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Can’t help thinking that the Daily Express readership will explode with anger over Harry Wales’ reception here. YAY, exploding Express readers.
I’ve no time for the royals, but the idea that this will anger the moronic royalists who hate Harry because he had the audacity to marry a girl who was half black, really cheers me up.
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Nadine Dorres havering though her butt again:
.@BorisJohnson has delivered #Brexit#tradedeals and jobs for #Harlepool along with a #Freeport and 180,000 well paid jobs. #Conservatives deliver, we get stuff done. #HartlepoolByElection
Angus, a resident of Hartlepool on Twitter is wondering where the 180,000 jobs are… ya know, given that the population of the town is around half of that, he feels he might have noticed.
What we do know is that Brexit has removed nearly 5% from the economy; that none of the new trade deals make up anything like what they’ve lost, no matter what the similarly-vacant MP, Liz Truss says; that Freeports were something Britain had until the Tory government closed them down in 2012 (making you wonder why they now think they are the answer to a prayer) and that the fishing industry, a part of the heritage of Hartlepool, has been all but shut down.
You can always trust Nad to have a well constructed argument though…
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Don’t mess with the Poileas in Manchester!
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Lots of rumours going about regarding the new royal yacht, proposed by Boris Johnson.
“Palace apparently very displeased with this suggestion in the papers.”“I’m told the Prime Minister hasn’t asked the Queen if she’d like a new yacht – she is well aware of the optics – nor has he asked about using Prince Philip’s name.
I just hope it has the right wallpaper and a suitable room for Nanny. Otherwise Princess NutNuts might not feel inclined to use it till it’s been suitably altered. Nothing but the best, eh?
I wonder too, if Handcock’s local barman will get the contract to build it… in return for free pints for life maybe?
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And finally, Munguin suggested something to cheer you up…
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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
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Alba heading for 0 seats?
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That’s how that poll looks. I’m a bit surprised. I’d have thought Salmond would have got in in the North East.
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It’s assuming that their predicted 4% is evenly distributed through Scotland which is always unlikely. Bosco4indy on twitter does a bit of polling analysis and though sub samples don’t have the same statistical validity, his model shows seats for Salmond, MacAskill in Lothian and McEleny in my region West.
However the only poll that matters is the one on Thursday.
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Yes, and apparently, it’s going to rain! (Just for a change.)
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If we assume a gaussian distribution centred on 4% then the only way they get over the 5.5% magic threshold is to have a standard deviation that is uncharacteristically high for the list vote. On this basis, I can just about imagine them getting 1 but the prospect of more on current polling (2%-4%) is vanishingly small. I’ve been quite shocked by the behaviour of their supporters and of their candidates so I’m now at a point where I take comfort in gaussian probability distributions. The counter-argument is that their vote is so small that it will be much noisier and less likely to conform to a gaussian. I try not to dwell on that too much but will note that forming a party that depends on high signal-to-noise to win seats does not fit well with any rational concept of gaming the vote.
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“I’ve been quite shocked by the behaviour of their supporters and of their candidates”
I’ve been very shocked by the behaviour of SNP’s supporters and candidates. However it’s a free vote and folk should vote for the party/ candidate/policies they wish to.
For me it is always about how best to bring about indy and what an independent Scotland should look like. I favour EFTA, a Scottish currency and central bank and only one party is offering that.
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I think a lot of people on both “sides” have said some really stupid things.
The tweets from some have been quite shocking.
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Totally agree with you Tris. I’ve been horrified by a lot of things I’ve seen. I wish folk would just stop attacking other indy folk for having a different opinion. We’ve an entire msm to attack the Yes movement, we don’t need to do their job for them!
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My personal gripe is Salmond’s bizarre belief that EFTA/EEA resolves all border divergence as though the relentless tedium of 5 years of endless Brexit debate never happened. Do we really need to wade through endless threads about transhipment and SPS regs all over again? Their policies on Europe are rather half-baked and leaves an unanswered question about Scotland’s trade policy that leaves us at the mercy of rUK in much the same way that the UK is now irredeemably stuck in the EU’s orbit. For someone like me who judges parties primarily on their Europe policy, they failed.
For the rest of it, though, I just cannot get past the characters involved – the plebiscite election brigade and the UDI brigade and the angriest bloggers imaginable. I also cannot forget or forgive the deliberate conflation of trans people and paedophiles by Margaret Lynch, an Alba candidate, and the eager retweets by her supporters. McEleny actually believes that the technical hitches at their policy launch were the product of a conspiracy. To top it all, the coordinated whispering campaigns about the FM’s sexuality is a new low for me. I don’t think it can get any lower than that.
I just look at the people involved and instinctively shudder.
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I seem to recall someone (from a unionist party) tried hinting about Nicola’s sexuality so years ago. You’d think that by the 21st century that people would have got over that 1950s nonsense by now.
Whether people like it or not, EU or EEA (EFTA?) it seems to me that we will have borders with England and Wales (but not, at current status, with NI at least on goods) when (if) we join.
You can’t take back control of your borders and then have an open border, as they found out on the island of Ireland.
So we need to start working out how that can be made to work instead of shaking our heads and denying that there will be a problem.
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If the goal is to minimise border divergence then EEA is definitely not the solution. It feels like EFTA /EEA has magical, talismanic properties for many people when more practical solutions exist to forge a more balanced compromise. Every time I ask someone on twitter why they prefer EEA over EU, I just end up getting blocked.
I really want someone to repeatedly say that if we do X then we will have Y as a consequence and if we do A then we will have B as a consequence but we believe that X/Y is the best outcome we value the positive outcomes of X more highly than the positive outcomes of Y. The lack of honesty means that instead of confronting the border and getting used to it as a measure of autonomy, it’s become an easy pressure point for unionist campaigners. Salmond’s falsehood about the border is just walking into that trap all over again.
As you say, nation states have borders. That has upsides and downsides so why is the debate is 100% about the downsides?
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I’ve never thought that the EEA or EFTA was the answer for Scotland.
Membership confers single market access but for a considerable price. Opening that massive market is clearly worth it for the 3 or 4 member states which are all extremely rich.
They have to accept the four freedoms. Movement of people, goods, finance and services.
Membership doesn’t include many of the regulations that don’t relate to the single market and it excludes fishing and agriculture (presumably among other areas).
By the same token, there is no faming subsidy, and I suspect none of the other payments relating to social funding or infrastructure funding and university research funding (from which the Brits earned so much).
This is perfectly Ok for the rich members. Certainly in Iceland and Norway there is a limited amount of farming thanks to the terrain and climate adn their government is perfectly capable of paying suitable faming subsidies. Liechtenstein is the richest country in Europe. I suspect they don’t need subsidies…although again the farming community must be very small.
I can’t see that working for Scotland. It seems to be a rather less satisfactory arrangement than the EU, at least for Scotland.
We are going to have a border with the UK, or what is left of it. Time to look at what that will mean and how we will deal with it.
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If you want to see a wealthy farmer with a Lambourgini outside their Hofhaus look no further than the Swiss countryside!
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Yes, I’m sure. I didn’t mean to exclude Switzerland.
I heard a documentary,a ctuall on BBC Radio Scotland about Norwegian farmers. The presenter asked if they wouldn’t prefer to be in the EU and get EU farming grants.
They said absolutely not. Norwegian farming grants were far more generous that the EUs, and I imagine that the Swiss ones are too.
I’ve yet to hear how the Brits will manage this. Badly I suspect. Gentlemen farmers only may apply?
If it’s anything like the social funds now being administered by Westminster, it will be Tory constituencies which will get the money.
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“I also cannot forget or forgive the deliberate conflation of trans people and paedophiles by Margaret Lynch, an Alba candidate,”
She did NOT say that Terry so she doesn’t require your forgiveness. What she said was that two Scottish charities had signed a declaration stating
“end the criminalisation and stigmatisation of adolescents’ sexuality . . . including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex”.
However the declaration did not define what it meant by adolescence. The WHO and UN definition of adolescence is 10-19. Now if I had that pointed out to me, I’d ask the declaration to put a definition in and then clearly and definitely state that there was no intention of changing the current age in this country.
What I wouldn’t do is start shouting transphobia when trans people weren’t even mentioned and falsely accuse someone of things she didn’t say. Unfortunately far too often this actually works.
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Her statement was false. None of the groups Margaret Lynch alluded to were signatories to the declaration and none condone lowering age of consent to 10. Words have been twisted with malign intent in an unforgivable way so as to tarnish trans rights supporters with paedophilia in exactly the way that used to happen with gay rights campaigners until very, very recently.
There are legititimate arguments for and against GRA reforms. Margaret Lynch’s statement wasn’t one of them.
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I had to check “Gaussian”, because not being STEM, although I’d heard of it, I really didn’t know what it was. (Munguin says I should stop trying to mix with my intellectual betters.)
I now remember from dim and distant past. Bell end shape… which leads me to wonder… No, perhaps not.
Oh well.
I see your point.
I think that perhaps uneven, as it is bound to be, big names may attract more votes… maybe NE Scotland where Alex himself is standing?
I think you can only game this system if you know how everyone else is going to vote… and at the moment I’m waiting for the emails.
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I think they’re banking on it being more uneven than ought to be expected just to pick up a single seat. To get above 5.5% on an average of 4% means the their best vote share would need to be something like more than double their worst vote share. On an average of 3%, their best share would need to be something like 11x their worst vote share.
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I think you’re right, Tris, the bell-end curve gives a good statistical approximation for politicians generally. In politics though, contrary to traditional statistics, the bell-end is the more accurate measure when the politician isn’t discrete.
Within the generality though there exists a subset , that being the independence supporters. Here the choice is between the Salmonds and the Sturgeons and so a Poisson Distribution is the one that should be used.
Where a political party name is an aggregation ( for example the Conservative AND Unionist Party, or, the Social AND Liberal Democrats) then its a Binomial .
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LOL… Jake. I’m glad you have that sussed!!!
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Somebody — I think on twitter — suggested a better name for the royal yacht:
Floaty McBoatface.
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It has to be better than yet another royal name.
I think maybe the £200 million would be better spent on the NHS?
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£200 million? Peanuts to the shower in charge.
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Well, that’s what they say, but of course whenever they do anything the costs escalate and the timeline drags by… Crossrail, HS2, London sewers….
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8% payed for by Scottish taxes, as these are deemed of benefit to the whole UK.
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Never a day goes by, William, when I don’t thank the lord for Crossrail, the London sewerage system, and the fact that sometime in the next 50 years I may be able to catch an expensive train from London to Birmingham and shave 10 minutes off the journey.
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£200 million?
They’d only get half a week of Track & Trace for that; peanuts indeed DonDon.
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How many rolls of wallpaper would it buy?
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Just a wee comment about the family on benefits in 11 Downing Street.
The big flounder is on £157,000 pay as an mp and a minister.
Princess nutnuts is paid £100,000 or so to be the pm’s social secretary, she is a consultant for an animal charity, hence the need for a nanny.
A free flat and a nice wee house in the country with free energy and a special ‘bus’ pass in a nice car.
No stopping at traffic hold ups as the police clear the way.
The flounder also has income from his boke deals, sorry book.
Wee rabb said that the position of pm is a moral responsibility and underpaid, the flounder needs £300,000 a year to just make do.
Currently universal credit is around £5,000 a year and no John Lewis Tatt can be purchased.
As to the Freeports, I pass the sign for the Prestwick one regularly and have done so for about 15 years.
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I too need £300,000 a year.
I wonder if the Brits are considering having a universal credit scheme that makes sure everyone earns that much.
I mean why would it be ok for him to need that much money, and yet demand that someone else manage on £295,000 a year less?
What is it that he needs so much more of?
Oh and didn’t he know the salary when he applied for the job?
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divorce settlements & child maintenance payments?
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Nannies don’t come cheap, so I’m told.
I wonder what you trade for the cost of a year of nannying?
Knighthood?
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Beautiful Arizona landscape! Nice group of Saguaro!
Random Thought:
Have royalists noticed that the sixth in line of succession to the British throne lives in California and might not want to move back to England. Perhaps Hollywood could be the new capital.
AND, the seventh in line of succession not only lives in California, but is also an American.
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Why don’t the whole shooting match of them move to America. After all you guys are richer than broken Britain. You can afford to keep them in flash cars and coronets… not to mention yachts.
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LOL……there used to be a presidential yacht to sail around on the Potomac. Might be nice to have an official yacht again. 😉
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That would be unfair to USA wild life.
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I see that the ever-lovely Murdo Fraser got his panties in a tangle over Martin Compston making a political tweet… in favour of independence and the SNP.
“Another “celeb””, he tweeted, “who doesn’t live here, telling us how to vote”.
Which, of course, is fine…except for, I suppose, a few things, like.
Eddie Izzard
Ross Kemp
David Bowie
Ben Fogle
Alan Titchmarsh
John Barrowman
Mick Jagger… and many others who poked their noses in, in 2014, but lived in England or America or wherever.
Of course, the other thing that dear old Murdo got wrong was that Martin Compston DOES live here, and as he’s probably a fairly big earner, he pays his taxes here.
I’m sure that he’ll be “elected” to parliament next week and will continue to amuse us with his…erm, whatever it is he amuses us with.
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You forgot Trinny and Susanna, but then who doesn’t?
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I once, in the dim and distant, turned up for load out at a gig, having come straight from another (and messy) job. On being wound up about my sartorial inelegance by one of our crew, my retort was “which wan urr you; Trinny or Susannah”?
It got a laugh and shut him up, but I doubt anyone present could’ve told you what either looked like.
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“I’m sure that he’ll be “elected” to parliament next week”
Both votes YES sorts that…
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HMS Bung.
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So the omni-challenged Nadine Sorties was tweeting about Harlepool, was she? I wonder if the people of Hartlepool showed much interest in it.
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I typed “Dorries”. Honest.
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These things happen… 🙂
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Probably a bit mystified about how there were going to fill all these new jobs now that they can’t import labour from Europe… and where to house them all.
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Just noticed that the media are NOT celebrating the quote by Dodgy Dave Cameron on its anniversary.
Quote
‘You can have strong and stable government with Dodgy Dave or chaos with Millibrand’.
That worked out well.
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Thank goodness they chose strong and stable. I’m not sure I could have coped with chaos!
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Well, yes.
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Something strange happening to my computer. If I disappear for a while, it’s because it has finally packed up.
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I sympathise with your computer, there’s stuff out there on t’internet from which we all need a day off.
I mean, in the scheme of things, what purpose this serve…?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9546207/Kate-Middleton-Prince-William-launching-YouTube-channel.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490
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“At start, Duke joked: ‘We need to be careful what we say now because these guys are filming everything’ ”
Laugh? I nearly cried. What a magical wit this man has. How I long to see more of their witty comedic routines.
Why they are almost like normal people. You can almost imagine them eating food or going for a walk…just like mortals.
What purpose, you ask?
Well, it gives them something to do, I suppose, given that they are permanently on benefits with no skills for a real job.
I can hardly wait to watch the whole thing, but I fear, I must get on with painting the Tay Road Bridge.
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A thankless task, Tris, painting the Tay Road Bridge … as the Regulations stipulate that it has to be painted concrete-colour, no one can ever tell the difference.
I’ve heard, though, that it’s the rubbing down first with sugar soap that’s the real killer.
As always, I laud your assiduous devotion to duty.
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Well, Ed… it has to be done. And while I’m doing that I’m not shopping for champagne or making Lobster Bisque for himself.
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Tris, I suspect that Mr. Munguin does in fact realize that you are a treasure, but doesn’t tell you in case you get Ideas above your station.
Lobster Bisque… ah, such a pity I don’t like seafood, or I’d invite myself round for dinner.
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Ah sorry, Ed. For obvious reasons seafood is one of Munguin’s favourites.
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