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Whenever the LDs have issued data like this they’ve won – politicalbetting.com
Whenever the LDs have issued data like this they’ve won – politicalbetting.com
Lib Dem internal polling in North Shropshire (Postal Voters Only):CON: 47.7%LDM: 37.8%LAB: 10.5%GRN: 1.9%OTH: 2.1%This is a CON lead of 9.9% in postal votes only.Context: A like for like poll was done for the Chesham & Amersham by-election and showed a CON lead of 23.8%.
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Or third!
Remember that for the LDs there is no downside. If they run the Tories close they come from a distant 3rd, show people that the true challenger to the Tories are the LibDems in significant parts of the couuntry and get motivated by the swing. Remember the LDs are in challenging range 2nd in about 100 seats, and even a loss in NS would show that many of those Tory seats are winnable.
And then, if they win....
If so, what?
Callers flat out refusing to cancel any Christmas plans, asking how many more variants there will be and whether this will the case every Christmas for evermore.
Virologist comes on and responds with zero-covid strategy: "we must stop this variant in its tracks".
"We should not learn to live with it. We must eradicate it now"
And yet we've been hearing about the Centre Party winning 100+ seats ever since the heyday of the SDP.
If they win it will be a by election shock which will put the wind up this band of bluffers.
No more.
"Avoid 'making merry', don't hug your relatives"
Holy shit these people have gone completely power mad.
This is Sarah Pitt btw.
Boris will shrug it off, like he did Chesham & Amersham and, before that, Brecon & Radnor which the Tories easily regained in the subsequent General Election.
Xmas will likely kill off any political momentum from the result.
(although that would be good for Labour, I guess)
The Lib Dems should be favourites to win a by-election in midterms. Governments don't win by-elections in general.
If the Lib Dems do win, it doesn't mean anything other than they campaign hard in a by-election and voters would rather kick the government in midterm than reward them. In the words of Angela Lansbury its a tale as old as time.
Sadly, I was right on both counts.
My GP is an excellent chap and expressed frustration at how many times he is now recommending private health care. He said he is a strong believer in the NHS but the long term underfunding (in his view) has simply meant it cannot cope with something like Covid and the reductions in capacity that the safeguards bring about.
Pretty sobering way to start the day.
I feel really bad for those with anxiety etc who, having heard that, must be near going into full isolation.
https://tinyurl.com/2p8c64c2
Week ending, 5-year average, COVID deaths, non-COVID deaths, excess non-COVID deaths
24-Sep-21: 9,264 | 888 | 9,796 | 532
01-Oct-21: 9,377 | 783 | 9,727 | 350
08-Oct-21: 9,555 | 666 | 10,141 | 586
15-Oct-21: 9,811 | 713 | 10,464 | 653
22-Oct-21: 9,865 | 792 | 10,516 | 651
29-Oct-21: 9,759 | 859 | 10,128 | 369
05-Nov-21: 9,891 | 995 | 10,555 | 664
12-Nov-21: 10,331 | 1,020 | 11,030 | 699
19-Nov-21: 10,350 | 952 | 11,151 | 801
What happened to them buying in the private sector stuff to try and reduce waiting lists?
To even suggest that death is a part of the circle of life and not to be prevented at all costs is now viewed as a monstrous suggestion by some people.
I doubt it would bring about a lasting change in national politics - although every so often a dramatic by-election has done so, leading to the downfall of leaders (we can only hope) and suchlike - but it would come at a bad time for the PM whose capability and judgement is being questioned by many in his own party, with consideration of his suitability normally leading to a "but" followed by "he's a winner". A series of bad by-elections followed by bad local elections in 2022 would all undermine the persisting belief that he is still capable of electoral magic.
If they do, I'll be very proud of the public.
Two front wars tend to be problematic for the very best generals. And unless it changes the Tories are led by Peppa Pig.
Even under Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dems almost won Bromley and Chislehurst in 2006.
The point your GP is making is one made fairly broadly by people inside the NHS and is - frankly - largely pooh poohed by supporters of the government. Thanks to front line underfunding and Covid the NHS is on its knees.
People are kept alive against their will when they are suffering and ill. Way beyond the point where the quality of life compensates for the illness.
Yes, life is precious, but preserving to the point of refusal to allow death with dignity is absolutely perverse.
NS is far from the rural South.
Which is a little more than me being pedantic. It is not LD heartlands.
*beyond the extra LD MP
By-elections are different. The Lib Dems are extraordinarily good at concentrating resources to contest by-elections. They cannot do the same across dozens of seats in a general election.
However, a defeat for the Tories in North Shropshire would still be huge. It would indicate that Brexit was losing its dominance of British politics, and that the Tories position is more vulnerable than previously thought.
In electoral terms the rural south is everything that isn't in the north or urban!
I pay to go to the vet for my animals. Its expensive, but thats the cost. Visiting the GP is 'free', except its not really free, we just don't see the price. I have come to believe that we need private GP's that can prescribe NHS medication (pay your 40 quid, or whatever the GP visit is, pick up a prescription, take it Boots/Lloyds/Well etc). Plus I also think patients need to be made more aware of what medical care costs - GP visits should still be free, but you get a note saying how much it has 'cost'. That and prescription medicine - the true cost should be shown somewhere.
We need a politically neutral debate on the NHS, but sadly its been a political football for too long.
1 - Are the Tories freewheeling on this one?
2 - There have been LD wins up that way before in byelections in unexpected places.
3 - But 3 - I would treat all LD publications, especially polls, as propaganda.
But, as we know, Nicola is politically bullet-proof, and nothing much will change however bad services get.
Rant over!
I do believe we should charge for GP appointments to ensure people actually turn up..
Probably not, of course...
This won’t be the last Greek letter we all hear about and there are plenty of other alphabets to use thereafter. And of course, plenty of pale horses sleeping in the zoonotic virus stable. Those that think covid won’t be key issue at the next election are most likely letting their optimism get in the way.
I really hope there's going to be some pushback from Tory MP's as well as the Liberal Democrats and Starmer on this. There's a small group of Tory MP's who actually mean what they say about libertarianism, and despite his loopy views on Brexit, I class David Davis as one of those.
A few aspects of the bill and its amendments are some of the most dangerous threats to our freedoms in almost a century, particularly the undefined criminalisation of 'disruptive' protest. A retweet of a noisy protest could even be arrestable under the "facilitating disruptive protest" section.
Extremely dangerous.
Sweep away all that bullshit and free up the cash spent on procurement and accountants and lawyers and contract managers. You'd think the Tories would have done this already - "Bring Back Matron" sounds like just their kind of policy.
Then you remember why they don't - too many donor mouths to feed. I did enjoy the Twitter feed this morning exposing that charlatan Hancock, whining to the Commons about "Labour Lies" saying claims his former pub landlord won a PPE contract was an egregious fabrication. Except the Good Law project has gone through the documents, found the document that had been redacted and there it is - a contract to the pub landlord as sub-contractor.
Why do we have multi-year waits for basic healthcare? Because Tory snouts in the trough.
Progressives of england unite! You have nothing to lose but your horrid tory governments.
Most deaths are either the unvaccinated who can own their own choices, or people who are very vulnerable and could die from the common cold or flu or anything else.
NPIs made sense pre-PIs, not anymore. If a thousand 'extra' deaths is the 'new normal' then that's the new normal and that's what we have to live with, though I'm sceptical that excess deaths actually are a thousand a week.
But curiously we are at a moment of record highs in: tax levels, tax take, tax proportions of GDP, public spending, borrowing and debt.
Every issue, taken one at a time, required increased tax and spend - try listening for a few days to Today on R4 and count up the times it is the answer.
So something is missing in this discussion. And it feels insufficiently wide in its scope. It isn't possible or practicable that more tax take/borrowing is the universal panacea.
But you might just have a more honest and informed one (I confess to being an incorrigible optimist)...
Interesting article here on how political debate might be made less divisive:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/30/why-american-politics-is-so-stuck-and-what-new-research-shows-about-how-to-fix-it-523517
And it doesn't even require both sides to agree, just for one or other to see the benefit to themselves of this approach.
- It keeps the party relevant nationally
- It helps create a narrative about the LDs being the natural alternative in the rural South. Forget the fact that NS is really the West Midlands, nobody knows where it is and if they've heard of Shropshire they're probably thinking a Shropshire lad or nice restaurants in Ludlow
- It shows the Tories can be beaten in a majority Brexit constituency
On omicron - unless I see something suggesting major increased virulence or massive immune escape - and the stats from SA so far don't seem to suggest this - I have zero intention of cancelling any Christmas socialising. We just all need to get boosted and trust in the vaccines.
The group whose mental health suffers most severely from restrictions are previously non mental health suffering extroverts.
Although research is at a preliminary stage it all points that way and is suspected to be a major cause of the fall in suicides.
They won't, and it vitiates the entire discussion.
But it's the confidence to say something like that and expect listeners not to have an immediate and violent reaction to it that concerns me.
They have come to expect adherence to a zero-covid strategy.
In the meantime why can't the government pay private providers to clear the backlog? If Labour can hire the private sector why can't the Tories...?
Rather than a Moral Crusade Against The Heretic Unbelievers opposite.
*Randomly selected numbers.
Ring fenced spending, tied to specific goals is required.
*Public, private, in between - they all behave like this.
Let's hope that the Pfizer pill does not suffer similarly.
Alban?
Salmondic?
Nutty?
Or, in homage to our own Malc, Malcomian?
We're a country of people labouring hard so that a small minority can achieve guaranteed returns of >5% on their investment portfolios.
There would be some value in people seeing how much things cost, I agree.
Likewise the libertarians / anti-maskers on the backbenches. They have their own internally logical world view which prioritises individual liberty and resisting the long arm of the state at the expense of controlling the spread of the virus. I don't agree with them either and think they're indulging somewhat in histrionics, but we need that voice in there too.
This is how government and public opinion gets the ability to triangulate and bring the public with it. What is more objectionable, and needs to be countered wherever it arises, is basic misinformation and pseudo-science. That includes anti-vax conspiracy theories but also the idea that the government has a cunning plan to lock us all down forever, or that this is some kind of eugenics experiment by the Tories, as well as a lot of the nonsense and moral panic around things like people gathering outdoors, or fist and elbow pumps (over a year since it became evident this thing mainly spreads in the air not from fomites)
Post-vaccinations its simply not worth putting life on hold any longer. The NHS should abolish all distancing etc, restore its capacity, and get on with life.
If the NHS is under pressure its because its restricted its capacity. We should stop trying to stop the spread of the virus and let nature take its course, relying on vaccines to prevent the worst of it.
If anyone who crosses in a dinghy is instantly deported to a third party nation like Rwanda then the dinghies would stop overnight.
We should then offer MORE asylum to more people, but via proper and safe routes not via people smugglers.
@PickardJE
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1h
the number of people wearing masks in shops and on public transport seems to be…about the same as last week