Slightly long post, but I’ve been getting a lot of responses to my Iran piece quoting recent statements by the IAEA. Now, the IAEA obviously oppose the Israeli action, and don’t want to be seen to be legitimising the strikes.
But all you have to do is actually read their recent report “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)”.
It unambiguously states: 1) “As previously reported, on 5 December 2024, Iran started feeding the two IR-6 cascades producing UF6 enriched up to 60% U-235 at FFEP with UF6 enriched up to 20% U-235, rather than UF6 enriched up to 5% U-235, without altering the enrichment level of the product.17 The effect of this change has been to significantly increase the rate of production of UF6 enriched up to 60% at FFEP to over 34 kg of uranium in the form of UF6 per month”

So a final, incredibly long, post on how I think the election will go. And why I think, despite the narrative shift of the past 24 hours, Trump will win. And I write this as someone who would vote for Harris, thinks Trump will be a disaster, and is praying I’m wrong.

I understand the excitement over gender, Selzer, the late poll shift in the swing states towards Harris, etc. And if she wins, there will have been enough indicators for people to correctly latch onto.

But I can’t get beyond five key fundamentals. And the way the analysis is currently being framed by one fundamental error, which is a failure to compare what we’re seeing today with what we saw in 2020... 1) The Harris demographic, especially amongst women. This is driving the current narrative, the idea women are “surging” for her in both the polls, and Early Voting. Possibly. But the polling this cycle has been broadly consistent. And it shows that Harris is actually doing worse amongst women than Biden did 4 years ago. In 2020, Pew’s exit poll analysis had women favouring Biden by 11 points. Last week Pew had Harris +8. And over the past week her average lead with women across all polls has been the same, +8. We see similar numbers in men, Black and Hispanic voters, and Independents. Her numbers have consistently trailed Biden 2020 in almost all key demographics. Disproportionate turn out amongst women would obviously help overturn that. But the fact is Trump retains a significant advantage...

OK, quite a long post, but I was asked by several people yesterday to respond specifically to the points @JuliaHB1 made in her own thread. So I’m going to try one final time to explain.

It is perfectly legitimate to interrogate individual pieces of Covid data... ...but what you also have to do – if you are genuinely trying to deal in truth and fact – is align those pieces of data.

So, it is conceivable there are flaws in testing. And Covid admissions data. And mortality data...

One serious thing to watch for. 1976, in the US, there was a Swine Flu outbreak at Fort Dix in New Jersey. It was feared it could replicate the Spanish Flu epidemic, and Ford decided to introduce a national vaccination program. 45 million people were vaccinated... ...But as the program was rolled out rumours began to circulate the vaccine posed a health risk. They were false. But given the vast number of people being vaccinated, several incidents were quickly seized upon. One patient was given the jab and dropped dead in the surgery...

1) I understand a number of Ministers are becoming concerned that a single “senior government source” is undermining the Government’s Coronavirus communications strategy… 2) It’s important to stress “the source” has no significant influence over the actual coronavirus action plan, which is still being driven by the scientific advisors…