The Third Ashes Test at Adelaide is reportedly a ‘crunch’ Test for England, as many have been down the years.
Interestingly statistics show that there is quite a good chance historically of the Third Test being a draw.
One can find a comparison with Psephology, political polling, which makes predictions on the outcomes of elections. The aim often is to influence voting behaviour but it doesnt always work.
When it comes to cricket stats as with other sports they are increasingly discussed, but again the problem lies in practice. Bazball doesnt do draws and it would require a five day Test to achieve it….
A YouGov poll of 2000 voters has found that of those responding a majority around 30% thought that if there was an Election before Christmas Santa would vote Green. Even 20% of Labour voters and 4% of Reform voters thought that this would be the case.
Needless to say this occasioned a Times Editorial (15th December) that was not in a cheerful and seasonal frame of mind about this.
It may be that the beard of new Green Party leader Zack Polanski leads some to think that the Greens are particularly Santa friendly.
Campaign for Real Santas organiser Keith Flett said, at least Santa as a Green voter is a positive image. A traditional one might be Nigel Farage, fag in mouth and glass in hand snarling at children who he thought were not as it were ‘appropriate’
I’m clearly not in the game of promoting Farage’s grifts, so you can Google the details for the special Reform T-shirt the Reform UK boss is currently promoting as a Christmas gift.
The T-Shirt is in a limited edition of 1,000 and is signed by Farage (A Farage signature is reportedly valued at £80). Each T-Shirt box also contains a ‘golden ticket’ which gives the buyer a chance to win a PFL with Farage.
PFL stands for Proper Fucking Lunch. This, for Farage, involves multiple cigarettes, a possible starter of a beer or two and a minimum of two bottles of red wine. Food will be meat focused. For those interested a PFL Farage had with the Financial Times 10 years ago is still free to read on-line and again Google is your friend.
Are the Farage’s Christmas T-Shirts made in the UK? I have no detail on that…
With Trump reasserting Latin America as the US’s backyard and threatening war with Venezuela there was an important solidarity rally on Monday evening with an array of speakers including Parliamentary Beard of the Year Jeremy Corbyn.
ENGELS TO JENNY MARX IN LONDON Manchester, 3 January 1868 Dear Mrs Marx, I must apologise for leaving your letter unanswered for so long. But the Christmas period is the only time in the whole year when, apart from business, I am made to feel that I stand with one foot in the bourgeoisie, and here in Manchester this entails a lot of eating and drinking and upset stomach, and the obligatory ill humour and waste of time. This is now fairly well over, and I am beginning to breathe freely again.
Lest We Forget. 5 years on. 15th December 2020. The start of Boris Johnson’s Downing St Christmas Party week
Boris Johnson was until July 2022 the elected leader of a political party a job he didn’t really seem that interested in doing. By contrast he was and no doubt still is a great enthusiast for another kind of party-the one involving champagne and nibbles (tbh sausage rolls and crisps don’t cut it). Sonia Purnell’s biography of Johnson, Just Boris, has numerous accounts of parties he attended. A lot were thrown by his erstwhile employers the Spectator and the Telegraph. When he was married to Marina Wheeler and lived in Islington he was also, according to Purnell, a frequent attender at dinner parties.
When he was elected London Mayor in 2008 he threw his own parties(paid for by the taxpayer obviously) and in that year The Tatler described him as ‘party viagra’.
He did not deny that a Christmas party was held at Downing St in December 2020, the one that started off the whole parties investigation. The Daily Mirror published a picture of the Christmas Quiz which took place via Zoom on 15th December 2020 which clearly shows an open bottle of champagne. No problem with that except in the context of the times when COVID laws banned social mixing in London. It clearly was not really a work event either but a social quiz.
There were three parties on 17th December, two at the Cabinet Office & one at Downing St.
However the one that really brought the whole thing into public focus took place on 18th December 2020.
The BBC report:
Downing Street originally denied a report by the Daily Mirror that a party took place in Downing Street on this date.
However, a video obtained by ITV News showed the prime minister’s then press secretary Allegra Stratton joking about reports of the event, saying: “This fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced.”
Ms Stratton resigned following an angry backlash, saying she would “regret the remarks for the rest of my days”.
The police investigation determined that the event on this date did breach the rules in place at the time.
What though of pre-restrictions 2019. Johnson had just won an Election and was celebrating.
According to the perhaps not totally reliable source of Tom Bower (Boris Johnson, the Gambler) on Friday December 13th after returning to Downing St from Buckingham Palace where he had seen the Queen, Johnson headed to Brown’s hotel off Piccadilly. The hotel is owned by Brexiteer Rocco Forte and a celebration party was being held.
One party however was not enough for Johnson. He then went to Evgeny Lebedev’s ‘traditional’ Xmas party which was in his house overlooking Regents Park. Unlimited caviar and champagne were available. In 2020 Johnson made Lebedev a Peer..
A YouGov poll commissioned by political scientist Philip Cowley for the House Magazine has found that a clear majority of those expressing a view think Ebeneezer Scrooge, resident of the Counting House in Newman’s Court, off Cornhill in the City of London, would vote Reform.
YouGov asked 2000 voters for their view and 30% said Scrooge would vote Reform, with 20% saying he would back the Tories. 25% of those who identified as Reform supporters also backed Scrooge.
The Times (Editorial 15th December) comes out in support of Scrooge claiming that his parsimonious use of coal for Bob Cratchit’s office fire (one lump of coal at a time) showed that he was an early adherent of measures to address climate change
The Financial Times (13th December) Editorial mused on the demise of the physical letter. In Denmark the national postal service will end for letters on 31st December. Parcels will still be carried (more profitable) and courier services will deliver some mail. There will however be no post boxes.
The writing and posting of physical letters, and the frequency of their delivery, is an issue across Europe and perhaps beyond. In the UK the Communication Workers Union continues to do what it can to defend and protect the mail service against the designs of its privateering owner.
There are two issues here, one of which the FT understands and the other it does not. Firstly the strictly practical. Some public and large private organisations will e-mail you correspondence. Some will if asked text you information. A good number will do neither relying on sending out written communications. Related to that of course not everyone has access to e-mail or is able to use it, often the most vulnerable and least well off members of society.
The second which the FT does get is a concern about what happens if the letter format withers away and is replaced by social media, WhatsApp etc. The chances of messages in these formats being available to later generations is minimal at the moment.
I often delve into the many volumes of correspondence between Marx and Engels (not complete but still a significant archive) which are available to read and search free on-line. If they had been conversing in the modern day I doubt there would be much to look at. Alternatively its just possible that on those occasions when Marx and Engels were physically in the same location (for example in the pub) where we currently have no detail that some messages might survive.
Either way what is happening to our mediums of written communication needs to be kept under careful review.
There is of course still the telephone, usually mobile now. I will and do ring people rather than sending them any form of electronic message, where appropriate. The art of conversation is also important and also I understand not what it was..
The Top 10 Christmas cracker jokes have been revealed. Two relate to Andrew-Mountbatten Windsor but in at No.10 is a Nigel Farage joke about Santa. The Reform UK boss is notoriously thin skinned so his lawyers are probably already on the case
Where has Santa been more than Nigel Farage? His house in Clacton.
Engels was an enthusiastic celebrator of Christmas in his later years when he lived in Regents Park Rd, North London. However when he was still a Manchester businessman he found the official celebrating rather too much
ENGELS TO JENNY MARX IN LONDON Manchester, 3 January 1868 Dear Mrs Marx, I must apologise for leaving your letter unanswered for so long. But the Christmas period is the only time in the whole year when, apart from business, I am made to feel that I stand with one foot in the bourgeoisie, and here in Manchester this entails a lot of eating and drinking and upset stomach, and the obligatory ill humour and waste of time. This is now fairly well over, and I am beginning to breathe freely again.
