It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, October 23, 2023
Labour Still Well-Poised for Rutherglen Despite 11% National SNP Lead
15 SEP @ 05:44
CALLUM JONES
Polling from YouGov, released today, shows the SNP extending their lead over Labour by 7 points to 11%. Although it will certainly be well received in SNP circles, for the moment it doesn't look like it will be enough to make them favourites in the upcoming Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.
YouGov puts Labour on 27% (down 5 points) to the SNP's 38% (+2). Based on this alone, the Rutherglen by-election might look favourable for the SNP, however this doesn't take the context of the seat into consideration. In 2019, the SNP held on to the seat by 9.7%. Although it's a decent margin, the national results for 2019 in Scotland saw SNP experience a vote that was around 26 points greater than Labour. On current polling, that margin is 11 points. With this swing, Labour could still be hopeful of winning back Rutherglen.
To put YouGov's recent pro-SNP shift into context, the below graph compares the 2019 Rutherglen result with a proportional and uniform swing applied based on the new polling. The dashed line represents the parties' vote shares based on the SNP-Lab swing from YouGov's previous poll, where the SNP led by just 4 points nationally.
On both a proportional and uniform swing of the YouGov poll, Labour would win the by-election - by 5% and 12% respectively. This compares to margins of 12% and 23% on prior polling. Our own adjusted UNS model predicts a slightly smaller Labour win.
There are some caveats to such predictions. By-elections are unique contests, with different electorates, and the high pre-existing Labour vote share might also mean the swing in the seat is lower than nationally. Equally, Labour might gain an advantage based on the circumstances surrounding Margaret Ferrier. Either way, it remains an important test for Starmer and Sarwar.
Half of staff on North Sea oil platform airlifted after anchors lost
Coastguard helicopters were called in to evacuate non-essential workers from the Stena Spey platform after eight anchors were loosened by Storm Babet.
Stena DrillingAround half the staff have been airlifted to safety. STV News
More than half the staff manning a North Sea drilling platform have been airlifted to other sites after several of its anchors came loose during Storm Babet.
Coastguard helicopters were called upon to move 45 non-essential workers from the Stena Spey to neighbouring platforms and to Sumburgh on the Shetland Islands on Saturday due to the incident.
The rig is located around 146 miles east of Aberdeen.
Stena Drilling said four out of eight anchors became detached from the drilling unit because of the severe weather.
The company confirmed all 89 employees manning the rig were accounted for during a roll-call held before the partial evacuation.
A response number has been set up for concerned relatives. The number to call is 01224 455199.
A Stena Drilling spokesperson said the well remains secure and the Stena Spey is stable. An ERRV emergency response rescue vessel is on standby to provide additional support.
The spokesperson said: “Emergency response procedures have been initiated and relevant authorities have been advised including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
“All support services are being co-ordinated through the shore-based incident response team and every possible effort is being made to safeguard risk to personnel and to safely and swiftly resolve the situation affecting the asset.”
Adam Price has a blueprint to improve Welsh democracy that must be taken seriously
22 Oct 202310 minute read
Adam Price. Picture by Plaid Cymru
Martin Shipton
Adam Price’s leadership of Plaid Cymru may have ended rather ignominiously, but at his best it can’t be denied that he is an original political thinker who still has a lot to offer Wales.
I’ve been reading a recent lecture he gave under the auspices of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre called Remaking Welsh Democracy and I found it very impressive. Indeed, he may have come up with a credible plan to make the Senedd better engaged with the Welsh public.
While there is plenty of polling evidence to show that most people want to have a Welsh Parliament and trust it more than they trust Westminster, it is nevertheless disappointing that no devolved election has resulted in as much as a 50% turnout.
Over the years there has been much agonising over why that may be the case and various “outreach” initiatives have taken place without much palpable success. I recall a seminar in Cardiff Bay’s Pierhead Building at which a number of London-based journalists said they wouldn’t dream of covering the institution because it was too boring. This led to some wounded feelings, but not much else.
It’s been pointed out ad nauseam that the pandemic raised the profile of devolved power, but while voters in Wales may have preferred the avuncular style of Mark Drakeford to the bombastic charlatanism of Boris Johnson, there’s little doubt that both administrations will, when the report of the UK public inquiry is eventually published, be criticised severely for the mistakes they made.
Resetting devolution
There’s a powerful case for resetting devolution – but what would that mean in practice? In his lecture, Price set out a fairly comprehensive programme for how to achieve positive change with the help of Senedd reform.
The Welsh Conservatives rail against the plan to increase the number of Senedd Members from 60 to 96, while at the same time complaining that standards in the delivery of public services need to be improved. Yet they’ve failed to explain how the quality of delivery can be raised.
Price has made a compelling, four-pronged case for reform, the first strand of which entails increasing the Senedd’s capacity.
Increasing the number of Senedd Members is usually justified by reference to the need for greater scrutiny – a trite phrase that is trotted out with tedious regularity. Price puts the meat on the bone. He argues: “Rather than engaging in a sterile debate about [increasing the number of MSs], why not have a more productive debate about what we could and should do with that new capacity?
“A larger Senedd means a longer parliamentary week becomes possible – with a third plenary day being dedicated, potentially, to non-Government bills. This would massively expand the scope for individual member bills becoming law, unleashing some real legislative creativity on the backbenches which is currently heavily circumscribed. We should be electing legislators, after all, not lobby fodder.”
Price pointed out that the Senedd hasn’t managed to pass a Senedd Member Bill since March 2016, when Kirsty Williams’ Nurse Staffing Levels Act received its Royal Assent. He added: “To give us a sense of what is possible in other parliaments, the 349 legislators in the Swedish Riksdag submitted some 2,238 private member motions – binding motions calling for legislative or executive action – for decision in 2022.
“To support this new potential for political creativity we need to be investing in the capacity to generate new ideas. We should create an equivalent of the Policy Development Grant focused not on Westminster as the current system is but the needs of Wales.
“We could decide that the new National School of Government that is being proposed as part of the Cooperation Agreement [between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru] trained not just civil servants but politicians too – a glaring gap in schools of government worldwide currently with a few exceptions.”
Recall
Other reforms would involve a system for recall or resignation where a member of the Senedd is found guilty of the most serious breaches of the code of conduct. Lay members of the public would sit on the Standards Committee, as is the case in Westminster.
Price argues that it should be an offence to knowingly mislead the Senedd and the public and to refuse to correct the record when required to do so by the Llywydd. As he put it, “Businesses can’t make false claims. Advertisements must be truthful. Why should politics be held to a lower standard?”
The next task, argues Price, is to replace what he describes as “a culture of competitive individualism and conformist groupthink” with something better.
He says: “Making committee-initiated legislation a key part of the political process as happens in Sweden and Iceland could unleash all kinds of opportunities for political entrepreneurs in parliament and outside to reshape Welsh society. In Iceland they have a 90% success rate in becoming law, as they tend to reflect a consensus view of what needs to be done.
“That makes them sound dull and prosaic, but another way of looking at it is that they tap into the collective intelligence, the wisdom of crowds that is a rich storehouse in any society of ideas that have the traction to work. As with individual Member Bills we have the power already, but not the time or space to do so: only one Committee Bill has so far been passed in the history of the Senedd.”
Financial scrutiny
Price argues that the work of the Finance Committee and the financial scrutiny of the Senedd as a whole could be transformed by the creation of a distinct parliamentary budget office with the kind of expertise and capacity necessary to provide parliament with independent analysis of budget proposals.
The availability of detailed independent advice could allow the committee to play the kind of active role in the budget process seen in Nordic countries and Canada at both federal and provincial level, where finance committees regularly propose amendments to the draft budget. A Senedd Budget Office could advise other committees and party groups wishing to cost manifestos and individual policies independently as happens in the Republic of Ireland and Australia.
It could also allow the Senedd as a whole to own the budget process, with a Budget where all members are able to table amendments to it, increasing expenditure in specific areas and reducing it in others or raising additional finance in order to achieve this, so that the Budget is genuinely approved by the Senedd rather than simply being nodded through.
Another strand of Price’s strategy involves creating a more diverse Senedd, and he favours measures to ensure that happens, not simply in terms of gender balance but with race and disability too. He said: “Changing the culture of politics will attract a broader range of applicants. Parliament for many is still synonymous with a group of older white males shouting scripted questions and answers at each other as they work their way up the greasy pole. But we can do things differently, and therefore become genuinely inclusive and diverse.”
Job sharing
Price advocates job sharing for all positions, up to and including the level of the First Minister. He said: “If co-captaincy works for the Welsh rugby team then there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for politics too and it will certainly open up the idea of elected office to a far wider range of people by background and by personality, so we achieve cognitive diversity alongside the social, making space for introverts as well as extroverts. And people will be able to balance their skills and experiences on joint tickets rather than pretending that anyone can be the complete package.”
To improve engagement, Price wants voting in Senedd and local elections to be made compulsory, but in return political literacy, media literacy and civic education could be made mandatory parts of the new curriculum. Price said: “We could do what Paris has done and allow school students to make decisions on a small proportion of local budgets, as democracy is best learned by doing. And teaching basic democracy should not be confined to new voters. We should make it a compulsory part of graduation from our universities and colleges, and support a massive programme of outreach in every community.”
Other proactive initiatives could involve advancing far beyond traditional consultation and the Senedd’s current petition system by adopting the latest democratic innovations in civic participation from randomly chosen citizen assemblies, juries and panels to participatory budgeting, participatory energy planning, participatory transport planning, deliberative polling, government and citizen co-design and co-creation and co-production of policy and public service delivery across every single area.
Participation
Price said: “We could take participation down to the local level and taking the recent upsurge of engagement through the 20mph decision as an example, make it much easier for local people to suggest an amendment to local regulations like speed limits through a sort of democratic equivalent of the neighbourhood app nextdoor.
“We could have instant online fact-checking of statements made during Senedd debates. We could give the Youth Senedd the formal right to be consulted on all legislative proposals which affect young people.
“Embracing a more transparent, responsive, participatory democracy would be a positive response to the generalised crisis that we see in democracy worldwide – the collapse in trust in institutions, in turnout in elections, in membership of parties, in satisfaction with outcomes.
“But I think it is not just about embracing particular methods or practices but a more wholesale shift to the idea of a collaborative democracy, a new hybrid between modern representative democracy and the direct democracy of classical antiquity. Electors and the elected, the governed and the governing have to become joint participants in a shared process.”
Price concluded: “Two hundred years ago the Chartists presented their six demands. If I had to create a New Charter which six would I choose?
“Top of the list for me would be universal civic duty voting. Coupled with that would be basic education in democracy for all. Third, I would say new public funding for political think tanks and public interest journalism. Fourthly, an incubator for new leaders. Fifth, quotas not just for gender but all under-represented groups in society.
And the final idea would be to create, as the Basques have recently done in Arantzazu high in the Mondragon Valley, in the shade of a Franciscan monastery that was a bastion for Basque language and culture and a bulwark against fascism, a democracy lab, seeking new ways to build the future, through collective intelligence and collaborative governance. A democracy lab would be a platform for ongoing evaluation and experimentation. Most major organisations or systems have some kind of R&D team. If it is to survive and thrive for the duration of the 21st century, then democracy needs an innovation function.”
By setting out a programme for democratic reform, Adam Price has issued a challenge to Wales’ political class. Either it can carry on in the same old way, making decisions that fail to resonate with a high proportion of the population, or it can resolve to make big changes that have the potential to draw the majority in. Let’s hope they have the courage to take the plunge.
UK
Stanwick Lakes: Bronze Age log boat build reaches halfway point
PublishedShare
IMAGE SOURCE,EMMA JONES@ANCIENTCRAFT
Image caption,
Lorena Boquete Vilarino wears Bronze Age style clothes while using ancient techniques to carve out the boats
By Katy Prickett
BBC News, Northamptonshire
Building Bronze Age-style log boats using replica tools and fire has revealed "how long and how much effort" it was to make prehistoric vessels.
Ten volunteers are hoping to get two boats afloat at Stanwick Lakes nature reserve in Northamptonshire next year.
It is part of a £250,000 Heritage Lottery project to connect the site to its ancient past.
Heritage officer Nadia Norman said the boat build began in June and volunteers had devoted 500 hours to it so far.
IMAGE SOURCE,EMMA JONES@ANCIENTCRAFT
Image caption,
Ms Boquete Vilarino is an experienced Bronze Age re-enactor but jumped at the chance to extend her skills "with proper tools"
The team is creating the boats from a fallen lime tree donated by Boughton House, near Kettering.
They include Lorena Boquete Vilarino, 35, an experienced Bronze Age, Iron Age and early medieval re-enactor, who is currently the only woman volunteer.
She said: "I do a lot of crafts such as weaving and spinning, which are manageable on your own, but you don't get many opportunities to work with the proper tools on something as big as a boat.
"This is a massive project and a lot of physical work and it has really helped me understand how long it takes and how much effort to carve out the boats."
IMAGE SOURCE,EMMA JONES@ANCIENTCRAFT
Image caption,
Ten volunteers have taken part in the boat build, many of whom have woodworking or engineering backgrounds
A post-doctoral researcher in cancer biology from Cambridge, she has also found it "really amazing" to use the bronze replica tools.
She said: "When you think of bronze, you think it's going to break or lose its sharpness - but it's really resistant."
They include Aidan Phillips (left), who has just begun a part-time archaeology degree, and Andy Dyks (right)
IMAGE SOURCE,ROCKINGHAM FOREST TRUST
Image caption,
Mr Phillips is leading on burning out one of the boats, which will eventually be finished off with tools
Despite being an experienced woodworker, "the biggest challenge now is the haft, I'm on my sixth one and I've just broken that, it is literally one a month - some lasted a day," he said.
Mr Phillips, a digital learning co-ordinator for Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue, said: "I've been leading on the boat burn on the smaller of the two and trying to perfect the technique for the right burn.
"But it starts you thinking, it's quite possible that in the past they would have had someone tending it all night and they would cook breakfast on the fire - otherwise the burn would have been a wasted resource."
The volunteers aim to create boats with flat ends like the one above and have them ready to try out on the water by next yea
Beavers released at London site
22/10/2023
Beavers have been reintroduced to London for the first time in some 400 years after a family of five was released at a site in Ealing.
The mammals were released at Paradise Fields, an area of wetlands in Ealing. They were relocated from a wild beaver population in Scotland by a coalition of wildlife groups.
The release was organised by a coalition of wildlife groups and was paid for as part of the mayor's Rewild London Fund (PA Media).
The project is being paid for as part of the mayor's Rewild London Fund. Sean McCormack, a vet and chair of Ealing Wildlife Group, said the mammals could play an important part in London's urban wildlife, explaining that there had been plans to spend money on flood prevention measures in Greenford but the beavers were offered as a "cost-effective, nature-based" solution.
The area where the beavers have been released will be closed to the public for one month to allow the animals to settle in. Dr McCormack said the public would later be welcomed on 'beaver safaris'.
The Ealing project is among 21 others across the capital which are planned to help restore wildlife. In total, it is hoped about 116 ha of habitat will be restored or created. So far City Hall has committed £850,000, with an extra £1 million of funding for new rewilding projects having now been pledged.
UK Man one of the first to get pen lid-sized pacemaker
UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL SOUTHAMPTON
Graham Motteram, 76, is the first person in Southampton to be given the new style of pacemaker
At a glance
A man from Romsey is one of the first in the UK to receive the pacemaker
The procedure to have it fitted took 30 minutes
The device is 10 times smaller than the current standard versions and could last for 20 years
Curtis Lancaster
Journalist
Publishe6 hoursago
A Hampshire patient has become one of the first in the UK to receive a pen lid-sized pacemaker.
Graham Motteram, 76, from Romsey, underwent a 30-minute procedure at Southampton General Hospital.
It is the first time experts at the hospital have used the Aveir VR leadless pacemaker, which is 10 times smaller than the current standard device.
Mr Motteram has since been discharged and said: "I feel better than I have in months."
He was sent for treatment following a high reading on a routine blood pressure check and abnormal ECG results at his local GP surgery.
He said: “I arrived at the hospital and to my worry was rushed straight through with no wait. After various examinations [I] was told that I would need a pacemaker fitted."
A team of heart experts, led by Professor Paul Roberts, implanted the new device for Mr Motteram 10 days later.
Prof Roberts said: "[It] represents a significant advancement in patient care with leadless pacemaker technology.
"The battery life of this device has the potential to last for more than 20 years in some patients."
How does it work?
The device is implanted into the heart’s right ventricle and is held in place by turning its spiral tip, which houses a small electrode for sensing and pacing stimulation.
The device receives a message after every heartbeat and, if needed, delivers an electrical pulse to correct the slow or irregular heart rhythm.
The device helps people with Bradycardia, which is a slower-than-normal heart rate.
There are more than 1.5 million people in the UK diagnosed with a heart rhythm condition that puts them at increased risk of a stroke, according to British Heart Foundation data.
