A welcome return to what was a PB Christmas Day tradition There was a time when Christmas Day on PB wasn’t Christmas Day without the annual crossword by St John. We’ll this year he’s back and here it is. Enjoy and have a great day. Thanks to everybody who had made the site what it is. To my son Robert whose hobby since for nearly 12 years had been keeping the technical infrastructure working a big thanks. Also to TSE…
Merry Christmas to him/her and to all PBers Amidst all the online deliveries to my home this week there was one package for which I have been unable to trace the source. It contained a bottle of vintage champagne- a Dom Perigon 2004 which, as a quick Google search discovered, costs quite a lot of money. Unfortunately there was no card or other means to identify the sender so I am unable to say thank you directly. It was addressed…
Appearing to put the interests of big business first might not be smart One of the things which the REMAIN campaign finds hard is giving specific examples of what the EU does for individual voters. One such area now is the decision taken at the end of October, to end all mobile phone roaming charges for use in the EU in 18 months time. This means that the millions of UK smartphone users who travel to Europe each year won’t…
Grendon, Underwood and Brill (Con defence) on Aylesbury Vale Result of council at last election (2015): Conservatives 43, Liberal Democrats 9, United Kingdom Independence Party 4, Labour 2, Independent 1 (Conservative majority of 27) Result of ward at last election (2015): Conservative 1,068 (55%), United Kingdom Independence Party 427 (22%), Green Party 246 (13%), Liberal Democrats 213 (11%) Candidates duly nominated: Cameron Branston (Con), Gary Good (UKIP), Julian Newman (Lib Dem) Aylesbury Vale is perhaps a fitting way to end…
Alistair Meeks on the “Secret Federation” On Wednesday, John Swinney stood up to deliver his draft budget for Scotland. The consensus was that the event was a damp squib. With no changes to income tax and only copycat changes to stamp duty on second homes, it was less of a fiscal fiesta and more of a monetary mundanity.  The SNP showed themselves to be a party more intent on not risking re-election than in demonstrating a different Scottish way of…
What’s the post EURef blue team going to be like? The Tories have a long history of tearing themselves apart over Europe. Who can forget how in the weeks after John Major’s sensational election victory in 1992 huge fault lines started to develop in the party. It wasn’t helped by “black Wednesday” – that extraordinary day when Britain could not sustain the value of sterling on the foreign exchanges markets and the country had to leave the ERM. How lucky…
LAB’s performance in local by-elections since the new man came in The following, produced by Luke Akehurst for Labour List, shows “the change in Labour vote share in all the council by-elections where there has been a Labour candidate (and there was a Labour candidate in the previous contest so a comparison can be made) since the leadership election in September)” Mike Smithson Follow @MSmithsonPB Tweet
In what’s likely to be the last EURef poll of 2015 ICM online reports an increase in the REMAIN lead from 1% a week ago to 7% now. This is the same direction that we’ve seen in all EURef polls over past week. One of the great rules of polling analysis is that whenever possible you shouldn’t treat one poll on its own. How does the trend compare with others with fieldwork at about the same time? What’s the general…