Daily catch-up: the SNP’s ‘fundamental problem’, says Corbyn, is that too many people support it
A non-random selection of things upon which our cyber-beachcomber stumbled recently
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Your support makes all the difference.I didn’t watch the Guardian Labour leadership debate last night. There is only so much even the most mono-minded political obsessive can take. But others watched it for me, and I most enjoyed Jeremy Corbyn’s analysis of the deep flaws in the Scottish National Party’s position.
Andrew Sparrow paraphrased it thus:
“Corbyn said the SNP had a ‘fundamental problem’ because its support was spread too widely. It was trying to span a spectrum from the pro-market right to the socialist left, he said. At some point this would become unsustainable, he argued.”
I expect Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond will be horrified to discover that their mistake has been to allow too many people to support the SNP.
Still, Labour Party members and supporters – many of whom have not yet voted, according to George Eaton, reporting what hopeful leadership campaign teams have told him – can rest easy knowing that Corbyn would never make such a fundamental mistake as leader of their party.
• Temperament is important in politics, and David Cameron’s evenness is one of his great strengths. Fraser Nelson writes that the Prime Minister does not share the rage of some of his colleagues against the BBC:
“In fact the Prime Minister admits, in private, that he’s quite happy with the BBC and is baffled by colleagues who loathe it. He grumbles about Nick Robinson having kept him awake by filming reports outside his bedroom in No 10, but his animus doesn’t run much deeper. His wife, Samantha, has been his personal BBC monitor. She is an avid fan of 6 Music, its digital-only radio station, and alerts the Prime Minister if she hears a story going badly for his government in its morning news bulletin. He then scrambles his spin team and if the story is fixed in time for 6 Music’s lunchtime bulletin, he’s happy.”
(Thanks to Ian Leslie.)
• I have filed for future use this handy post-apocalypse survival tip from Tom Chivers’s round-up of scientists:
“Diarrhoeal disease kills millions of people every year – all preventable by simple means. One method recommended by the World Health Organisation in developing nations for low-tech treatment of drinking water is called SODIS, or solar disinfection. All you need to do is pour your suspect water into a plastic bottle and leave it in the sun. Ultraviolet rays in sunlight pass straight through and kill any germs. So you can come back to your bottle a day or two later and know that the water you put to your lips isn’t going to kill you.”
• And finally, thanks to Brian Bilston for his pome:
Get up.
Get on up. Beep.
Get up.
Get on up. Beep. Threep.
Get up.
Get on up. Beeeep. Threeeep ...
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