events was made possible by a kind and magnanimous gesture from Mick and Keith, who have also agreed that they are happy for the writing credit to exclude their names and all their royalties derived from the song they will now pass to me.

Was never a fan of the Verve, or Ashcroft, but the song itself was pretty good and never quite understood why the Stones would feel quite so possessive of the sample. 

Anyhow, compare and contrast the songs.

Here’s the original song.

This is the orchestral version (Andrew Oldham Orchestra) from which the sample was taken:

And here’s the finished piece:

Apparently the Andrew Oldham Orchestra – Oldham being the Stones manager at the time, had put together various musicians to record orchestral interpretations of their songs.

The Andrew Oldham Orchestra was a musical side project in the mid-1960s created by Andrew Loog Oldham, the original manager and record producer of the Rolling Stones. There was no actual orchestra per se. The name was applied to recordings made by Loog Oldham using a multitude of session musicians, including members of the Rolling Stones.

The Rolling Stones Songbook included an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones song “The Last Time“,^[1] which was sampled by The Verve for their track “Bitter Sweet Symphony“. The threat of litigation over the licence for the sample led to the entire copyright to the composition, belonging to Richard Ashcroft, the Verve’s frontman, being taken by ABKCO Records, and the assignation of the songwriting credit to Jagger and Richards.^[2] At the 2019 Ivor Novello Awards Ashcroft announced that Jagger and Richards had “signed over all their publishing for Bittersweet Symphony”, ending the dispute.^[3]

Whoever came up with the arrangement under the AOO moniker was pretty much a genius. That said the Verve version is still a pretty solid track.

WE BUILD THEM UP AND PULL THEM DOWN – the Sarah Lundberg Summer School on Saturday 29th June June 28, 2024

The 10th annual Sarah Lundberg Summer School is an exploration of the concept of commemoration, remembrance and celebration.

Who decides what is remembered and how we remember it ?Are all commemorations of equal importance , can remembrance be ‘neutral’ or is there always an agenda ?Does history dictate how we commemorate the past, or do commemorations shape how we view the past ?Presentations  :“The ups and downs of Dublin’s statues” featuring Hugo McGuinness of the East Wall History Group.“We’ve put up more than we’ve pulled down’: The fall of Colston and the memorial landscape of Bristol” featuring special guests Roger Ball and Mark Steeds of the Bristol Radical History Group and Countering-Colston.Booking via eventbrite, but not essential. https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/we-build-them-up-and-pull-them-down-the-sarah-lundberg-summer-school-tickets-922347033807?The community centre will be open at 12pm for teas & coffees etc.Hope to see you there.Details of the Sean O’Casey Festival 2024 will be announced soon. Joe MooneyMary Muldowney

Remote working (part of a continuing series) June 28, 2024

This doesn’t entirely surprise me.

Irish workers are increasingly willing to turn down job offers that do not include the option to work remotely or in a hybrid arrangement, a new global survey has found.

Published by Stepstone Group, the global recruitment company behind IrishJobs, it found that almost half of the more than 1,700 Irish survey respondents said they would refuse a job offer if there were no remote working options compared with a global average of 29 per cent.

The research, conducted in partnership with Boston Consulting Group and a global alliance of more than 70 recruitment sites, is the first instalment of the Decoding Global Talent study to be published since 2021.

It suggests that work-life balance is the top priority for jobseekers in the Republic, unchanged since the last survey. Financial compensation, meanwhile, has moved up six places within the list of priorities since the last survey, Stepstone said, highlighting the impact of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.

Albeit this is a survey done, one suspects, purely for publicity, the finding isn’t that strange.

I’m not sure that the pandemic changed everything but it changed some things, and quite radically. Or perhaps, more accurately, it allowed for approaches where there was already an existing infrastructure and underlying logic for them to be implemented.

So, after decades of networking homes with wi-fi and broadband the capacity was there (just about) for many workers to work in that context should the opportunity arise. And – as we know people on here being already in that situation – this did pre-exist the pandemic. But for a larger shift in working patters it did require the pandemic to push employers and workers into implementing actual change. 

This following does surprise me a little:

A study published in 2023 by the University of Galway and the Western Development Commission indicated that 59 per cent of respondents were working in a hybrid arrangement last year while 38 per cent worked fully remotely. Only 3 per cent worked fully on-site.

I wonder about that 3%. I’d have thought with retail and a host of other work environments that figure would be much higher. 

There’s this:

The prevalence of hybrid working appears to be changing other habits and priorities within the labour force. Nearly a quarter of all first-time homebuyers borrowed against a property in a different county than the one they were living in last year, according to a Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland report from last week.

That’s quite high too. Cross-border dynamics on this island, perhaps? Though one wonders at the numbers involved.

Stepping back a little, the potential for technology to break or blur for many workers the link between workplace and work is a genuinely fascinating to see. This is certainly the most intriguing and visible dynamic I’ve seen in decades of working. It puts all that nonsense about open-plan offices (remember when they were the future?) and loose talk about disruption into context. Then again, it goes with the grain of processes long in play. 

Those election debates ratings coming in… June 28, 2024

…and they’re not looking good.

On a scale of 1 to 10 – with 10 being excellent and 1 being a disaster – it’s clear Biden was a 1. Trump’s opponent was rambling, off-topic, difficult and sometimes impossible to follow, his voice weak. Yeah, it was disaster.

Do the debates have an impact? Was it a disaster that can be made good?

Meanwhile the other debate was a fair bit more illuminating. Not least with calls for London to give more money. Quite some Union they’ve got there.