SF have won a 7th seat. So, 322 seats is enough. If the Cons refuse to put up a deputy speaker, 321 would be enough.

How come?  Can nobody there count?

Historical practice in the UK has always been to count in one central location to help keep the ballot secret.

On the other hand, NE was predicted in the regular polls to be better for Tories then rest of the country, so maybe exit poll isn't far out. Not many marginals in NE, so exit poll wouldn't have polled much there.

326 needed, but without SF, that would probably go down to 323...

Joe, the poll isn't including NI seats. Remember you have PC and the greens. That's probably the 4 others.

With NI unionists and SF not taking their seats they could - just - be there. Maybe they'll refuse to take a deputy speaker spot!

Thank you, Mark.

I was getting "Dear Yamor/Guest, you are banned from using this forum. Reason: general disruption".
Or something along those lines. And it had a heading "An error has occured".

Done.

Mark, I've been getting an error message fairly regularly over the last 3-4 days or so saying I've been banned from the forum for 'general disruption'. When I clear cookies and log back in, it's usually fine though.
A couple of times it persisted after clearing cookies, and I hadn't even logged back in - the error message just started with something like "Dear Guest, you are banned from using this forum...". I then had to wait a bit and clear cookies again, then it was fine.

What would you be referring to there about Bush and 9/11?
Also, she IS still PM (only parliament has been dissolved), and what extra can she do now that parliament has been dissolved? How would parliament 'stop' her doing something?

I don't think universal credit helps as a means test. Universal credit is a working-age benefit.

They could use pension credit as the means test, which would be extremely easy to administer, but they've announced that that is not their intention (because they want to limit it further then that would).

The truth is, with any means test, the more you limit it the more affordable it becomes, and if only very few people are excluded it definitely would be more expensive then leaving it universal.

However, I believe it wouldn't have been "too expensive to administer" on any sensible sort of means-test that could be suggested.

There is no downside to offering a CHOICE to take leave. The most you can say is it may not help as many people as it could or should.

Anyway, you're not entirely correct. The right to take 52 weeks maternity leave is in itself unpaid. Separately, there are benefits you can get which can be claimed for 39 weeks within maternity leave. Maternity Allowance is a regular benefit, and even SMP is a type of benefit (almost entirely) funded by the government, just paid through the employer.
Here too, there will be benefits you can claim during your time off - Carer's Allowance, Income Support, ESA or Universal Credit.
For someone with no income from other sources, there will be basically no difference. The advantage of MA/SMP is for more well-to-do people who have other sources of income, that they can still get payments during their maternity leave.

 Being able to do without an employee on your own terms, i.e. you can refuse the request ( and how many can afford to take a years unpaid leave?)  still sounds like pish to me.  Don't see the common herd storming the barricades of capitalism to exercise this right. If Labour had it in their manifesto the Tory Press would be going ape, as well.  

But they can't refuse. That's what it means for an employee to have the right to take off.
This is similar to maternity leave, where there is also currently a right to take off 52 weeks - if the employee wants.
I'm not saying this is an amazing policy which will solve all workers' ills. It's just that I can't see any downside for workers.
There are plenty of things to criticise the Tories about. This isn't one of them.

  It's complete pish. Basically it's giving firms leeway to lay staff off without penalty.

I really don't get this. To me it looks like it's the complete opposite. People will be able to take time off and their employer CANNOT sack them!