An "am I getting old or has this got worse" dilemma: the website giving me my credit score has video game style achievements and notifications saying "well done on smashing through the X00 barrier". Mate this is about my mortgage, at least pretend to be professional

This is an interesting personality test: would you find this frustrating or think "result, unexpected free afternoon"? (Mine would vary massively depending on how busy work was TBH)

The whole Farage vs YouGov thing is intensely tin-pot and depressing but it’s at least made funny by the fact the extra question YouGov has agreed to publish (but not make headline VI) makes no meaningful difference to Reform’s raw vote share at all - 18 vs 17

This is a deep error. Pollsters have a pretty good record recently, and they should not give even the impression that they doubt their models - or retreat in the face of the haters and liars. There's a reason why no-one puts out their raw data! Because it's... usually nonsense.

Project Hail Mary was really fun but Jesus I'd forgotten how weird it is seeing organs of the US government being shown as these benign forces out to solve global problems. It's the Contagion problem all over again.

This is such a bad time to be remortgaging

Correlation/causation it's hard to know

Not only are betting markets less reliable than polling, they're also less reliable *than no polling* because that just leaves space for all sorts of hunches and nonsense

The contrast between the public and the commentariat on this has always just been night and day

There's probably a limit to how many times I can repost this but let's find out. "Hero voters" were always "economically insecure & wouldn't rule out voting Labour", not "may have voted for Jim Callaghan but haven't considered Labour since"

Have been a bit frustrated by some of the conversation about Labour's voter coalition. I've written about who the "Hero Voters" actually were, how we won them, and what we need to do to earn their support next time. chriscurtismk.substack.com/p/who-actual...

NEW: After Gorton & Denton, how should we understand the threat to Labour's left? Big new @persuasionuk.bsky.social report out with @38degrees.bsky.social on 'progressive defectors' - Lab 2024 switchers to Greens, Plaid, SNP, Lib Dems. Who are they, who are they not & what's moving them? 🧵

Tangential: the most intense discussion about geopolitics I've ever had (and I did an IR degree) was the bus into school the morning after 9/11

Is the phrase "special relationship" actually used in government or is it mainly a journalese thing?

In hindsight I cannot believe that my parents (teachers who also ran a school boarding house) agreed to me and my sisters demanding packed lunches rather than (correctly) answering "are you insane? What's given you the impression that we have all this spare time lying around?"

This is not a reasoned political response. Labour has spent two years making all the voting groups who backed the Greens feel unwelcome and unheard, and now attacks them for daring to back someone else. They believe Labour isn’t listening and Starmer seems determined to prove them right

I thought Marty Supreme would be the most stressful film I saw this week but I just came out of If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and bloody hell...

I agree with this, not least because the timing of the GM mayor and general elections mean that Burnham had a perfect opportunity to stand as an MP in 2024 and has another after his term ends in 2028. Blocking him then would be factional overreach but blocking him right now was much more reasonable

But mainly thanks to @cjterry.bsky.social and @ralucahippie.bsky.social for what they have had to endure to get us all through this

💥Oxford St Pedestrianisation Approved💥 With the majority of Londoners supporting the change, I'm delighted @sadiqkhanlondon.bsky.social has approved the plans to transform this iconic street. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We once found that men aged 18-24 in London were 4 times more likely than average to have fostered a child

Low-key dystopian prediction: in a few years smartphones will stop including a speaker at the top of the phone and the epidemic of people taking speakerphone calls in public will become unstoppable

I will never not watch this whenever it comes up. Bonus for the Andor version youtu.be/Mt5z4IkD-qE?...

Surveys that find British young adults have high levels of Christian belief & practice have two things in common: 1. They survey opt-in panels that accept volunteers. 2. They don't make the underlying survey datasets publicly available for researchers to analyze.

Not saying this is the No 10 plan but it's not *not* the plan

For the love of god

Agree with every word of this righteously angry thread

FFS every time you think you're safe and watching another event they cut back to the curling

Curling is the taekwondo of the winter Olympics

I have not seen the rest of the interview but if the next words aren't "come on that's a bit pathetic isn't it?" then it's a failure by Nick Ferrari

For the craic - The trendines for each pollster from 2024 to now

Politics is nothing but vibes giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

🧵 / To be more serious, one of the advantages of Westminster types taking more than a surface-level interest in elections would be to stop falling for this 'great man theory of elections'.

Watching the Winter Olympics the same way that I do every four years: sound turned down, BBC Ski Sunday theme on repeat

Realistically the best case for Starmer (and I'm not saying this is likely) is "Theresa May after Hill and Timothy resigned": complete change in strategy that allows for better governance setting up better conditions for his successor in the next GE

The absolute lack of remorse from the perpetrator is genuinely chilling

You know when you're reading something and you can tell the author is having a great time...

Apropos of nothing, feels like it's a good time to dig out Gavin Barwell's book about being Theresa May's chief of staff

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Oh hell yes

Nice illustration of the lizardman's constant here. In Denmark, a country the man basically threatened with invasion, 4% still have a positive view of him

Watching SkyscraperLIVE (now that I know how it ends) and the contrast between watching without sound (focused on the climb, almost meditative) and with sound (endless inane commentary, who TF is Seth) is night and day

Hamnet is a beautiful film only partly sullied by the use of On the Nature of Daylight at the end. It's the musical equivalent of the Wilhelm scream

I have a strong commercial interest in this not happening (clients like knowing you're a member of something official sounding) but I think it would be good if the British Polling Council was called something else

Sample size of 143, one month from the election, with no Labour or Green candidates selected

(polling community takes note of new innovation in boosting response rates)

If you take out like 30% of the scenes with the Jimmys then The Bone Temple is a really good 4 star film