Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion pollsWelcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention polls for the next general election, along with the latest MRP projections and party leadership ratings. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRefLab leadFieldwork Survation 19% (-2) 25% (+1) 10% (-1) 8% (-3) 26% (+2) -1% (vs Ref) 22-24/7 UK YouGov 20% (-1) ... (more) |
Neal Ascherson on Berlin in the second world warEmbed from Getty ImagesNeil Ascherson writes about Berlin in the current issue of the London Review of Books: Berlin is a strange, parvenu capital which shakes itself and becomes unrecognisable every few generations. The little Prussian town suddenly becomes the pompous capital of an empire, which collapses into a defeated rump republic, which turns into the powerhouse of the Third Reich, which is bombed shapeless, then divided into two by a wall. And now united again, with a new government centre worthy of that old parvenu pomposity. Reviewing Ian Buruma's book Stay Alive: Berlin 1939-45, he says of the city ... (more) |
Lord Bonkers' Diary: Searching the rock pools for "sea anomalies"The new Liberator is out. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. And that means it's time to spend another week with Rutland's most popular fictional peer. When I first mentioned the Well-Behaved Orphans' summer holiday in the pages of Liberator, Marcus Trescothick was a 14-year-old playing alongside his father for the Keynsham club in Bristol. In those days the WBOs went to a different Cornish resort: Trebilcock Bay. Monday I write these words in a deckchair on the sands of Trescothick Bay, the Cornish resort where I always bring the Well-Behaved Orphans for their summer ... (more) |
AI at the crossroads: two stories, one warningThis month gave us two AI stories that, read side by side, tell us something important about where we are and how little time, we must decide what to do about it. The first is unsettling in a very specific way. OpenAI admitted that during an internal test, it removed the safety controls on its own models to see how capable they really were at hacking. The models didn't stay in their sandbox. They found a flaw, broke out, and used it to hack into a rival company's servers, Hugging Face, to steal the answers to the very test they ... (more) |
Observations of an Expat: The American VoteThere are growing signs that Donald Trump is preparing the ground for a challenge to close congressional election results in the mid-terms. Several election law experts have warned about Republican shenanigans. Scenarios range from the highly unlikely declaration of martial law and seizure of ballot boxes to attempts to delay certification of Democrat winners. The second possibility is regarded by most legal experts as the most likely and would be designed to influence the organisation of the House in the key early days of the next Congress. The Republicans don't need to challenge all the races. Only the ones where ... (more) |
How Oswald Mosley met his match in SwanseaA lot of well-known politicians have found themselves in Swansea at one time or another, but none of them had the sort of reception that awaiting British Fascist leader​, Oswald Mosley. Wales-on-line reports that he started his Welsh odyssey in Cardiff where his rally was peaceful, but the reaction was vry different in Swansea's Plaza Cinema that summer when Mosley took written questions from the audience: The crucial one was, "I work for a Jew. Should I change my employer?" Mosley replied: "I am disgusted that anyone should work for a Jew. You should be certain to find a more ... (more) |
Welcome aboardGateshead full council meeting was held last week. Quietly slipping in under the radar was Reform Councillor, Lindsay Atkinson. He was the winner of the High Fell by-election caused by the Reform councillor, elected in May, lasting only 11 days in the job. Atkinson's win went unobserved by Full Council. No mention by the Leader or Mayor. No opportunity for Reform to celebrate their majority of 5. (more) |
50 years in businessI had to go to Lobley Hill today for some stamps. The joy of popping to the Sunniside Post Office ended when the branch was closed a few years ago. Lobley Hill is therefore now our closest branch. The Lobley Hill branch is next to the Kular Stores which recently celebrated 50 years as the convenience store for the whole of Lobley Hill. I remember being sent to the shop 50 years ago by Mam (more) |
A cross between Biggles, Tintin, the Famous Five and FitzcarraldoGeorge Weeks posted the link to this the other day, saying: I love the BBC Archive YouTube channel. So much footage to enjoy. This one is possibly my favourite: The Trans-African Hovercraft Expedition of 1969-70. It's a cross between Biggles, Tintin, Famous Five and Fitzcarraldo. And he was right. This film was shot in Francophone Africa, and though I know from a recent rabbit hole that British Africa had all but crumbled by 1962 when Sammy Going South was released, but it's still tempting to place hovercraft beside flying boats and airships as new means of transport that promised to ... (more) |
George Orwell on the style and quality of C.S. Lewis's argumentsWhen I wrote about the philosopher C.E.M. Joad last month, a comment suggested I read one of George Orwell's 'As I Please' columns from Tribune. In it (it was the column for the 27 October 1944 issue), Orwell defended Joad as someone associated in the public mind with Science and Rationalism (his capitals), unlike the religious right-wingers who tended to dominate debate on the BBC. But the column was mostly about C.S. Lewis and Orwell's criticism of his writing style and the quality of his arguments. It's worth quoting at length: Reading, a week or two ago, Mr C. S. ... (more) |