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Partial turnout data does more harm than good – politicalbetting.com
Partial turnout data does more harm than good – politicalbetting.com
As a long-standing gambler on elections, I’ve always found the day itself to be somewhat odd. The betting speculation reaches a crescendo, and judging by the betting exchanges the punting itself does so too. But it’s the only day for months where we don’t actually get any new information to update our predictions.
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In 2022 Labour stands in 61% of seats
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_Kingdom_local_elections
I remember the 'YouthQuake' in 2017, which turned out to be nonsense, or as the BBC puts it 'a myth'.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42747342
At the same time, a curfew has been called in Odessa, partly due to intelligence that Russia is paying fifth columnists in the area to strike.
As ever, fog of war, rumours, etc, etc. However a 'landing' in Transnistria might make sense (although it is landlocked, it has access to the Black Sea via the Dniester river). It would make a landing pretty much unopposed, and cause significant issues for NATO, Moldova, and Ukraine.
I'm assuming this discussion is in response to Glen Owen and Dan Hodges whingeing about poor Boris being stitched up.
I think a psychiatrist needs to attend Northcliffe House.
It's awful. It's messy. It's protracted. There's nothing else we need to know.
It's also not like-with-like: in 2018 there was no Somerset,.
It's one of the more absurd Mail on Sunday stories but there's stiff competition in recent months from within their own newspaper.
Honestly think the Mail have lost the plot: like seriously gone yumpy.*
(* Uncle Vernon)
(I'll put this more politely than Malc would): Oh, do go away, dear fellow. Over there. Then go away a little further. No, that's not far enough. A little further, please. Nope, still not far enough.
It's a major news story. It has, and will, have an effect on UK politics. It seems fair enough to discuss it on here - probably more so than (say) AI, UFOs or gronks, hoovers or tractors.
May has arrived and this is the month the conservative mps just have to act and vote Boris out of office
I note the party have decided to seek 50% of their mps as women, and this is long overdue and hopefully they will install a woman candidate for Tiverton and North Devon
The misdemeanours of mps, not just the idiotic Neil Parish, but others and let us not forget there are reports that 3 cabinet ministers, 2 shadow cabinet ministers and 56 mps are under investigation for sleaze, and of course Liam Byrne was found guilty of bullying and harassment
It is little reported but labour mp Mary Foy launched a drunken tirade against conservative mp Richard Holden on the Commons Terrace in front of members for which she has since sent a written apology to him
However, we must not tar every mp with unacceptable and inappropriate behaviour as the vast majority across all parties work honestly and diligently for their constituents
Indeed this tweet from Jess Phillips gives hope that those mps who rightly have had enough are standing up for integrity and decency and give us hope that a new era will dawn, but it has to start with Boris being voted out of office and it is just these conservative women mps, and others, who need to act and act this month
Jess Philips MP
'Counterpoint to all the Westminster is dreadful stuff. Women in Westminster this week, by and large Tory women made themselves heard, worked together supportively and succeeded in their aims to have action taken. I know it might not seem like it but I'd call that progress'.
According to today's Sunday Telegraph, Lord Frost is being urged to stand.
I'm not convinced that would end well.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/04/30/lord-frost-urged-stand-neil-parishs-seat-by-election/
An unkind person might say something similar about your posts.
A few short weeks ago they were demanding NATO intervention and no fly zones.
It's a shame in a way that this site can't operate sub-threads then all you boys with toys could go off to your dorms and discuss it to your hearts' content.
I've never advocated NATO intervention as such.
I accept this is avoidance but tbh the war in Ukraine could drag on for years. As it has in Kashmir, Yemen, Tigray and countless other places around the world.
For a 'gal who hates conflict it's tedious. There are plenty of other places they can go to have their vicarious days back.
Have a nice Sunday everyone
xx
They need a local candidate and preferably female
It does look, sadly, like we are in for the long haul.
Indeed it could evolve into Europe's worst nightmare of use of nuclear weapons
You may want to sideline it, but that is not going to happen and indeed is disrespectful to Ukraine and its suffering people
"No data is bad data"
All data are imperfect. Bad data are a problem you solve with careful data science. If the posterior is the prior, then meaningful inferences cannot be drawn.
No data are a problem you solve by going out and getting data.
Certainly, there is a threshold when the data are so riddled with sampling or selection effects that it is more work to analyse than to go out and get more data.
However, bad data are only worse than no data because there is inevitably someone (normally Robert Peston or some other axe-grinder) who tries to present invalid findings on that dataset.
I won't say Good Morning, because it doesn't feel like that, either on here or chez Cole.
On the two topics here, the war in Ukraine has already been going on, at a somewhat less vicious level, since 2013 or so..... see the annexation of Crimea a year later ...... and how is giving Frost a platform a benefit for the nation? Anyway, he'd have to resign his peerage, wouldn't he. An in the event of him losing, what would happen; would he be given it back?
And as far as chez Cole is concerned, my various aches and pains, mainly associated with old age, seem to have decided that May 1st is a good time to enliven themselves.
I'm sure @Heathener knows and can assert this war will have absolutely no effect on European politics.
We have a trip arranged to our family in Lossiemouth in July and will be the first time we have met in over 2 years
Amazing when you think about it that we have not been able to go north until recently
Imagine if someone said “Too many young black women on here; I’m off”…
And why the hell would you put an apostrophe in front of gal? What letter(s) are you replacing? Fungal? Illegal?
Mayday, mayday, mayday.
If the Russian invasion isn’t defeated this year, then it will affect all our lives far more than say Brexit. Energy costs alone will do to this decade what the oil crisis did to the 70s.
And we’re unlikely to break Russia economically any time soon - their oil and gas revenues so far this year are considerably higher than they were last. Volumes might be down, but higher prices have more than compensated even though they have to discount to the world market to sell the stuff.
And in any event, as you make clear, they have sufficient natural resources to be essential to the world economy. Short-term..... 25 years ..... at any rate.
For example, the current likelihood of a protracted war, with increasing isolation of Russia as Europe finds other energy providers, is unlikely to provide any relief on inflation and so the government's economic difficulties will continue.
Tisdall in the Observer today with similar black and white thinking. Either we should fully commit to joining the war, or we should pressurise Zelnskyy into making territorial concessions. I'm completely behind sending in NATO armoured brigades to join the war, but I don't think the only alternative to that is to concede Ukrainian territory to Putin.
As for any postwar settlement with Russia, I don’t know (and it’s unknowable whether the current regime would fall), but we should be thinking about it.
I don’t know that Russia’s oil and gas will be essential for so long. Peak hydrocarbon use is probably only about five years off.
Good luck with that one, $33bn of US lend lease, an impending EU ban on Urals crude and a sudden strategic cohesion around the goal of rolling Russia back to pre-2014 borders. Can’t speak for other places but yellow and blue still flutters from flagpoles and bedroom windows everywhere you go in my corner of Brexitland.
How’s your vpn by the way? You managed to move to a safer one yet?
It is wrong to send other people's sons and daughters to die at your behest.
If the families of the armchairs want to contribute their own sons and daughters and nieces and nephews to armoured brigades, that is fine.
We can call it a Brigade of the Little'uns ... in honour of one pb.com's finest armchairs.
I don't expect the current order in Russia to outlast Putin himself; I don't think there's an alternative 'strongman' but I'm no expert.
Wouldn't 'pushed back to the pre-2014 borders' mean a series of low level incursions, sabotage and so on? With a risk of nastier flare-ups every so often?
What else is civilian control of the military - a cornerstone of democracy - if not sending other people sons and daughters to die at your behest, if that is deemed necessary?
Oil can fairly easily be redirected; gas isn’t so easy, as the pipeline to other destinations than Europe are limited.
Sanctions will slowly degrade production volumes as they’re not self sufficient in production equipment and engineering.
And remember worldwide demand will rise for most of this decade.
The man negotiated a deal he then claimed he was surprised operates the way it was written, wants us to discard much of it, supports the UK imposing one-way trade barriers on itself to make us uncompetitive, and then thinks people whose MP wanks off to Massey Fergusons will be impressed and vote for him instead.
Are we really sure we didn't enter an Iannouchiverse some time in the past few years? That the prime timeline isn't watching "Armando's Brexit Bubble" every night on Sky pissing themselves at events in the stupid bubble universe parody created for their entertainment?
The other, more general, problem is that given the increasing tendency towards postal voting means turnout at the polling stations means increasingly little. Which rather makes @Quincel's point.
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1520670067662458882
There's an interesting Oxford study here on why Russians who support Putin do it:
https://medium.com/oxford-university/expert-comment-putins-russia-people-increasingly-identify-with-the-soviet-union-here-s-what-26981131a858
It's positive that there's very little anti-western sentiment or expansionism in there (though the latest research is from 2021, so as they note the war may be driving an anti-western "rally round the flag" effect) - the driver seems to be hostility to market reforms plus cultural conservatism and nostalgia.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gszshUMfjtsC&pg=PT87&lpg=PT87&dq=fon+durrell+publicity&source=bl&ots=9DsOvPMa2J&sig=ACfU3U2Suwb0urns2QxqpE-XCcRAlIGY3A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj7hqa95r33AhV9QUEAHS23BJMQ6AF6BAgiEAM#v=onepage&q=temperance&f=false
The Swiss Army is for the defence of Switzerland. It does not participate in other people's wars.
It does contribute to peace-keeping missions under the auspices of the UN.
You should not argue for a blood sacrifice by others unless you and your family are willing to make the sacrifice yourself.
Otherwise, ...
"Well, best of luck to you all. Sorry I can't be with you, but obviously there is no place at the front for an old general with a dicky heart and a wooden bladder ... See you all in Kyiv for coffee and cakes"
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1520561969153073153
This is quite scary stuff beyond its immediate context. For well under £1m, a non state actor could have a swarm of 1000 of the small drones each carrying one of the antipersonnel grenades…
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18425956/boris-johnson-hartlepool-local-elections/
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the elections in Hartlepool do show a swing back towards Labour, like most places.
That theory has already destroyed Cameron and May, and it's weakening Johnson. But one more real push is bound to do the job.
I'd go further and point to the bizarre way results are reported in the United States as one of the fundamental reasons they have had such allegations of vote rigging in recent elections. Results should not be announced on the drip as they do there. Each seat should be declared when all the votes are counted. In MEP elections we managed that, even when counts were being held in 70 or 80 different places for the same seat. It's quite possible.
At the very least, you should be mentally prepared to end up walking across the Falklands, freezing in a bivvy.
I'd have thought going into Ukraine to defend a European democracy is as worthy as it gets. Indeed, the urgent statements by the MOD warning people not to go over there would suggest there are plenty who would be up for it.
(I don't think we should go into Ukraine, but that's not out of a concern for the people in the Armed Forces).
The assumption must be that the crude making it to the world market right now is largely being consumed in the three core EU countries. And that Russian domestic storage is now close to full.
If core EU is on the verge of formally phasing out imports of Urals crude, what then? The EU sanctions that kick in 15th May make it very difficult to impractical for Russian crude to go transoceanic at any scale. It’s reckoned there are single digit number of super tankers without an EU link that would be unaffected by the sanctions. Let’s assume 10mins bbl of capacity. And generously a 40 day return transit time to India. Unless there are unforeseen holes in the sanctions regimen, we could conceivably see as little as a million bbl a day make it to market, versus the pre war level of 5-6 million. Say some slips through, 2mln bbl. It’s still crippling.
So what then if domestic storage is also full? Further falls of production at wellhead is the only answer. Which would almost certainly have a serious long term impact on Russia’s oil production capacity. And the assumption must surely be that medium term Europe will have pivoted away from Russian gas too.
By the end of his Z War, Putin is going to have a shell of a conventional army, his core export industry of hydrocarbons will be bust and Russia’s demographics will look even worse. But it will still have an extortionately expensive nuclear arsenal to maintain. Feels to me the next Presidents of the US and Russia are going to be on Time Magazine’s cover shaking hands on a historic multi lateral disarmament deal. Hard to see another outcome.
This is despicable!!
Newly elected MP @AnumSNP was prewarned of 'colleagues' to watch out for with respect to their lecherous or 'over friendly' behaviour ..
As told to @KamaliMelbourne on Sky News. https://twitter.com/KamaliMelbourne/status/1520666514164273152 https://twitter.com/LightHackers/status/1520675533192933381/photo/1
Real excitement ! Free trees are on their way !
It seems 5,000 trees were given out in March (according to a press release from the Welsh Government), and there will be 200,000 more free trees available in Autumn 2022.
It seems that they will be given out at five regional hubs in Llanrwst, Wrexham, Machynlleth, Swansea and Cwmbran.
So, a trip to Mach for me in the Autumn, presumably with proof of Welshness to claim my free tree.
Apparently, it is a native broadleaf tree.
The assumption by the Conservatives is that they cannot, and should not, be allowed to lose General Elections. If they do ever lose, the Party of Jeremy Corbyn could then own the Electoral Commission.
Andrei Isayev, a pro-Kremlin politician, said Britain had ‘never been a real ally to Russia’ during an impassioned tirade on state TV
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/01/britain-accused-evil-us-stealing-russian-invention-fish-chips/
Slightly weird
Mr. Moonshine, that assumes the leader of Russia is rational.
Mr. Z, I believe fish and chips, which are superb, were created here by migrants who were Jewish. So, we're closer to getting them from Zelensky than Putin...
* A bad night for the Tories doesn't necessarily tell us they'll lose the next election (although a good night in current circs would be impressive for them and certainly lock Johnson into Number 10)
* Comparing Lab, LibDem and Green results for "best opposition party" won't tell us much. Tactical voting is everywhere.
We've got some old cherries dying, ourselves, but rowans, birch and hawthorn have selfseeded so we've transplanted and got some replacements coming on well in the way of even free-er trees ... the old trees are being eyed by a local woodworker, and the neighbour will use the branches in his solid fuel stove.
So, it will be quite costly. And he will be buying ~ 2 million of them, one for ever household in Wales.
So, very costly.
(I can get hazel / sycamore / beech /walnut trees to germinate for free already in my garden).