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How many people do we think have two mobile phones?

Rupert Lowe has a figure of 91m active phone subscriptions, against a population figure of 69m people.

He think that’s indicative of the population being higher than the official stats, but I’m not sure. I always had a company mobile in the uk.

https://x.com/rupertlowe10/status/2014083705493483760

It also depends on if they're counting tablets and dongles with 4/5G connections as a mobile phone sub or not.

The CIA world Factbook has us slightly higher per capita than France (1.22 to 1.17) and significantly lower than Japan (1.78!).

Alarm systems sometimes require phone connections via a dedicated SIM, too. Chip and pin machines, also.

There are lots of devices that have a SIM to send back data without a WiFi connection, but I'd have thought they wouldn't necessarily be counted as phone subscriptions.

Still, anyway, number of phone subscriptions is an exceptionally poor proxy for population numbers. If the water companies weren't discharging so much sewage into rivers and the sea, then you'd think they would be a good source of an independent estimate.

Both the sewage (water) companies and supermarkets seem to think the population estimates are a bit low.

Those would certainly seem better ways of estimating population than counting phone sims.

Kelly is worth a long shot bet. Newsom and Buttigieg lead polls now though for the Democratic nomination and Buttigieg is likely to do best in early states. Harris also polls well but losing nominees who have never been President are rarely nominated again

Newsom seems to be everywhere.

No doubt he is running.

Buttigieg has the repeated problem of the later states and their demographics.

Buttigieg isn't second favourite for the nomination. He's way out at 19.5 on Betfair.
Newsom is clear favourite on 2.65.
AOC is second on 8.6.

The dream ticket is Newsom with AOC as his VP. That covers all the bases.
AOC is very young and can wait eight years for the presidency, and use that time to prove herself.

Newsom-AOC risks scaring the horses with a population pissed off by Trump but still very wary of the Dems.

There is a real risk that ticket makes the same mistakes Harris made in 2024. The Dems have to earn a lot of respect again.

What mistakes did Harris make - other than being who she is? As far as I could tell it was entirely conventional campaign based on the bread and butter stuff like cost of living.

The "culture war" stuff is blatant projection from the US right which too many people fall for. Even if you run a sober, sensible campaign, whatever candidate they pick will get an avalanche of "woke" histrionics regardless. They've already accused Kelly of sedition FFS, taking his pension away.

Conversely, there is a risk that if you don't energetically condemn stuff like ICE you have a collapse in Democrat turnout. I'm really not convinced a softly softly approach will work in this political environment - they need really a distinctive and pro-active USP. Can't just sit there taking punches.

The mistake Harris arguably made was being too loyal to Biden, and not creating more distance from him sooner.
But she was, as very VP is, in an impossible bind on that score.

She wasn't an outstanding candidate, but she certainly wasn't a terrible one, either.

Among her problems was that she was status quo candidate when voters were hurting and wanted "change". Well, they surely got it.

She also didn’t even try and take credit for Biden’s positive achievements, such as the CHIPS investments which had widespread support and brought investment to Middle America.

Voters really don’t like being taken for mugs by the politicians.

Trying to engineer a by-election to get a mayor back into Parliament looks awfully like a stitchup, but will the Tories and Lib Dems want to stand aside or run paper candidates to let Reform challenge Burnham and keep their momentum running? Will Greens and WhateverTheyCallThemselvesThisWeek Party want to run hard and risk a Reform win?

I actually like Burnham, he has done well in Manchester, and deserves huge praise for the way he pushed forward the Hillsborough Inquiry after being booed at the Anfield memorial service while sports minister.

Still not sure that trying to fix a by-election works though.

The last MRP we had suggested that Gorton was currently 30%/28%/23% Ref/Lab/Green. Feels like a net seat loss for Labour one way or another.

@SamCoatesSky
EXC:
Could Andy Burnham be on the brink of becoming a member of the Parliament? Well he faces a BIG hurdle.
There is a new rule - introduced in the 2026 Labour rule book https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Rule-Book-2026.pdf
About Mayors wanting to become MP.
It says: “Directly Elected Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners must seek the express permission of the NEC/SEC/WEC (as applicable) before seeking nomination as Labour candidates for the Westminster Parliament. The NEC/SEC/WEC’s decision shall be final”
Andy Burnham would have to stand down as Metro Mayor of Manchester, triggering an election for that post which Labour is not guaranteed to win and will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.
So these are the grounds that could be used to block Burnham by the NEC.
I’m told Morgan McSweeny thinks he’s got the NEC sewn up to block Burnham. But you never quite know.
If Burnham is granted permission to apply for the seat, the NEC does a long and a shortlist.
The long list over email, then the shortlisting is done by a panel.
The panel has 3 members of the NEC, one member of the board and a local constituency rep. The panel is chosen by the office of the general secretary, Hollie Ridley, who is close to Morgan, decides the panel.
So it’s far from clear he wins this

These threads are coming thick and fast. Anyhow, FPT:

Hi pb brains trust - any views on the following:

We (me, wife, three kids 16-11) are hoping to go from Manchester to Austria for a summer holiday. Would you:
- overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam then drive with overnight stop in Germany (probably cheapest,can pack as much stuff as we want, but would take up two days travelling there and two days travelling back. If si, where would you stay?
- fly then hire a car (surprisingly expenaive even with Easyjet but only two and a half hours to our destination from Munich)
- train to Brussels then Brussels-Salzburg sleeper (I'd always wanted to travel that way but some reports are discouraging)
- something else?

The sleeper tickets are insanely popular, given such limited supply, and probably sold out as soon as they went on sale, assuming the ones for your travel date already are. So you can probably discount that option.

I’d take the ferry and car option, and you should get an early start off the ferry. If you want to break the back of the driving on the first day, go stay in Tubingen - the hotel schloss at the top of the hill is a great place to stay, and the whole old town is laid out beneath you. Or, to balance the driving between the two days, you could look at Heidelberg, or one of the characterful small towns along the Rhine around Mannheim. If you are driving to Germany, make sure you have your emissions sticker sorted for the vehicle well ahead.

For a party of five, the costs of individual plane or train tickets probably make the car an economic option; the downside is obviously the travel time there and back, which you may or may not see as part of your holiday.

Plus, the chance of all five in a party sleeping well on a train is close to nil. Going to be at least one grump the next day.

A consideration will be how many compartments you need - on the old sleeper trains, which I used every year back in the day, you'd commonly find two-person or four-person cabins, so with five you'd be after at least two compartments. I always slept reasonably on a train - yes, you'd get woken up in the night by random noises or when the train stopped suddenly, but the movement of the train always sent me back to sleep quite quickly. The biggest hassle travelling in a small compartment with others is the lack of floor space, especially when the beds are all down, such that getting dressed or washed normally involved a complicated rotation-dance between beds and floor so that everyone got their turn.

Much simpler and relaxing doing it by car , no humping luggage for five, you can set your own schedule and the drive is a great part of the holiday, you do need the extra couple of days either side though.

Before the pandemic, I did a few European trips by train with the dog, and it was a good way to go, convenient if you want to visit cities. The problem was the dog crap that filled up much of the suitcase leaving very little space for my stuff and leading to a fortnight spent frequently washing clothes. The car is, as you say, much easier, but you do need the time, and need to adjust the itinerary to reflect the increasingly restrictive rules on driving and parking in urban areas in much of Europe.

I'm still wondering how literally I should read "dog crap" here.

a

How many people do we think have two mobile phones?

Rupert Lowe has a figure of 91m active phone subscriptions, against a population figure of 69m people.

He think that’s indicative of the population being higher than the official stats, but I’m not sure. I always had a company mobile in the uk.

https://x.com/rupertlowe10/status/2014083705493483760

It also depends on if they're counting tablets and dongles with 4/5G connections as a mobile phone sub or not.

The CIA world Factbook has us slightly higher per capita than France (1.22 to 1.17) and significantly lower than Japan (1.78!).

Alarm systems sometimes require phone connections via a dedicated SIM, too. Chip and pin machines, also.

There are lots of devices that have a SIM to send back data without a WiFi connection, but I'd have thought they wouldn't necessarily be counted as phone subscriptions.

Still, anyway, number of phone subscriptions is an exceptionally poor proxy for population numbers. If the water companies weren't discharging so much sewage into rivers and the sea, then you'd think they would be a good source of an independent estimate.

Both the sewage (water) companies and supermarkets seem to think the population estimates are a bit low.

There’s likely to be less variation in using those data sources for population estimates.

SIM cards is a bad way of doing it. How many million cars are now ‘connected’, as well as alarms, card machines etc, plus all those with two or three phones anyway?