Brett-Butler

Another solid episode, a some creepy motifs (like the bone-spider), and a really unsettling villain - the only thing in Doctor Who scarier than a Cyberman is a more humanoid Cyberman. A good mix of humour and drama, and interesting concepts. That makes two good episodes and three passable episodes this season, which is much better than the one before.

If that actually ends up the case, then one of my predictions from the 2020 predictions thread will come true, which will be a first for me.

Last week I was going to joke that if the Democrats want to win the next election, they should make Mitt Romney their nominee. The more I hear of Mike Bloomberg, I wish it were him. He’s been accused of many of the same things as Trump in terms of sexual harassment (and worse). The only difference is that Bloomberg literally has a media empire behind him, and enough clout that he could pull down several other media channels that don’t toe his party line by pulling his funding. He’s got the money to clinch the nomination , it’s then a matter of what the Democrats do next - I imagine that a majority would fall behind him, with a sizeable minority opting for A 3rd party candidate. The worst thing about this though? It makes that gosh-awful spider episode of Doctor Who, where a Trump-hating billionaire tries to become US president, prophetic.

It's from The Onion.

Julian Smith has been the most effective NI Secretary we’ve had in the last 10 years, so of course he’s the first out.

Absolutely shocked that Dolittle so convincingly got the #1 slot this week; it's heavily underperformed in the US (will probably lose over $100 million), it's reviews have been universally terrible, and its a franchise that doesn't seem to have much of a following (even the Eddie Murphy remake is largely forgotten). It has been advertised on all the buses here, which might have helped.

Marty Mone, now there's an artist I never imagined seeing in the iTunes UK chart. Is there a campaign behind it, or does are there genuinely enough Irish country & western fans willing to purchase it?

Rupert Murdoch doesn't own the Daily Mail.

HS2 is due to go ahead.

Unless there’s some major changes from it, then yes. Great Realignment and all that. I should note that I am as critical of the policy then as I am now, albeit not for the same reasons as others were critical of it.

I don't think this will happen, largely because by the time it is finished, neither side of the bridge will be in the United Kingdom.

Fun fact - the Irish democratic system of PR was forced upon it by the UK, solely to stop a government that is run solely by one party - namely Sinn Fein.

Only one result is confirmed, and that's the speaker, who is from Fianna Fail (the speaker is automatically re-elected, unlike in the UK, where he has has to run for election again). Early indications are that Sinn Fein are going to top the 1st preference poll, although are unlikely to win the most seats, due to them standing only half the candidates that FF/FG did. Unless some interesting backroom deals happen, there's probably going to be another election by the summer time.

In hell freezing over news, the Sunday Telegraph are alleging that Boris Johnson is considering introducing a "mansion tax" on owners of expensive homes. In most other circumstances, I would laugh this off as ridiculous, but given that it's coming from a paper that Boris writes for, there could be some truth in it. I've said before that it's easier for the Tories to move left on economics than it is for Labour to move right on social issues, and if this happens, then it's the first evidence that it wasn't just manifesto puffery. Interestingly, such a tax would disproportionally affect home-owners in London, an area that famously did not return many Tory MPs in the last election, which I imagine is just coincidence.

@1226265002782478337 Also: Independents: 11.2% Aontu 1.8%, other parties: 1.5%.

Exit poll has: Fine Gael - 22.4% Sinn Fein - 22.3% Fianna Fail - 22.2%. Ruddy heck.

Tomorrow I believe, although an exit poll comes out at 10pm.

I only wish that the Labour Party leadership contest released attack videos are brutal as Biden's on Mayor Pete: @1226200604218994689 Interesting that he thinks that he's the biggest threat to the race rather than Bernie Sanders - presumably he thinks that Sanders' supporters are unlikely to be swayed over to him.

Wouldn't surprise me if he did. I suspect Yang didn't think he'd win the candidacy anyway; likely saw it as helping to leverage name recognition for a future run for Congress or to the Senate.

They've released the preliminary results, based on 62% of the votes counted, which give: 26.9% – Buttigieg 25.1% – Sanders 18.3% – Warren 15.6% – Biden 12.6% – Klobuchar 1.1% – Yang It seems odd (and some would say...suspicious) that they've released partial results; as we don't know if this 62% is a representative sample, a different set of winners could have emerged if the remaining 38% were counted. Buttigieg will be happy that he appears to be the fake frontrunner at the moment; his name will dominate all the headlines and allow him to shape the media narrative over the next few days.

Statistically, he's actually achieved more of his promises that you'd think. According to Politifact, as of the start of the year he's kept 17% of his promises, and compromised on a further 10% of them. Of course, some of those promises he's kept might not be things you wished he'd kept to, but he did them nonetheless.

One of the most interesting statistics I read in the last few days is that out of Andrew Yang's followers, 42% of them would not support another Democratic candidate if he wasn't nominated as their candidate (for context, it's 16% for Sanders and 0% for Warren). It seems that Yang is really popular with the sorts of people who wouldn't normally lean Democratic, which means that in the very low circumstances that he becomes the candidate, then there's a lot less of his supporters that could end up pivoting to Trump.

Whilst I've grown somewhat numb to the whole Brexit thing by now, my inner Fenian just can't ignore the fact that one of its leading proponents today referred to it as a "Glorious Revolution". Those Protestants, up to no good as usual.

Sceptical Brett is sceptical in the truth in this. After the Jade Goody documentary (especially the comments Davina McCall made in it), I don't think that Channel 4 would risk its reputation by bringing it back to the channel. I feel its moved away from what Big Brother was by the end and moving into more "respectable" reality shows like The Circle. Now if they were to try to revive Big Brother as it was supposed to be in the beginning ie a social experiment, rather than the loud attention seeking behemoth it turned into, then maybe I can see them going for it.

I haven't followed the Irish General Election campaign as closely as the UK one, but here's some assorted thoughts/predictions of what I think will happen. One of the interesting thing about the Irish GE is that like the NI Assembly, its members are elected based upon the STV form of PR within constituencies, meaning that a wider range of parties have a chance of getting a seat in the Dáil. Indeed, when it was dissolved just before the election, there were 9 different parties represented across the political spectrum, as well as nearly 10% of its members being independent of any political party. It also means that whatever happens in this election, we're likely to see a coalition government running the Republic come 9th February. Fine Gael are almost definitely going to fall behind Fianna Fáil as the largest party, which means that FF will likely be the leading party of the next government, although who they will align with is anybody's guess. I do feel that Sinn Fein's support in the run-up to the election has been somewhat overstated - in every election in both sides of the border since 2017, their support has reduced somewhat, so I would not be surprised if they only improved slightly, or didn't improve at all, compared to the 2016 election. From a European perspective, ROI is almost unique amongst its European brethren in that it is one of the only countries on the continent that has not had a major populist and/or far-right party enter their parliament within the last half a decade (even Spain, who had a fascist dictator within living memory, has gone that way in the last few years). In 2020, despite a few parties that could be described that way fighting the election, I cannot see that changing this year.