Tuesday, 28 July 2009

Hot, hot heat

More bad news for the environment…… We are facing record-breaking temperatures as the sun's activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted for the next five years, according to a new study about to be published in Geophysical Research Letters.

The paper written by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies has also concluded that the relative stability in global temperatures in the last seven years is primalrily down to the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. The study coincides with another piece of research from climatologists that the world is likely to be entering a new El Niño period. This potentially could mean that temperature rises in the next couple of years could be even higher than the new research has indicated.

Friday, 3 July 2009

The Norwich North by-election: a must win for the Tories


The description in today's Times of the parliamentary seat Norwich North (the site of the forthcoming by-election) and the Conservative candidate Chloe Smith as being a "Tory candidate in a long-shot Labour seat - 163 on the target list" is wide of the mark.


Leaving aside the fact that Rallings and Thrasher have calculated that it is the 162nd most vulnerable Labour seat, Norwich North is precisely the sort of seat that David Cameron's party will have to win to have even a small working majority, requiring a swing of 8.3%. It should be remembered that the Conservatives need a swing of 6.9% (or the top 140 target seats) to have any chance of having the smallest of overall majorities.


Norwich North is just the sort of seat that will determine whether the UK has its first Conservative Government of this century - but being a by-election a Conservative loss would be disastrous.

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Vlog: 'The Class of 2010'

A quick video previewing some of our findings from our definitive guide to the next generation of MPs: 'The Class of 2010'.

(RSS readers click through to see video content)



Read more about the Class of 2010 HERE.