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2023 looks a value bet for year of next general election – politicalbetting.com
2023 looks a value bet for year of next general election – politicalbetting.com
One of the things that surprisingly we do not see much speculation about is when the next general election will be held. Whenever people talk about the date they tend to assume that it will be in 2024 but looking at what previous Prime Ministers with big majorities have done the timing tends to be no more than 4 years after the previous one.
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And from memory that's October so a November 2023 election makes sense unless economically things are bad.
The problem is I do think economically things are downhill from here and in a potentially seriously bad way, given how much of our economy is services and other items that are very discretionary spending....
Now? Much less likely unless you expect the Tories to regain a significant poll lead surely?
I don't think November will be the first choice of whoever is in charge unless they have no choice. All the signs are nobody found campaigning in the dark, cold and rain much fun.
I think May 2024 is still the likeliest date, even if it does leave them boxed in.
Even professional photographers doing their best get some weird effects:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/may/04/why-do-the-carters-look-so-tiny-alongside-joe-biden-and-his-wife-jill-in-this-picture
(Although Carter might have been replaced by a puppet ...)
But as you say, whatever the merits of going early but only after the boundary changes are implemented, there's not a cat in hell's chance of the Tories voluntarily going for an early election if the polls aren't great for them.
https://twitter.com/planner9818/status/1491703124008083459?s=20
Tho that does not explain the odd size and tilting (however the latter could be a lens effect, as you say)
It's all decidedly fishy as when these photos first emerged there was no tinsel or bottle. So someone edited them out, then put them back in? WTF?
At this late decadent stage of partygate, it could be anyone doing anything. It could be some guy in a Croydon basement making photos for the lolz
https://twitter.com/nickgutteridge/status/1491718767772057604
Not as if that rag doesn’t have form for doctoring photographs, isn’t that true Piers Morgan?
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2859/stages
This suggests that the bottle was originally photoshopped OUT (by the Mirror? by the Mirror and Dom and the CIA?), when the first image was released, then it was put back IN, so as to drag out the agony for Boris and prolong the scandal by making it juicier....
All jolly fishy, and also rather diverting, in an amateur detective kind of way
You cannot design out all the effects in a lens system. But you can chose which ones you end up with.
So, using computer design and analysis, the cheapest lens system possible is designed to remove as much as possible of the distortions that the designer doesn't want. Which in turn, generally, increases other distortions.
When you add in the requirement for wide field on laptop and phone cameras...
As to the content itself the lighting on the bottle looks right, the tinsel seems to cast colour onto the white shirt, and the plastic in front of the bottle looks correctly translucent. Getting those things right would take a real expert in photoshopping, that goes way beyond simply making a good mask. Amateurs would get it wrong.
But when an iPhone costs £1k, and a DSLR £5k, anyone who isn’t a serious photog makes do with the phone.
I think it's the same game as the Andrew/Virginia thing - photoshop him out, then claim he was photoshopped *in*. It is not the case that the Mirror ever published the no-bottle photo, that's misdirection.
However I certainly would not rule out my explanation. Release a doctored, more innocent, bottle-free image first, get Boris to say Oh it was a Zoom call, not a party, you can tell from the photo - THEN release the real photo, with tinsel and bottle, and make Boris look even more of a liar, and elongate the "scandal" by another week or two
https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/lords-information-office/2022/hereditary-peers-by-election-result-ridley.pdf
Why did they stop the count after round 2? If Lord Strathcarron had 18 votes and the other candidates in total had 18 in total between, it is mathematically possible for their to be a tie. In that situation, presumably the winner is the candidate with the most first round votes?
IshmaelZ said:
You'd be surprised. 3 or 4 years ago I did the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers - 200 yachts sailing Canaries - caribbean. Most are just cruising, about 25 are in the "racing" division. It's completely amateur, no serious yacht taking part, 50p prize money, dog with the waggiest tail stuff. Nonetheless one owner begged his crew, just before reaching St Lucia, to go along with his claim they hadn't motored at all when they had. They had had 2 weeks to decide how much they disliked him and told him to piss off. St Lucia is not a large island, and there was a dozen drunk yachties telling this story in every bar on the island to anyone who would listen
He can also probably explain the giant bottle of sanitiser on the table.
Look closely at the bottle and the sanitiser and they both have the same light reflection in precisely the same place.
I call this a very very good DSLR: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1634703-REG/canon_r5_cine_kit.html
I also look noticeably different on my new laptop webcam, according to colleagues. I'd wait for an actual expert to debunk all this first.
"Here's the supposedly 'original image'. However, it is actually photoshopped from the one publicised by the Mirror. You can see the editor placed a blur effect on the bottom left corner (where they removed the bottle), and the removal of the tinsel leaves some major errors"
https://twitter.com/Quinby__/status/1491717630918541319?s=20
Apparently Zahawi did in fact say at the time the quiz came to light No alcohol therefore not a party.
What it really shows up is a remarkable lack of confidence in the economics of independence, even among its more avid supporters.
Just reading about this, it raises serious questions for the mirror to explain and account for the two photos
They both cannot be correct and maybe the MET needs to look into this
The doctored photo is the one without the bottle and the tinsel. You can tell. It isn't even doctored very well (see below). The removal of the bottle and tinsel have left blurs and lacunae, it's quite poorly done
The question then is: who did it? Did the Mirror really publish this badly doctored image, ever? There is no proof they did, so it is more likely someone has taken the doctored image and stuck MIRROR EXCLUSIVE on top of it, to cast doubt on the whole of partygate and on the Mirror
Note that the original tweet which kicked this all off came from a Boris fan account.
Fabulously murky. And this points to quite a scary and imminent future: in a couple of years photoshopping will be a billion times better than this, thanks to GPT82, and so we will never be able to distinguish between the fakes and reality. Ominous.
Yes, I mean that seriously. I wouldn't trust the Met to look into a shop window after the last few years.
I refer you to the Carter photograph above.
But, I don't think they did
Anyone receiving one would be well advised to consult a lawyer before even thinking about replying. The most you'd ever say in reply is "I was in the offices for the purpose of work and everything I did while there was for the purposes of my work."
And I certainly would not use this method even in an internal investigation, if I could have an interview with the persons concerned, which the police can do.
It is quite bizarre.
So my DSLR sits in a box unloved and now practically worthless.
So she's posted this to try and save her hero, yet it does the opposite. If the original version out there in BJ's defence was doctored to remove the party evidence then it really does make him and his lies look worse. Whomever was responsible for the photoshopping.
Or maybe Putin did it in his tea break because he's fucked off that he's screwed up his Ukrainian War
Thatcher and Blair only held early general elections as they were ahead in the polls, same with May in 2017 and Boris in 2019. I therefore do not expect the next general election to be until Spring 2024.
The only way there would be a general election next year is if the Tories got a clear poll lead again under Boris or a new leader
"Lord Strathcarron is a student of Advaita Vedanta and has written of his experiences in non-duality in the books Living with Life and Mysticism and Bliss. He is also the author of two spy thriller novels for Troubador: Invisibility, and Black Beach.
"In 2009, he recreated Lord Byron's 1809–1811 Grand Tour of the Mediterranean for the book Joy Unconfined! Lord Byron's Grand Tour Re-Toured published by Signal Books, an imprint of Christopher Hurst."
I do want to get back into it though, maybe with the aforementioned R5. Don’t want all the photos of upcoming family events to be on a phone camera.
OK.
I reckon high teens % on this is marginal value, i.e. to the low end of 'about right'
If you look at the architrave behind the bottle, in the one where the bottle is missing the architrave extends much further than where the bottle would cover it up.
I think both photos have been changed.
https://twitter.com/Ann06957684/status/1491545566928584711/photo/1
A number of women who participated in protests demanding women’s rights in Afghanistan are missing.
The Taliban deny they are holding them and also say they have granted a general amnesty to all those who worked with the previous regime.
But the UN has raised alarm about a pattern of reprisals against activists, journalists, former government officials and security forces.
The BBC has investigated multiple incidents that have taken place recently, some just in the past couple of weeks.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-60323638
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/10/my-heart-is-broken-death-of-marine-life-is-devastating-englands-fishing-industry
A fascinating mystery. Encompassing fishing, levelling up and the "Brexit bonus".
Not in dispute, something is causing it. Whitby will be devastated. A town doesn't survive on Goths alone.
The Lizard Men denied having anything to do with the photo.
1) There is going to be no point before there has to be a GE when the economics will look good
2) No leader ever calls an election before he has to unless the polls are right
3) FTPA means either the commons has a super majority for it, or both houses pass primary legislation top bypass the FTPA, or repeal the act. The first may not occur and the second two can be delayed by the HoL
4) Boris plans to spin out his leadership turmoil maximally. The more he succeeds, the less likely the polls are to be right for the Tories.
5) While Labour still can 'win' a GE (126 seats needed), the Tories can very easily lose one (lose 45 or so seats). As things stand the centre left alliance will be the winners.
On balance before Paterson and Partygate I thought 2023 a decent chance. Now less so.
If you have roughly the same amount of noise (i.e. the random variation from pixel to pixel) right across a photograph, then it’s probably not been altered. If you see a particular section that has a noticeably different noise level then that part has probably been pasted in.
I think something else smaller has been removed and the bottle then added.
This way is, quite apart from any other consideration, incredibly inefficient. And pointless. Because any sensible person will simply write what they need to to get themselves off the hook and the answers would not be admissible anyway if a FPN was challenged. It just seems amazingly inept.
Perhaps the reports are wrong. Or perhaps the Met really is as useless as I think. Who knows.
But the key thing is that if the Conservatives are on track to lose (and that's a smaller if than it seemed a few months back), they are duty-bound to hang on as long as they can. Anything can happen at backgammon and all that.
What's the latest possible date under the new rules?