On ‘Election Eve’ it is traditional for some cheeky punters to stick a small mortgage-worth of cash onto a sure thing to try and bag a quick if small return. Apparently during the week of a general election even seats as short as 1/100 see 5 figure bets on this basis, since in theory the annual equivalent ROI of such a bet is very good.
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Local Election Canvassing 2022
Paul Krishnamurty and one of the other guys on the star sports “polling station” video thought NOC looked like value.
But I'm nervous about it ever since tlg86 challenged the prospects. He lives in the borough as do I.
Betfair have offered me a cash out. Stick or twist? What's your take Quincel? Others?
There is not a snowball's chance in hell of them losing control. If the odds were 1/100 it would still be value.
Hillingdon must rival Kensington and Westminster for split boroughs. It's got both the PM and John McDonnell as MP's as proof.
Will the svelte new pescatarian Ed Davey help win Green votes?
And some people learn very young. I've not met *that* many PBers, but most of us look like that Little 'un.
He definitely has strong opinions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s-gs4vrK0U
This is one of the reasons I think Woking represents real value at 2/1. The tory minority council have massively screwed up the money. It's the third most debt-ridden council in the entire United Kingdom. Yes that's right: Woking. £1.84 billion in debt. A tory led council. It's staggering.
https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/staggering-amount-woking-borough-council-23066714
Worth noting that the Victoria Square development has finally opened and Victoria Way is running normally again. I don't know if that will help the Tories.
Thanks for this. I never thought to google what they were all about. I've seen geese on there too.
Ah lovely Wych Hill. The walk down to St John's is very pleasant too. I've often run around there and picked up the canal towpath.
Surrey is an incredibly beautiful county, with iirc more trees than any other county in England. As well as private schools and dogging. True fact.
It's just some of the residents And the driving. And the lack of phone masts.
Superficially, it looks possible. At ward level, it is huge Tory majorities in the wards they win. Over 50% of the borough vote in 2018 and 2022.
https://wokinglibdems.org.uk/en/article/2022/1428216/a-liberal-democrat-vision-for-woking
Borrowing stands at almost £2 billion pounds. Repayments of £60 million have to be found every year. This is why the Liberal Democrats secured a Financial Review. Thankfully the review didn't reveal a catastrophic situation, but it did raise concerns on how the Council will afford repayments in future.
Of course, perceptions matter, and I have heard people talk about the debt.
What annoys me is when Tories go on TV and say "Conservative councils keep council tax down". Not in Woking they don't!
"Once again, COVID accelerated a process - in this case early retirement/slowing down
Quite a few people "retired" early, by replacing their full time jobs with part time plus pension."
----
This is the unsurprising result of an economy where govt distorts it to such an extent that an average house earns more per year than an average wage.
If you have housing assets why bother working? And in large parts of the country, even if you are working, you will feel poor as cannot afford housing locally.
Hence the weirdness to the cost of living crisis, it is far more divided than previous ones, with haves and have nots largely decided by age rather than class or education.
They are filling the jobs. But not with decades of knowledge. And over promoting earlier than they'd like to.
I shouted something about Northants at the TV but the chap didn't seem to hear me!
https://medium.com/britainelects/andrew-teales-2022-local-election-previews-e9fe434dc869
And where pray are the blunder(buss)Tories to repel this invasion? - Totally absent. St Albans and Harpenden are further lost to the orange demon diamond hordes ..
By going part time you proportionally reduce your hours worked much more than you reduce your earnings.
And this sort of income and pension planning knowledge is now much easier to access than it was in pre internet days.
Republican Primary (over 95% counted)
Candidate Votes
J.D. Vance
340,991 32.2%
Josh Mandel
253,051 23.9%
Matt Dolan
247,042 23.3%
Mike Gibbons
123,417 11.7%
Jane Timken
62,237 5.9%
Mark Pukita
22,478 2.1%
Neil Patel
9,897 0.9%
Total reported
1,059,113
Democratic Primary (86% counted)Candidate Votes Pct.
Tim Ryan
355,764 69.7%6
Morgan Harper
90,485 17.7%
Traci Johnson
64,113 12.6%
Total reported
510,362
Ryan won 2/3 carrying every county in the Buckeye State. But total Dem vote just half of GOP total.
In the Republican primary, Vance won with less than 1/3 of total vote, leading his nearest opponent, Mandel, by over +8% and over +87k votes.
Of Ohio's 88 counties, Dolan carried just three, all big: Franklin (Columbus), Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Geauga (affluent Clev. burbs); Mandel won eleven, small city/rural spread across central part of state; and Vance took the other 74 sweeping southern Ohio and including Cincinnati, Toledo, Youngstown, Akron, Dayton, Springfield and Middletown where Vance grew up (in at least one sense of the word).
Given that this is weaponry that's never really used or displayed, it seems a prime target for a bit of embezzlement strategic redeployment of funds with a box ticked saying that its been maintained while funnelling the funds to more pressing concerns. Like Villas or nice cars.
If the bulk of Russia's hardware is Potemkin, I wonder whether the tritium has already decayed and their nuclear arsenal is Potemkin too.
Gosport is all up this time, because of new boundaries.
The problem for the Conservatives is that they win their safe wards (basically the seaside ones) by massive majorities on huge turnouts. The trouble is that they sometimes/often struggle in the rest of the borough, which looks like a bit of the north that broke off and got stuck back in the wrong place.
The problem from a betting point of view is that the results in Gosport pretty much depend on one specific Lib Dem activist, the mood he is in and whether he can pull the rest of the party with him. On his day, he can sweep the board, but he can also annoy the rest of his party enough to almost destroy it. That's been true since the 1980's, and he's still at it. I suspect he will be enjoying the government's current tribulations, but I'm too many miles away to know.
NOC is possible, but tricky. Basically, it requires a decent showing by Labour, and they have had a torrid time over the last few years.
In short, search me guv.
(The problem with local elections- unless the national tide is an absolute tsunami, the countercurrents at ward level can make odd things happen in specific places. To take another example, Havering ought to stay NOC, though perhaps Residents-led minority rather than Conservative-led minority. But there are enough wards where the result is something of a lottery that a Conservative majority or a Residents majority aren't impossible.)
A Rotten Candidate for a Rotten Borough - Black Adder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkb9SIe4WWo
Paul Waugh
@paulwaugh
·
5m
Latest rumour among Tory MPs: poss
@BorisJohnson
reshuffle after local elections, to try to control the 're-set' narrative ahead of the Q Speech next week.
Will he move
@RishiSunak
as sacrificial lamb for the cost of living crisis?
Paul Waugh
@paulwaugh
·
5m
Or will Sunak walk? Some MPs think he didn't want to rock the boat before May 5...
Johnson's attitude on 6th May.
And yet he is only PM because of his star quality and campaigning skills that allow him to connect with the public and reach parts no other politician can.
Shome mishtake surely?
Of another Old Etonian Tory PM.
If one has saved for a reasonable occupational and/or private pension and/or ISAs and has a decent income available, then the impact of NI and income tax disporportionately hit the salary and reduce it to something much closer to the net pension etc income than one might think from the ratios of gross income in work vs retirement. I'm sure the news of the increase in the tax known as "NI" will be making this much worse.
And the Court decided Jeremy knew little or nothing about it. So that's all right then!
Actually, I'm rather wondering whether/when I can get hold of a copy of Norman Scott's (or whatever he was called) book.
My impression is that their hardware has mostly been fine, it's principally in terms of training and strategy that they've been poor.
I’d love to see some retirement statistics, there’s definitely anecdotal evidence that more people than usual retired during the pandemic.
Also interesting that the US figures for attrition of tanks in a land war, are almost exactly what’s been observed with Russian losses in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1521785331892293632
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1521778069232627712
It’s already been said that Russian reserves are close to full, at which point they will need to start shutting production down or burn it off, if they can’t sell it. They also rely heavily on Western equipment and services for their O&G industry, which will quickly become unserviceable due to sanctions.
https://order-order.com/2022/05/04/keir-squirms-over-beergate-scrutiny-we-were-working/
“We were on the road, at the end of the day, we were in the office preparing. Now, that evening, from memory, we were doing an online event for members… at some point, this was in the evening, everyone is hungry. A takeaway was ordered… in Durham all restaurants and pubs were closed.”
On the 30 April 2021, I was doing my bit for my local by having a drink in the garden.
Oh, and on 1 May 2021, we had lunch outside at a restaurant in Weybridge.
What annoys me is that Starmer et al clearly weren't going the extra mile to stop the spread of COVID. They have consistently been on the safety-first side of the COVID argument, so it's annoying to see that when they thought no one was watching, they weren't that bothered about it.
> clear and convincing victory for 45's anointed in a key (if no longer battleground) state for his Next Hurrah in 2024; Vance was stuck in back of the GOP pack UNTIL he secured Trump's endorsement.
> yet fewer than one in four Republican primary voters picked 45's pick; his imprimatur alone is NOT enough to sway more than a fraction of GOP voters in a major primary.
> still that fraction was decisive, in THIS primary anyway, which was crowded, super-expensive, media-saturated, hotly-contested, high-profile big-stakes race.
> Trump backers, whether MAGA maniacs or less fervent but still supportive, did NOT coalesce behind Vance in the primary, but instead split their votes between him, Mandel, Gibbons and Timken; even Dolan got a few; in part because many were more turned off by Vance's flip-flopping on 45 more that The Donald himself.
> Vance should be able to unite the lion's share of the solid Trump vote in Ohio this Fall. However, contested primaries often leave wounds and open fissures that can be tough to heal. Plus in Tim Ryan the Democrats have united solidly behind a competitive, combative moderate who will NOT hesitate to throw Joe Biden under the bus like he did with Nancy Pelosi. AND will also not hesitate to do battle with Vance from Parma to Portsmouth, Lima to East Liverpool.
Pay them more, they can retire earlier.
Pay them less, they think sod this, and retire earlier.
Not sure of the short term solution, or if there even is one.
These Oniks anti-ship missiles that they've been using against land targets look quite technically advanced. Maybe corruption means they only have half the number they might have, but if they can get those right they can likely maintain a nuclear deterrent.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1520702173797044226
If you’re going to take that approach to personal morality, you’d better make damn sure that you’re whiter than white yourself.
The ‘narrative’ is now that they’re all as bad as each other on this issue.
Ticked box maintenance happens in the UK all the time and is a massive moneyspinner for very little work.
Companies just want to meet regulation requirements to ensure that their insurance etc is valid and employ a suitably qulaified company to carry out the maintenance on a particulat system/installation. They have no idea whats done but as long as the maintenance schedule is completed they are happy. Often nothing is done. Its easy money.
He said he'd been given a house in Devon, I gathered not too long after the trial and had been living there ever since, although at one stage Wikipedia says he was living and working in Ireland.
That's a pronoun I've not encountered before.
There are quite a lot of wards where RA-on-RA action might let Conservatives come through the middle.
Havering politics is utterly bonkers.
Limiting tax relief on pension contributions to 20% has been mooted for years, but it will be about as unpopular as inheritance tax with the Tory faithful.
Anything else is tinkering around the edges, and changes to private sector pensions neglect the elephant which is a lot of final salary schemes still around in the public sector.
Which other famous person would immediately spring to mind when planning to enter a scarecrow competition?
I apologize profusely, unreservedly, repeatedly for any and all discomfort I have caused to JackW personally, and for the shame I have brought upon PB.
I'm out of touch with matters there nowadays, so I don't know what's really going on.
No Lib Dems, which slightly saddens me.
Getting rid of the hassle factor is a major step to staff retention.
Edit: no reflection on Quincel, of course: just the ambiguity ...
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1521532533464354817?t=NI2GN5Em2aCOzRnFp22qFw&s=19
#Beergate stories haven't changed the public perception that Keir Starmer has generally abided by COVID rules
Generally did: 42% (+2 from Jan)
Generally didn't: 28% (-)
Boris Johnson, meanwhile, is still seen as a rulebreaker
Generally did: 21% (+4)
Generally didn't: 70% (-3) https://t.co/fwy7GhSwou