I'm a bit less cheerful today than I have been in some of my recent updates. Belgium managed briefly to qualify for the ECDC green zone last week, but infections have started to surge again in the last few days, today's case rate being a massive 82% ahead of a week ago. Hospitalisations and deaths have not yet started to rise in sympathy, which either means that a lot of people who are getting diagnosed are not in fact all that ill, or that the other numbers are delayed. And it's currently raining cats and dogs outside, on a Saturday ...
York has become the first city in the UK to sign up to the Good Business Charter - a pioneering imitative that puts fairness, representation, diversity and a shared commitment to our environmental responsibilities at the heart of our economic strategy. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, City of York Council has had a clear focus on working closely with the business community, supporting small and micro businesses, and promoting our unique approach to economic development - the 'York Way'. Recently an independent evaluation of the Council's £1.14m micro grant scheme revealed that since its introduction in March 2020, 294 local businesses ...
Sat 10th
12:15
Latest PollBase is out, with all the voting intention polls since the general election
With the end of another quarter, another update to PollBase, my database of British voting intention opinion polls since 1943 is now up. Includes corrections to various dates thanks to Philip Canning's eagle-eyes. Enjoy! P.S. For the very latest polls, see my polling scorecard. Get polling news and analysis by email Sign up here if you would like to receive the Polling UnPacked occasional email newsletter, highlighting the best in analysis and news about British political opinion polling from a carefully curated range of high-quality sites (no more than one email a day and usually much less frequent):
Fri, 15:20: I have read 12 of these 46. https://t.co/Vbjs2uJdrd Fri, 16:05: RT @pmdfoster: It's OUT!! My weekly #Brexit Briefing for @ft This week: the transition from "CE" safety marks (u see them on everything) t... Fri, 17:11: Southgate is one of sport's great communicators https://t.co/k7NxDfqCn9 @ArvindHickman salutes the England captain in @PrWeekUKNews. Fri, 18:15: The incredible baroque stucco ceilings of the Abdij van Park https://t.co/cZx3sBJhhW Fri, 20:11: Friday reading https://t.co/T2Y7KTdX8T Fri, 20:48: RT @apcoworldwide: The 2020 halt to tourism caused huge losses of jobs and income in communities that are largely reliant on tourism. Now,... Sat, 02:01: RT @ottocrat: ...
This week's by-elections present a very mixed picture, along with some crucial lessons in defending our held seats. With eight vacancies to fight, we stood in six, succeeding in one. We lost our one defence in East Devon, in what was a disappointing result. Nevertheless, good campaigns were fought elsewhere, and we can celebrate a good town council gain. There two Green gains on Thursday, we stood in one and not the other. The lesson is it's always better to stand for the sake of giving voters a real choice, rather than getting any misplaced ideas about deals and pacts. ...
The Independent reports that departmental accounts show the Home Office spent more than £370,000 to settle a top civil servant's tribunal claim after he quit amid allegations of Priti Patel's bullying. They say that former permanent secretary Sir Philip Rutnam accepted the six-figure sum earlier this year after launching legal action against the Home Secretary, following his dramatic resignation in February last year, accusing Ms Patel of a "vicious and orchestrated" briefing campaign against him. An employment tribunal was due to hear his case in September with him claiming constructive dismissal and accusing her of bullying subordinates. Meanwhile, elsewhere in ...
America believes in exporting its Democracy. And it has sought to do so right from the start. Congress regularly ties aid and trade packages to political change in developing countries, too often ignoring local conditions. For many years America was seen by other countries as that "Shining City on the Hill" first mentioned in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and later repeated by Puritan leader John Winthrop and, more recently, by President Ronald Reagan. Its War of Independence inspired the French Revolution, liberation movements in South America and elsewhere in the world. The stirring words of the Declaration of Independence ...
The Ninewells Community Garden Annual General Meeting, held on Zoom, with a guest speaker, Rebecca Wade, talking about COP26 what it means and how we can get involved, takes place on Tuesday 20th July at 7pm. Contact chair@ninewellsgarden.org.uk for zoom link - all welcome!
Nigel Scott on the Liberal Democrats, queer theory and transsexual rights: "The Liberal Democrats' have adopted a queer theory centred approach to trans rights. This means that the party implicitly opposes women's sex-based rights, because women no longer exist as a fixed sex class. Accordingly, any man can adopt the status of a woman on demand and because 'transwomen are women' in the words of the party's mantra, there is no longer a rationale for single sex spaces." "Having been for centuries essentially a comprehensive for the aristocracy, Eton changed into an oligarchical grammar school. With the incomes of the ...
