Interesting Links for 17-11-2021

[andrewducker]

Racism Is Institutional In British Cricket

(tags:UK cricket racism OhForFucksSake )

Supersaurus: Scientists realise dinosaur might have been the longest ever after fixing fossil mix-up

(tags:dinosaurs )

Chile wants to export solar energy to Asia via 15,000km submarine cable (losses would be just under 50%)

(tags:solarpower chile Asia )

Joanna Cherry's popularity is not going up

(tags:LGBT SNP transgender politics Scotland )

England’s austerity-hit courts losing days of work to collapsing ceilings, broken lift and arctic conditions

(tags:justice UK OhForFucksSake )

There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

(tags:Canada transport roads weather )

Remarkably accurate neurosurgery residency interview

(tags:medicine USA surgery doctors funny satire video interview )

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told an employee he would have her killed. He kept an exec from being fired after a sexual harassment claim. He didn't tell his board of alleged rapes and other misconduct.

(tags:games rape abuse misogyny OhForFucksSake )

John Carmack on Steve Jobs

(tags:Doom games Apple stevejobs johncarmack history computers graphics opengl )

Amazon to stop accepting Visa credit cards issued in UK

(tags:UK Amazon visa credit wtf )

The students losing thousands in an Edinburgh rental scam

(tags:edinburgh property fraud )

‘Clear risk’ UK joining Pacific trade deal will raise drug prices for NHS

(tags:uk nhs trade )

The FTC is moving to end “click to subscribe, call to cancel”

(tags:business usa )

Netflix has started publishing its top 10 watched movies and TV shows

(tags:netflix )

Dogs! Being! Kissed!

(tags:dogs behaviour )

Comments

Re: Joanna Cherry

[andrewducker]

Judging by the recent polls, that doesn't seem to be what voters are doing. 48% support for the SNP indicates that voters are happy to support them even if they disagree over this point.

So, they're not leaving over this. It seems like the major thing would be your point "voters do not like parties that do not look unified. (It is the thing they HATE most about political parties)" - so best hope that nobody goes about acting disunified!

Re: Joanna Cherry

[danieldwilliam]

I think you are drawing the wrong conclusion from the voting intention polling.

It doesn't indicate that voters support SNP policy on this issue. It doesn't particularly indicate that they are content to go along with the generality of the SNP offer despite disagreeing with them on this issue.

Most voters do not pay attention to politics. Almost no voters pay attention to policy outside of elections. Mid-term voters generally look at the tone and values of a political party, whether it appears competent and occassionally a policy issue will break through - such as a botched budget or the recent Tory corruption scandal.

Remembering that we life in a polity where almost every voter ranks "the economy" as one of the most important issues but almost no voters could draw you a set of supply and demand curves.

High information voters are tracking policy at a headline level on perhaps 3 or 4 major issues. Activists and political hobbiests (like thee and me) are ultra high information voters with a particular niche interest in 1 or 2 policy issues.

So voters are not leaving the SNP over a policy they disagree with not because they are prepared to put up with the SNP position on a policy they don't agree with but because they currently are not paying attention to the policy debate.

But if the BBC headlines are "Joanna Cherry expelled from SNP by Youth Wing Activists" then voters (not activits and not even high information voters, but ordinary punters) might start paying more attention to the issues involved. The James Kelly polling suggests that if they do start paying attention to this issue specifically that might be bad news for your team.

As for hoping that people don't go around acting disunified, I'm not sure a strategy that relies on your enemies continuing to do what you want them to do is a well founded strategy.

Re: Joanna Cherry

[andrewducker]

If the answer is that we shouldn't call attention to SNP policies, then possibly making public statements against them and running polls against them which you then attempt to garner as much publicity as possible for is not in the interests of Independence?

Re: Joanna Cherry

[danieldwilliam]

That is absolutely the correct take from this.