andrewducker | Interesting Links for 05-11-2019

Police investigate suspicious package in office of Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson: (tags:police libdem OhForFucksSake )
Sinn FÃ©in won't stand in three Westminster seats - BBC News: (tags:uk europe ireland NorthernIreland )
Here's a list of confirmed election pacts so far: (tags:elections UK )
Constituency polling showing big swing to Lib Dems: (tags:polls libdem )
The new design for the Western part of Princes Street Gardens looks interesting: (tags:design edinburgh gardens )
Politics, conditional probability, and the Labour leave vote: (tags:politics Labour probability viaDanielDWilliam )
PM accused of cover-up over report on Russian meddling in UK politics: (tags:Russia politics elections UK )
Reverse engineering Best For Britain's polling data: (tags:polls elections uk )
Rangers are very close to going bust: (tags:football business fail scotland viaDanielDWilliam )
Voyager 2's Discoveries From Interstellar Space: (tags:space )
Microsoft Japan tested a four-day work week. Productivity jumped by 40%: Needs longer test periods, of course. But I do think that shorter working hours per week would be a positive for most people.
(tags:working_hours microsoft japan )
Samsara: The tale of the last unenlightened man: (tags:religion meditation satire funny )
Why Lindsay Hoyle Will Be A Very Different Speaker From John Bercow: (tags:uk parliament )
Britain is divided. That's why we need to fix the voting system: (tags:UK voting reform )
The government "ruling out" extending the transition period is either a lie or setting us up for No Deal.: (tags:uk europe doom Conservatives )

Ooh, I do like that. Seems very much the same sort of thing as the landscaping outside the Parliament, which is lovely.

One idle worry I have about these sorts of polling results is that on my reading of the British Polling Council rules, it would be possible to commission private polls of lots and lots of constituencies, and only publish the results for the ones that show results you like. The BPC require full disclosure of methodology and results for any poll where the results are published, but this seems like a loophole.

(If you were being smart about it, you might generate local-specific questions in each poll, and only include voting intention along with a bunch of other demographics, so it was slightly less blatant to the pollster what you were doing, and looked more like on-the-ground information gathering about the constituency. In fact you could well use it for that, come to think of it.)

I'm not suggesting that this is what's happening here with this figures, to be clear. I was just reading something about the LibDems using figures from dodgy pollsters who aren't even BPC members, but these are from Survation who are kosher and I (mostly) trust Mark Pack not to be behaving outrageously.

It does strike me, though, that although the LibDem reputation for shenanigans with figures (the bar charts!) is almost certainly not a major issue for most voters ... except the sort of people who you might imagine would form a LibDem core vote, such as it is.

That CG-representation of the plans for the western Gardens does seem to suggest a lot of trees are going to be removed to open the sight-lines from the amphitheatre-style terraces down into the new Hobbit-hole replacement for the Ross bandstand.

I've been very peripherally involved in shows put on at the bandstand during the Festival and at other times and there's a problem coping with crowds on the existing grassy slopes. The terraced hard-standing is going to make less of a mess and be less slippery and dangerous for those shows but it isn't very inviting for day-to-day visitors to the Gardens.

Interesting Links for 05-11-2019

The new design for the Western part of Princes Street Gardens looks interesting

Constituency polling showing big swing to Lib Dems

Re: The new design for the Western part of Princes Street Gardens looks interesting