Can boffins really work out your politics from your genes?

Can boffins really work out your politics from your genes?

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Cambridge University Press Could your politics be determined by your genetic make-up? Like most PB regulars, I guess, I’ve always assumed that a person’s political ideology is determined by family environment and friends. New research suggests something different. For liberals, at least, may owe their political outlook partly to their genetic make-up, according to researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene…

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What’ll slashing 500,000 public sector jobs do to the Tory vote?

What’ll slashing 500,000 public sector jobs do to the Tory vote?

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Populus poll All voters Public Sector Private Sector Retired voters CON 37 23 45 44 LAB 38 50 30 37 LD 15 17 15 10 Do people vote according to their current situation? The above table has been produced from data from this week’s Populus poll for the Times and shows the voting intention shares broken down in terms of respondents employment sector or whether or not they are retired. As can be seen there’s a massive gap between private…

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Betting countdown to the Mid-Terms

Betting countdown to the Mid-Terms

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Betfair Politics Betfair Politics We are less than a week away from next Tuesday’s elections in the US when two of the key issues will be whether the Democrats lose control of both the House and the Senate. So far, at least, the markets think that the Republicans will take control of the House but not the Senate. So far there’s not been a lot of betting in the UK though that could grow sharply in the final few days….

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Has John Rentoul got the PMQ HB row right?

Has John Rentoul got the PMQ HB row right?

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Should EdM be thinking of the wider audience? In his summary of today’s PMQ encounter between Cameron and Ed Miliband the Indy on Sunday’s John Rentoul concluded:- “..Good tactics on Miliband’s part; poor strategy. He succeeded in winding up Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary, standing at the end opposite the Speaker’s chair, shouting, “Absolute rubbish!” He succeeded in dividing the left-wing of the Liberal Democrats from their colleagues on the Government benches. (Miliband had a good line about…

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Is welfare the new political divide?

Is welfare the new political divide?

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What are the dangers in getting tough? Maybe I’m being unfair to suggest that there is perhaps nothing that pleases Daily Mail readers more than reading headlines like this morning’s about the efforts to tighten up on who should receive the £95-a-week Employment and Support Allowance – which is replacing incapacity benefit. Phrases like “weeding out the work-shy” are powerful and resonate, surely with the audience. The Mail highlights new statistics showing that 640,000 out of about 840,000 who applied…

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Are the new boundaries going to be announced all at once?

Are the new boundaries going to be announced all at once?

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Is the plan a big bang rather than a dribble? We all know that a key part of the coalition’s electoral reform package is to reduce the commons from the current 650 seats to 600 all apart from one or two of the same size. What I understand tonight is that next September there’s going to be a big announcement when the boundaries of all the new seats will be revealed all at once. Until now the process has been…

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How should oppositions respond to what seems like good news?

How should oppositions respond to what seems like good news?

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What should Labour say about the GDP figures? It’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves that for thirteen of the last thirteen and a half years Labour has been in government. Being in opposition requires a totally different skill-set and the party is only just learning how to make best use of the limited number of communications opportunities that are available to it. This morning was a particular challenge. The Q3 GDP increase at 0.8% was far higher than most had expected…

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Is Labour making the Mrs Thatcher “Oct 1990” mistake?

Is Labour making the Mrs Thatcher “Oct 1990” mistake?

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Remember when the “Dead Parrot” struck back Next month we’ll see the twentieth anniversary of what for me was the biggest earthquake in UK politics of my life-time – the ousting of the Conservative party’s three times election winner, Margaret Thatcher. A few weeks earlier, on Friday October 12th 1990, the leader had received her biggest applause from her party conference in Bournemouth in response to a joke based on the famous Monty Python sketch which she linked to the…

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