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[10ebbor10]

 An independent poll that is favorable for the party that commissioned (ie. Paid for it.) it is always suspicious. Especially this party.

 Anyway, a short search reveals the poll is done by Maurice de Hondt. He made polls for the party before, and they always overstated the actual results. His methods are contested, and the questions are not entirely neutral.

[XXSockXX]

Yeah, these polls shouldn't be taken too seriously. Every other year there are talks that an anti-EU party would have a "potential" of 15-25% of the vote in Germany, but now that there is one (much more moderate than Wilders' party), they didn't even get the 5% necessary to get into parliament.

Generally I'd expect right-wing, anti-EU, anti-immigration parties to do relatively well in the upcoming EU parliament elections, but less due to huge popular support and more due to low voter turnout, as the population tends to see the EU parliament as rather unimportant.

[10ebbor10]

Yup, vote turnout on the European election has dropped with each consecutive election.

[MonkeyHead]

The downside of this though is that then it can be used to claim legitimacy - the "rise" of UKIP has been primarily through European elections, and from there they are actually gunning to take down the Tories (and in any case are possibly gonna cause a reaction from them of swinging back to the right from centre-right), and UKIP would clearly be the worse of 2 evils in that scenario.

[XXSockXX]

Yeah, a lot of smaller parties will try to use gains in the European elections to claim or maintain legitimacy here too, not all of them are an radicals though. Most notably the liberal FDP, who missed parliament for the first time in the last election, and the AfD, our new anti-EU party.
There will be no threshold in these elections for the first time, so even some tiny, usually irrelevant parties might make it into the EU parliament this time.

[palsch]

Speaking of UKIP, this is a nice way to celebrate their poll gains.

[Sheb]

The leading candidates for the PPE, Greens, PES and ALDE will have a debate tonight a 7pm CET if anyone is interested.

[Sheb]

Debate is live .

[Owlbread]

Spoiler: The first of its kind in Scotland (click to show/hide)

On Sunday the 4th of May, the Sunday Herald (a Sunday morning broadsheet and, admittedly, the only newspaper I read these days) will become the first newspaper in Scotland to formally back Scottish Independence. I hope that at least one or two more may follow suit, but besides the Sunday Herald I struggle to think of any more that would. As strange as it sounds I wouldn't be surprised if the Sun actually lent their support; despite being a pretty terrible rag they do subversive things like that to get readers.

It's very sensible from a business perspective; despite at least a third (if not close to 50% as recent polls have indicated) of the Scottish electorate backing Scottish independence, none of the newspapers until now have backed independence. Instead, they are all Unionist and fairly Conservative in nature, despite occasionally having Socialist or Liberal pretensions such as in the Daily Record. The Sunday Herald have thus become the only paper that represents the political views of an entire third of the Scottish electorate. I hope that their sales grow as a result.

As a point of interest, the Daily Record is the only Scottish newspaper to run a news report on Dwarf Fortress, as they did in 2009. I don't know if that was just on their website though.

[Graknorke]

Spoiler: The first of its kind in Scotland (click to show/hide)

On Sunday the 4th of May, the Sunday Herald (a Sunday morning broadsheet and, admittedly, the only newspaper I read these days) will become the first newspaper in Scotland to formally back Scottish Independence. I hope that at least one or two more may follow suit, but besides the Sunday Herald I struggle to think of any more that would. As strange as it sounds I wouldn't be surprised if the Sun actually lent their support; despite being a pretty terrible rag they do subversive things like that to get readers.

It's very sensible from a business perspective; despite at least a third (if not close to 50% as recent polls have indicated) of the Scottish electorate backing Scottish independence, none of the newspapers until now have backed independence. Instead, they are all Unionist and fairly Conservative in nature, despite occasionally having Socialist or Liberal pretensions such as in the Daily Record. The Sunday Herald have thus become the only paper that represents the political views of an entire third of the Scottish electorate. I hope that their sales grow as a result.

As a point of interest, the Daily Record is the only Scottish newspaper to run a news report on Dwarf Fortress, as they did in 2009. I don't know if that was just on their website though.

No Scotland, please don't go.
If you do we'll be stuck with a Tory government. Forever.

[Owlbread]

No Scotland, please don't go.
If you do we'll be stuck with a Tory government. Forever.

This is actually untrue. Besides the fact that there are plans to change the makeup of the Westminster seats (or so I hear) thereby reducing Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish influence even further, this article may shed light on why Labour doesn't actually need Scotland.

Here is a summary of the article:

- on ONE occasion (1964) Scottish MPs have turned what would have been a Conservative government into a Labour one. The Tory majority without Scottish votes would have been just one MP (280 vs 279), and as such useless in practice. The Labour government, with an almost equally feeble majority of 4, lasted just 18 months and a Tory one would probably have collapsed even faster.

- on ONE occasion (the second of the two 1974 elections) Scottish MPs gave Labour a wafer-thin majority (319 vs 316) they wouldn’t have had from the rest of the UK alone, although they’d still have been the largest party and able to command a majority in a pact with the Liberals, as they eventually did in reality.

- and on ONE occasion (2010) the presence of Scottish MPs has deprived the Conservatives of an outright majority, although the Conservatives ended up in control of the government anyway in coalition with the Lib Dems when Labour refused to co-operate with other parties in a “rainbow alliance”.

- which means that for 65 of the last 67 years, Scottish MPs as an entity have had no practical influence over the composition of the UK government. From a high of 72 MPs in 1983, Scotland’s representation will by 2015 have decreased to 52, substantially reducing any future possibility of affecting a change.

[Graknorke]

This is actually untrue. Besides the fact that there are plans to change the makeup of the Westminster seats (or so I hear) thereby reducing Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish influence even further, this article may shed light on why Labour doesn't actually need Scotland.

Here is a summary of the article:

Oh yes, I was reminded that Scotland has a disproportionately small number of MP seats for its size while looking up the 2010 general election results. It looks a bit ridiculous if you put the map into proportional view.

[Owlbread]

Oh yes, I was reminded that Scotland has a disproportionately small number of MP seats for its size while looking up the 2010 general election results. It looks a bit ridiculous if you put the map into proportional view.

Very true. To be fair to the British political system, if we gave the people out in the rural areas that make up most of the Scottish landmass proper representation it would be at the expense of England. I also think the old argument that England needs Scotland to protect them from themselves is undemocratic. I just don't see this current framework as sustainable in any way.

I think that England should be an independent, federal state, with the House of Commons as its national parliament. Its regions (for instance the Midlands, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-West etc) would have their own devolved assemblies. I admit that I would rather like to see those regions being given their old names, e.g. "Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland" and so on.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Somehow, somehow I think the people living in Merica might object to that.

[Owlbread]

Somehow, somehow I think the people living in Merica might object to that.

Actually, according to Wikipedia "Mercia" is quite popular as a local name for local companies.

The West Mercia Constabulary was created in 1967, combining the police forces of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.

Telephone directories across the Midlands reveal a large number of commercial and voluntary organisations using ‘Mercia’ in their names. In the early 1980s, Mercia Television was an unsuccessful contender for the Midlands franchise, then owned by ATV. It was won by Central Independent Television. Mercia (formerly Mercia FM) is a commercial radio station broadcasting from Coventry founded in 1980 as Mercia Sound.

In 2012, a new football league was formed called the Mercian Regional Football League.

They're still aware of themselves, I believe. At least partly.