Hello! I'm Mark Pack, author of Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, as well as 101 Ways To Win An Election and Bad News: what the headlines don't tell us. Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention poll from each pollster currently operating in Britain. Below the table, you'll find the option to sign up to email updates about new polls and also a set of answers to frequently asked questions about political polling. Or, if you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how ...
Joanna Lumley (Photo: Paul Grover/Shutterstock/The Scotsman) Joanna Lumley is in the news today for speaking about mental health. She says: "When someone dies and you grieve, that's human. That's what being a human is. You're not mentally ill.... I think the mental health thing is being overplayed at the moment because anybody who is even remotely sad says they have got mental problems... And I think it also is awful to people who really are mentally ill or are properly clinically depressed, for everybody to say they've got to have some sort of special treatment. Everyone's claiming the mental illness ...
This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days, I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia. In December 2014 I had two work trips to London, one of which was combined with a visit to Albania. We ...
Responding to the Met Police statement this morning on the Sue Gray report, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: "So first the police were waiting for Sue Gray, now Sue Gray has to wait for the police?"Any appearance of an establishment stitch-up between the Met Commissioner and the Government is profoundly damaging. Police officers need the trust and confidence of the public to do their jobs and keep our communities safe."That's why we called for the police to investigate Number 10 weeks ago and put this whole sorry business behind us, instead of waiting for Sue Gray."The ...
Three principal authority council by-elections this week, with not only three Lib Dem candidates but that's also three up on the last time these seats were up. A very welcome step forward in the party's journey to standing more often in council elections. Maypole and Leyton Cross (Dartford) council by-election result: CON: 63.1% (-21.1) GRN: 14.4% (+14.4) LAB: 12.3% (-3.5) LDEM: 10.2% (+10.2) Votes cast: 529 Conservative HOLD. Chgs. w/ 2019 — Britain Elects (@BritainElects) January 28, 2022
A while ago I read a book by British journalist, Tim Marshall, entitled 'Prisoners of Geography', where he argues that where you live colours to a great extent your perception of the world around you. That Mr Marshall is an believer, if that's the right word, in 'geopolitics' is very clear. He's now followed this up with 'The Power of Geography', which I have yet to read; but I assume this takes the idea further. Geopolitics states that politics, especially international relations, is influenced by geography. That certainly makes sense to me and I would argue, for example, that, living ...
Thu, 16:05: RT @charlieconnelly: So many people sharing stories of Barry Cryer being lovely to them. Here's mine. https://t.co/tcWFwLzYIl Thu, 18:11: The Gift of Rain, by Tan Twan Eng https://t.co/5R3GnVGo2t Thu, 19:35: Hooray! New design of the Belgian passport https://t.co/V5zEwyqfqU via @YouTube Thu, 19:51: I am 20,000 days old today https://t.co/CMM2R8wvkc Thu, 20:48: Totally. https://t.co/7XePJv3NNq Thu, 23:11: RT @AgataGostynska: I cannot quite believe that after all those years of analysing factors underpinning Brexit there are serious people on... Fri, 10:45: A bit too close to the bone! https://t.co/ELJ9Su3tGK
I have never flown to Australia, but if I did, I suspect that the cost of flights would be in the thousands, not hundreds of thousands of pounds. So what is it that makes our Foriegn Secretary so different that she cannot get a commercial flight like everybody else, rather than stiffing the taxpayer for a cool half a million pounds through the use of a private jet? The Guardian reports that Liz Truss used the private government Airbus A321 for her flight from London's Stansted airport to Sydney, via Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, arriving on 20 January. Once there, ...
I was surprised to read a letter in today's Shropshire Star that claims that only 17,000 people have died from Covid-19. This is a complete misinterpretation of information provided by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). It is correct that only 17,371 people had Covid-19 registered as the only cause of death up to September 2021. But the reality is that disease has led to more than 140,000 deaths in the UK. The letter, which I hope will not be published on the Star website, seems to be from someone opposed to vaccination, including those in health and care settings. ...
