LongTimeLurker

There appear to be two sets of Comres numbers out this weekend. Those are for a poll commissioned by a group called Remain United, while another for the Torygraph with more recent sampling on 4-5 Dec has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#2019 Con 41 Lab 33 LibDem 12 SNP 4 Green 3 Brexit 2 Plaid 1

A simple skills testing question like "What is the square root of 9?" with a box provided for the answer should be added to the ballot paper and only votes with the correct answer should count.

Latest Scotland only poll numbers from Panelbase. SNP 39 Tories 29 Lab 21 LDem 10.

...or maybe it's just a few borderline cranks on the internet on a fitba board that shouldn't be taken too seriously rather than Scotland's answer to Kristallnacht.

Agree there were too many lines closed but if you check out what happened with this particular line you'll find a lot of it including the branch that went past Meadow Park in Irvine had closed for passenger use by the 1930s.

Was staying in a hotel close by through work a few years back. Was hoping to see a game at the stadium but it turned out Rapid had folded to be replaced by various tribute acts at Liga IV level none of whom had a home game on there and Sportul Studentesc whose old ground was even closer to where I was staying appear to have done a Third Lanark and sunk without trace. Went to check out Ceacescu's old home instead.

Not quite so good for the SNP:

At the other end of the scale from Comres:

Shire somehow managed to lose 3-2 to nine men having been up 2-0 after 10 minutes judging by what's on twitter.

Think clubs would need to already have their application in by now to have a shot at the 2020/21 Scottish Cup.

Next door to the station is pushing it a bit having walked between the two, but it is fairly close by and right next to the main railway line. CFR Cluj who Celtic have been playing against this season are also a railway team.

Think Ian Blackford's seat is the one to watch for a potential shock and NE Fife will definitely change hands, because the LibDems are good at targeting seats and encouraging tactical voting. Think Boris will get a majority of around 30 and the SNP will win most seats lost last time back from Labour and several of the more marginal ones from the Tories to be around 45. Hope Jo Swinson gets the full Sheena Easton treatment from the voters of East Dunbartonshire for her accent change.

Have seen it claimed that Unionists outpolled SF and the SDLP in F&ST at the latest council elections. It's weird how the slow demographic shift over the decades never seems to stop this one constituency from being a cliffhanger in the same way it was in the Hunger Strike era, because there are other rural NI constituencies where Unionism used to be competitive electorally but has now fallen away to around a third of the vote at best. When people suggest that the SF machine will get the job done it's probably referring to which party does the best job at using proxy and postal votes to maximise their turnout now that voter impersonation isn't as easy as it used to be in that part of the world.

Having Corbyn as leader was mainly in response to what was happening in England and definitely wasn't the way to attract voters who are Unionist in a Scottish context. That isn't helping Labour in this election campaign. Being close to wiped out FPTP firstly at Holyrood and then at Westminster means that they have lost most of their best career politicians and are now fielding candidates who never should have made it beyond local council level, because the next generation of careerists are increasingly attracted to the SNP. Hence how Labour wound up with somebody as inept as Kezia Dugdale as leader at Holyrood, who some paranoid Labour activists genuinely started to speculate was an SNP plant sent to destroy them.

Looks like this was closed even before Dr Beeching and it's difficult to argue with given there was no obvious need to have two different ways to reach Ardrossan from Glasgow Central.