lee harpin @lmharpin Spoken to two Tory MPs this afternoon who seemed quite deflated by Rishi Sunak's performance at #PMQs. "Starmer walked all over him," said one.
"Aides to [Trump] are making quiet preparations for a 2024 presidential campaign that could be launched soon after next week's midterm elections as he tries to capitalise on expected Republican wins to propel himself toward becoming the front-runner for his party's nomination.
"I'm like 95 per cent he's going to run," said Reince Priebus, Trump's former White House chief of staff."
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
See, I deliberately didn't google it - because I find it hard to remove things like this from my head once they're in there - and here comes you with this graphic post.
Sorry (genuinely). I find this stuff fascinating - not so much the detail but all the legal stuff around it. Most people just don't realise how tenuous and unstable most English governance was prior to the Tudors. We pick out the notable bits but miss the fact that for much of the rest of the time England was in a semi permanent state of war even under seemingly long living and well established monarchs like Henry III.
It is fascinating, yes. Just that general point of how civilized order and a common morality arises and is maintained is fascinating.
lee harpin @lmharpin Spoken to two Tory MPs this afternoon who seemed quite deflated by Rishi Sunak's performance at #PMQs. "Starmer walked all over him," said one.
Why do British weather forecasters typically stand to the west of Britain, obscuring the direction where most British weather approaches from, rather than to the east, so that the weather approaching from the Atlantic is more easily visible?
Handedness? Right handed people would want their right arm free to gesture, which means standing to the left as seen on screen.
I suspect it is this
Plus it means they are pointing left to right on screen as we look - as we read left to right, it somehow feels correct that we look at them pointing that way?
It's not the handedness of writing with the Latin alphabet.
It may originate in large part in the predominance of right-handedness, but in any case it's a cinematic convention now. Doing it the other way round looks weird.
lee harpin @lmharpin Spoken to two Tory MPs this afternoon who seemed quite deflated by Rishi Sunak's performance at #PMQs. "Starmer walked all over him," said one.
It is genuinely hard to gauge these things. I thought SKS was the better, sure, but the mehness of the whole thing was its outstanding characteristic.
Starmer wasn’t rip roaring, but I think the telling thing throughout PMQs was that he was setting the pace and agenda. When PMs are winning they are able to take a question and turn it around convincingly, which Sunak struggled to do.
He also seems to be trying too hard to emulate Boris. He needn’t. I thought he was good in the leadership debates when we answered seriously and directly and delivered hard truths. Now he seems to want to deflect and obfuscate.
lee harpin @lmharpin Spoken to two Tory MPs this afternoon who seemed quite deflated by Rishi Sunak's performance at #PMQs. "Starmer walked all over him," said one.
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
See, I deliberately didn't google it - because I find it hard to remove things like this from my head once they're in there - and here comes you with this graphic post.
Sorry (genuinely). I find this stuff fascinating - not so much the detail but all the legal stuff around it. Most people just don't realise how tenuous and unstable most English governance was prior to the Tudors. We pick out the notable bits but miss the fact that for much of the rest of the time England was in a semi permanent state of war even under seemingly long living and well established monarchs like Henry III.
Henry VIII was a tyrant and an absolute arsehole but he certainly centralised governance.
Lesson to future time travellers who want to "explore" this time period: never ever accept a job offer from Henry VIII.
"Aides to [Trump] are making quiet preparations for a 2024 presidential campaign that could be launched soon after next week's midterm elections as he tries to capitalise on expected Republican wins to propel himself toward becoming the front-runner for his party's nomination.
"I'm like 95 per cent he's going to run," said Reince Priebus, Trump's former White House chief of staff."
Telegraph live US blog
I think he will and I've bet that he will. If his price for president then shortens significantly in the excitement of the announcement - which is likely imo - I'll lay more of that, adding to my Big Short.
"Aides to [Trump] are making quiet preparations for a 2024 presidential campaign that could be launched soon after next week's midterm elections as he tries to capitalise on expected Republican wins to propel himself toward becoming the front-runner for his party's nomination.
"I'm like 95 per cent he's going to run," said Reince Priebus, Trump's former White House chief of staff."
Telegraph live US blog
I think he will and I've bet that he will. If his price for president then shortens significantly in the excitement of the announcement - which is likely imo - I'll lay more of that, adding to my Big Short.
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
There'd be Remainers turn up to see that done to Nigel Farage today...
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
See, I deliberately didn't google it - because I find it hard to remove things like this from my head once they're in there - and here comes you with this graphic post.
Sorry (genuinely). I find this stuff fascinating - not so much the detail but all the legal stuff around it. Most people just don't realise how tenuous and unstable most English governance was prior to the Tudors. We pick out the notable bits but miss the fact that for much of the rest of the time England was in a semi permanent state of war even under seemingly long living and well established monarchs like Henry III.
It is fascinating, yes. Just that general point of how civilized order and a common morality arises and is maintained is fascinating.
Is not our common morality being undermined by a handful of cabinet ministers with third world morality?
Not to mention American influences that arrive in different ways?
"Aides to [Trump] are making quiet preparations for a 2024 presidential campaign that could be launched soon after next week's midterm elections as he tries to capitalise on expected Republican wins to propel himself toward becoming the front-runner for his party's nomination.
"I'm like 95 per cent he's going to run," said Reince Priebus, Trump's former White House chief of staff."
Telegraph live US blog
I think he will and I've bet that he will. If his price for president then shortens significantly in the excitement of the announcement - which is likely imo - I'll lay more of that, adding to my Big Short.
You are brave.
Thanks - but maybe not so brave because I'll only lay more if punters get swept up with the drama of however he does it (lurid no doubt) and start backing him right down. Logically the announcement should only bring his price in by a modest amount. To 4 say. If it shortens much more than that it'll be Trumpermania driving it and I'll go against it. I think. Probably.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
There'd be Remainers turn up to see that done to Nigel Farage today...
WASHINGTON — Senior Russian military leaders recently had conversations to discuss when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, contributing to heightened concern in Washington and allied capitals, according to multiple senior American officials.
Yeah right, we're meant to believe a nation that can barely agree to mobilise some peasants and is unable to stop the Turks from breaking their grain embargo is willing to commit nuclear suicide?
Pull the other one.
Not sure “pull the other one” is the optimum retort at this juncture
What happened to the invasion from Belarus?
Yokes suggested it is still on just two days ago.
There’s still exercises going on in Belarus, and the suggestion is that an invasion of Ukraine could take place. Personally I can’t see it, the Russian conscripts are lacking training, morale and equipment - but the threat of it, is keeping thousands of Ukranian soldiers occupied on the other side of the border.
Did we do the claimed Russian troop loss numbers yet today? Another 800, biggest losses in “Avdiivka and Lyman directions”. Earlier in the week Bahkmut was mentioned. So basically we’re seeing the senseless waste of the mobilised conscripts to try and retake bits of ground that don’t have such obvious strategic value.
WASHINGTON — Senior Russian military leaders recently had conversations to discuss when and how Moscow might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, contributing to heightened concern in Washington and allied capitals, according to multiple senior American officials.
Yeah right, we're meant to believe a nation that can barely agree to mobilise some peasants and is unable to stop the Turks from breaking their grain embargo is willing to commit nuclear suicide?
Pull the other one.
Not sure “pull the other one” is the optimum retort at this juncture
What happened to the invasion from Belarus?
Yokes suggested it is still on just two days ago.
There’s still exercises going on in Belarus, and the suggestion is that an invasion of Ukraine could take place. Personally I can’t see it, the Russian conscripts are lacking training, morale and equipment - but the threat of it, is keeping thousands of Ukranian soldiers occupied on the other side of the border.
Did we do the claimed Russian troop loss numbers yet today? Another 800, biggest losses in “Avdiivka and Lyman directions”. Earlier in the week Bahkmut was mentioned. So basically we’re seeing the senseless waste of the mobilised conscripts to try and retake bits of ground that don’t have such obvious strategic value.
It is mud season, too. Russia seem to be repeating the tactical mistakes of WW1. That ended in revolution in Russia.
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
There'd be Remainers turn up to see that done to Nigel Farage today...
I suspect Farage never had genitals to cut off.
You’re saying Farage is not a prick? I can’t accept that!
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
There'd be Remainers turn up to see that done to Nigel Farage today...
I suspect Farage never had genitals to cut off.
You’re saying Farage is not a prick? I can’t accept that!
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
And why do they choose a dangerous boat crossing to escape the empyreal realm of the European Union to this benighted Brexit hellhole?
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Good luck. I'm sure you will have a good time. I've never had a bad time in Ireland, or among the Irish anywhere.
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
They are proportionately more Brits in the Republic than there are Irish-born over here. You'll be fine. And Cork is a brilliant part of Ireland. Good choice.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Good luck. I'm sure you will have a good time. I've never had a bad time in Ireland, or among the Irish anywhere.
You haven’t been to the rougher bits of Dublin, then
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
It is fun, so long as its fake.
That's why we just had Halloween. Its fun. Gruesome is fun, not awful.
Though certainly for too long in the past people used to be taught to be afraid of "witches" and not those who burned them alive.
Admittedly, I think if we revived publicly torturing people to death, it would attract considerable popular support, so long as the victims were detested.
It's something I would expect the 6.30 Weds R4 comedy show to make a joke of and the studio audience to laugh like drains.
Odd time for comedy, 6.30 on a Wednesday.
Your kidding, right? It is the slot for "new" and out there and sometimes in there radio comedy.
Are you from round these parts?
I do listen to R4 but I've never checked that one out. I don't associate R4 with comedy tbh. Sounds like I might be missing a trick.
Where Alan Partridge got his first break. Aha!
...and Count Arthur Strong, although I doubt anyone could label that as comedy.
There are some great bbc R4 comedy things on sounds but you have to search them out.
Old Harry’s game by Andy Hamilton is amusing and clever. Bleak Expectations was probably my favourite comedy programme tv or radio but sadly not on sounds right now.
“The day today” and as you said Alan Partridge were great.
There are some good, sometimes seriously good like League of Gentlemen programmes that started there but you have to cut through a lot of dross.
The worst things are the topical comedy programmes the last few years.
"WILL THE TORIES EVER GET OVER KWARTENG’S BUDGET?" @MikeSmithson asks
'Ever?' yes
'When?' It will take a generation.
This is Black Wednesday only much, much, worse. Instead of 5 years out there's now 2 max and unlike 1997 the economy is in dire straits.
Bet against Labour winning an outright majority and you may as well be throwing your tenners on the fire. Well that's one way of heating the home.
At the moment I’d say Labour largest party is by far the most plausible outcome. But the jury is still out on whether there’ll be an overall majority. Overturning an 80 seat majority and building a majority yourself is a significant task. They can certainly do it but it’s far from a foregone conclusion.
Yes - I meant more in historical terms but for Venstre it's the worst result since the 1980s.
Update - 92% counted and it's 86-73 with 16 for the Moderates. We mustn't forget the four seats allocated to the Faeroes and Greenland. The former split equally with one seats won by the Union party which backs the centre-right and the other by the Social Democrats. We then have the Greenland seats which last time went one to the Social Democrats and one to a democratic socialist party.
I suppose if you add the three centre-left and left seats to the 86 you'd have 89 out of 179 so not quite a majority but perhaps enough for Frederiksen to continue without the Moderates - we'll see.
It's probably bad form to quote your own contribution but this was my last and extraordinarily prescient piece from Danish election night last evening.
What I hadn't bargained for was the Social Democrats making a second gain to end up on 50 seats and thus, with their allies, reaching 90 and a majority, albeit a pretty skinny majority (one to be precise).
Friday will see the start of the Government formation negotiations known (if I've translated it correctly) as the Queen's Round as the Monarchy invites the political leaders to begin the process of talks about creating a Government with a majority in the new Folketing.
To round up the vote shares, the centre left got 48% and the centre right 41.1% with the Moderates polling 9.3% putting them in third place overall.
Apparently the Moderates leader, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, in a desperate attempt to prevent a centre-left majority, called one of the Greenland members and asked her to jump ship to the blue block but as she represents the democratic socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit which as we all know means "community of the people" she told Rasmussen where to get off.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen may have her majority and 50 of her own party in the centre left bloc but many of the other 40 are well to the left of the Social Democrats and would run a mile if she attempted to form a broad based centrist government with the Moderates or anyone else.
Add the Moderates and Venstre together and you get 39 seats which would mean a coalition with the Social Democrats would have 89 seats and technically be a minority but in fact it seems unlikely the other parties would ever combine to defeat the Government. That may yet be Rasmussen's card but his hand is a lot weaker than it seemed at this time yesterday evening.
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Good luck. I'm sure you will have a good time. I've never had a bad time in Ireland, or among the Irish anywhere.
You haven’t been to the rougher bits of Dublin, then
It gets seriously nasty
Why would I have done? I'm sure Lost Password isn't either - he says he's going to Cork where I am sure he will have a great time. I have fond memories of a night out in Mill Street where the dance floor would occasionally get disrupted by the local young farmers punching each other in the face, and dispite that there was a cracking and very friendly atmosphere.
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Good luck. I'm sure you will have a good time. I've never had a bad time in Ireland, or among the Irish anywhere.
You haven’t been to the rougher bits of Dublin, then
It gets seriously nasty
A friend of mine once walked into a pub in a rough area of Dublin and ordered an Irish Car Bomb.
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
It is fun, so long as its fake.
That's why we just had Halloween. Its fun. Gruesome is fun, not awful.
Though certainly for too long in the past people used to be taught to be afraid of "witches" and not those who burned them alive.
Admittedly, I think if we revived publicly torturing people to death, it would attract considerable popular support, so long as the victims were detested.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
For now, on current polls they will almost all go back to Labour even if Sunak does save much of the blue wall.
In opposition therefore expect the Tories to become more NIMBY in terms of building in the greenbelt as bluewall Home counties MPs are again the majority of the party and with the NIMBY LDs the main threat to them. A Starmer Labour government meanwhile would build large numbers of new homes to take home ownership from 65% to 70%
No, young HY, Wrong as usual. The Lib Dems are not against building houses. But they are against building the wrong sort of houses in the wrong places for the wrong sort of people.
In theory, perhaps. In practice, they pander to NIMBYs to get votes.
As they did in Chesham and Amersham.
I believe the LibDems are all in favour of housing being built. Just not here.
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Good luck. I'm sure you will have a good time. I've never had a bad time in Ireland, or among the Irish anywhere.
You haven’t been to the rougher bits of Dublin, then
It gets seriously nasty
A friend of mine once walked into a pub in a rough area of Dublin and ordered an Irish Car Bomb.
The silence was truly defeaning.
I have no clue how he got out alive.
Or even shinfeaning.
It wasn't the name, it's the utter shitness of the drink. It makes no sense. Boilermakers yes, cream no.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
For now, on current polls they will almost all go back to Labour even if Sunak does save much of the blue wall.
In opposition therefore expect the Tories to become more NIMBY in terms of building in the greenbelt as bluewall Home counties MPs are again the majority of the party and with the NIMBY LDs the main threat to them. A Starmer Labour government meanwhile would build large numbers of new homes to take home ownership from 65% to 70%
No, young HY, Wrong as usual. The Lib Dems are not against building houses. But they are against building the wrong sort of houses in the wrong places for the wrong sort of people.
In theory, perhaps. In practice, they pander to NIMBYs to get votes.
As they did in Chesham and Amersham.
I believe the LibDems are all in favour of housing being built. Just not here.
Get local enough and that's the case for any party, believe me. It's the one thing that unites them. The LDs just make more of a play of it as a national party.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
For now, on current polls they will almost all go back to Labour even if Sunak does save much of the blue wall.
In opposition therefore expect the Tories to become more NIMBY in terms of building in the greenbelt as bluewall Home counties MPs are again the majority of the party and with the NIMBY LDs the main threat to them. A Starmer Labour government meanwhile would build large numbers of new homes to take home ownership from 65% to 70%
No, young HY, Wrong as usual. The Lib Dems are not against building houses. But they are against building the wrong sort of houses in the wrong places for the wrong sort of people.
In theory, perhaps. In practice, they pander to NIMBYs to get votes.
As they did in Chesham and Amersham.
I believe the LibDems are all in favour of housing being built. Just not here.
This is a joke which has now gone full circle because the local mouth breathing fraternity was unable to recognise the joke 3 posts back.
Unless Cortez is the reincarnation of Harry Reid...
The Dems can hold Nevada if, and only if, they can motivate lots of women to come out and vote on the issue of abortion.
That's perfectly possible: look at the Kansas result, to see that people really do care. But it does require the Dems to make the election an abortion referendum.
I'm coming to the conclusion where this, this will be the year where the Dems do not outperform their polling by enough and lose in Nevada
The problem for the Democrats is that if they lose Nevada they almost certainly lose control of the senate.
Senate elections are more atomized than we instinctively think.
So, Susan Collins wins in a Biden Blue state in a year where the Dems flip both Georgia Senate seats.
I could easily see a scenario where Dems lose Nevada but (just and not by Betfair Rules) retaining the Senate.
If the Dems gain Pennsylvania and hold Georgia and Arizona, then - yes - it's possible.
But I suspect that either the polls are understating the Republicans by 3-4%, in which case they win AZ, NV, GA and hold PA. Or it's the other way around, and the Dems hold all their marginal seats and grab PA.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
I believe @Leon has announced plans to travel there, which has sparked an exodus.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
I believe @Leon has announced plans to travel there, which has sparked an exodus.
For true shits and giggles: if they joined the EU and we re-joined.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
So 82% of LD seats have above average home ownership levels too.
Yes we need more affordable housing, especially in brownbelt areas of London where home ownership is at its lowest and Labour has gained lots of former Conservative seats.
Build all over the greenbelt however and you will see lots of formerly safe Conservative seats like Chesham and Amersham go Liberal Democrat
To be honest once the Democrats lose the House, almost certain, it makes little difference whether the Democrats win 50 or 49 Senate seats.
Biden still has to compromise with the GOP either way to get his budget etc through Congress.
Only difference it might make is on approval of foreign treaties and getting some SC justices he proposes approved, so they might need to be a bit more moderate and less liberal.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
and are also no slouches when it comes to organ harvesting. Lovely blokes.
Albania's great. Great mountainous scenery, friendly people, great food and wine, Ottoman architecture and that Hoxha-ist cold war backstory. But no money. More Albanians live outside the country than in. I was a bit worried about safety given their reputation in Western Europe, but it seemed very safe, I think most of the criminals have left for richer pickings elsewhere
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
To be honest once the Democrats lose the House, almost certain, it makes little difference whether the Democrats win 50 or 49 Senate seats.
Biden still has to compromise with the GOP either way to get his budget etc through Congress.
Only difference it might make is on approval of foreign treaties and getting some SC justices he proposes approved, so they might need to be a bit more moderate and less liberal.
If Biden loses the senate, he’s got zero chance of appointing a justice before the next election. McConnell won’t let him.
He is however unlikely to be in a position to need to. None of them look to be about to shuffle off this mortal coil, and there is zero chance of a liberal justice like Sotomayor retiring if there are question marks over a replacement.
Unless Cortez is the reincarnation of Harry Reid...
The Dems can hold Nevada if, and only if, they can motivate lots of women to come out and vote on the issue of abortion.
That's perfectly possible: look at the Kansas result, to see that people really do care. But it does require the Dems to make the election an abortion referendum.
It could be the Dobbs decision might have come too early in the year and the media has been mostly talking about the economy now .
If they do exit polls for these mid-terms an early indication will be the make up of the electorate . The Dems as you suggested need woman to make up an ever bigger proportion of voters .
To be honest once the Democrats lose the House, almost certain, it makes little difference whether the Democrats win 50 or 49 Senate seats.
Biden still has to compromise with the GOP either way to get his budget etc through Congress.
Only difference it might make is on approval of foreign treaties and getting some SC justices he proposes approved, so they might need to be a bit more moderate and less liberal.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
To be honest once the Democrats lose the House, almost certain, it makes little difference whether the Democrats win 50 or 49 Senate seats.
Biden still has to compromise with the GOP either way to get his budget etc through Congress.
Only difference it might make is on approval of foreign treaties and getting some SC justices he proposes approved, so they might need to be a bit more moderate and less liberal.
That was a betting post, not a political one.
But betting posts advising betting on what other punters rate as most likely is just following the market.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
and are also no slouches when it comes to organ harvesting. Lovely blokes.
Albania's great. Great mountainous scenery, friendly people, great food and wine, Ottoman architecture and that Hoxha-ist cold war backstory. But no money. More Albanians live outside the country than in. I was a bit worried about safety given their reputation in Western Europe, but it seemed very safe, I think most of the criminals have left for richer pickings elsewhere
Afiak the 'dial-a-deal' drugs business here in Glasgow is Albanian-run now.
That thread someone posted on the last thread about Albanian asylum seekers..
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
From what are Albanians claiming asylum? I'm not saying I'd want to live there, but it is not ravaged by war, natural disasters or genocidal dictators. Surely once they're identified by Albanian it shoud be relatively easy to send them back (or to Rwanda, if that is preferred).
and are also no slouches when it comes to organ harvesting. Lovely blokes.
Albania's great. Great mountainous scenery, friendly people, great food and wine, Ottoman architecture and that Hoxha-ist cold war backstory. But no money. More Albanians live outside the country than in. I was a bit worried about safety given their reputation in Western Europe, but it seemed very safe, I think most of the criminals have left for richer pickings elsewhere
Pennsylvania looks like being very close and because of state laws the mail in votes will be counted later . This means theres likely to be the same drama as in 2020.
The Dems have a huge lead in mail in votes by 70 to 20 over the GOP.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
To be honest once the Democrats lose the House, almost certain, it makes little difference whether the Democrats win 50 or 49 Senate seats.
Biden still has to compromise with the GOP either way to get his budget etc through Congress.
Only difference it might make is on approval of foreign treaties and getting some SC justices he proposes approved, so they might need to be a bit more moderate and less liberal.
That was a betting post, not a political one.
But betting posts advising betting on what other punters rate as most likely is just following the market.
FWIW I've bet on 50 GOP seats.
Were I not in America, I would be selling Republicans on 50 and 51 seats. Basically, I'd be betting on the polls being out by 3-4% in one direction or another. Just that I don't know which way.
I think I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue is still my favourite R4 comedy show
Really like David Mitchell's The Unbelievable Truth too
+1, +1 and Cabin Pressure was remarkably good.
I've heard of Cabin Pressure but haven't listened to it
I think I'll have to, given your +1s!
It's _very _ good. So I will also +1 in it's favour. Occurred to me at the time of broadcast that it could be pretty cheap to do as a TV show, but no sign.
About to cross the Irish border. After nearly fifteen years together my wife has finally prised me away from Britain and we're heading to her native County Cork. Not sure what it will be like to be an immigrant. The world doesn't seem overly welcoming to them at the moment.
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Good luck. I'm sure you will have a good time. I've never had a bad time in Ireland, or among the Irish anywhere.
You haven’t been to the rougher bits of Dublin, then
It gets seriously nasty
Why would I have done? I'm sure Lost Password isn't either - he says he's going to Cork where I am sure he will have a great time. I have fond memories of a night out in Mill Street where the dance floor would occasionally get disrupted by the local young farmers punching each other in the face, and dispite that there was a cracking and very friendly atmosphere.
People are people everywhere. Mostly they're fine, but some of them are twits. There's a story about a farmer round my wife's family's area who sold someone a house - but not the access to it. They sold that to them separately afterwards for a special price.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
No, it says 9% of voters included inheritance tax in the top three taxes they want held constant.
Obviously people want taxes on other, higher-income people to go up, though they also love the public services those people pay for by building businesses in the UK or working in jobs that are created in the UK, so it's a bit of a bind.
Belgium has a big welfare state by taxing ordinary people at 30% from euro one. The average Brit wants to pay something like 10%, so of course they get less stuff from government.
Anyone saying "no" should explain what they mean (or they could mean almost anything).
Burning effigies of anyone is not that great; in the case of Guy Fawkes it looks a bit like celebrating his torture and execution, but that's sort of OK because he was RC. It's like awful things like the London Dungeon, Ooooh the kids will love it because it's so *gruesome*. Torturing people to death isn't funny.
But kids (and many adults) find it very amusing. My teachers always got a rapturous response from the classroom, when telling us about gruesome medieval and early modern executions (the demise of Hugh de Spenser the Younger, I recall, caused particular merriment).
Had his penis cut off for being gay.
great LOLs.
No he didn't.
The charges against him were High Treason, robbery, making the King "ride in arms against the peers of the realm and others of his faithful liegemen, to destroy and disinherit them contrary to Magna Carta", murder of a couple of dozen nobles and waging a false war against Scotland.
He was hung, drawn and quartered which was the usual punishment for nobles and other notables found guilty of treason. That included having his genitals cut off and then his innards removed whilst he was still alive. It was practiced on many people and had nothing to do with him being gay. The same punishment was meted out to William Wallace and many other nobles over the next several hundred years.
Froissart says he was de-penised, and one can see it happening as an improv not in the original script. Anyway I am guessing that even if it is incorrect, that's the version which had @Sean_F's classmates in stitches
De-penising was a standard part of being Hung, Drawn and Quartered. For Kinabalu'a sake I won't go into more detail but it was a pretty formulaic, if grizzly, way of executing someone
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
No, it says 9% of voters included inheritance tax in the top three taxes they want held constant.
Obviously people want taxes on other, higher-income people to go up, though they also love the public services those people pay for by building businesses in the UK or working in jobs that are created in the UK, so it's a bit of a bind.
Belgium has a big welfare state by taxing ordinary people at 30% from euro one. The average Brit wants to pay something like 10%, so of course they get less stuff from government.
So does Sweden have a big welfare state but also no inheritance tax at all.
There are also examples in Europe of lower tax, lower spend nations than the UK eg Switzerland
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
No, it says 9% of voters included inheritance tax in the top three taxes they want held constant.
Obviously people want taxes on other, higher-income people to go up, though they also love the public services those people pay for by building businesses in the UK or working in jobs that are created in the UK, so it's a bit of a bind.
Belgium has a big welfare state by taxing ordinary people at 30% from euro one. The average Brit wants to pay something like 10%, so of course they get less stuff from government.
So does Sweden have a big welfare state but also no inheritance tax at all.
There are also examples in Europe of lower tax, lower spend nations than the UK eg Switzerland
There are countries which eat dog, but that doesn't mean it would go down well in Epping High Street.
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
That's nonsense. Most families don't have IHT to worry about.
Thanks in large part to Osborne's IHT tax cut for married couples raising their threshold up to £1 million, given the average UK property price is now £367,760 with Rightmove, over the £325,000 IHT threshold
'Levelling up' is dangerous ground for Sunak, given that video of him trumpeting unlevelling up the already high...
That’s not actually what he was saying in the video. But Labour had artfully cut the video to mislead.
He was saying that all deprived areas need support - including deprived rural areas in Kent - not just deprived urban areas
The problem was not him rightly pointing to pockets of deprived rural areas. The probem was that he claimed he had taken money from genuinely shonky areas in the north to give to pockets of deprived rural areas.
Nobody is denying that rural places can't hide poverty. But you can't divert money from places already promised the cash. Or in practice what it's meant is that money has gone to posh Tory areas to sort the small bit that isn't quite as posh as the rest whilst the scum area gets little or nothing.
Stockton on Tees seeing levelling up money spent in Yarm as a prime example. Yes, there are bits of Yarm not as nice as the rest. But relatively these areas are fine - certainly a lot better than chunks of town centre or Newtown wards.
Why do the Tories still have a minister for levelling up? Bottom line up front, Boris Johnson’s glib election promise “we will level up” is undeliverable bollocks.
Once you fathom out the impossible to fathom out “what exactly does it mean? Level up the north to the level of the south? But bits of the south are just as run down as bits of the north and vice versa? And switch to how to do it anyway to delivery something at least, even though you don’t really understand what it means, you realise it’s not about funnelling existing money from this to that, you will just end up hated and stuck in the 20s in the polling, it has to be new money, given to deserving places, fairly, and so that Tiverton in Blue Wall can’t get upset they are just as deserving and being cheated.
After all that, are you now levelling up? Of course not, because it is just pretend the ancient mismatch in scale and wealth between London and the secondary cities their regions can ever be levelled, it always was empty unachievable Johnsonian electioneering bollocks.
Why? Because: (a) Red Wall voters have noticed they are still relatively / actually poor (b) Brexit promised them resources and riches (c) Tories promised them definitely resources and riches (d) They won't take no for an answer
Either this government produces a rabbit out of the hat or the Tory 2019 first timers depart.
(A) is wrong.
Red Wall Tory voters are typically home owners, not impoverished people awaiting resources and riches.
Thanks to the relatively huge success in building new homes up here, compared to the rest of the country, the Red Wall has seen much more people getting on the property ladder rather than the reverse happening as in much of the country.
That's the real reason the non-metropolitan North has been swinging Tory while the South is swinging against the Tories. Because voters here have their own deeds to their very own Barratt Home and similar, rather than rental bills.
(a) is not wrong. A is the reason why we have seen a clearout of Labour councils and Labour MPs in Labour since the Danelaw areas. Try living in the red wall for a while and you will see what they are so upset about./
Incidentally, it wouldn't be a good idea for the Tories to listen to you. Telling people that their lived experience is wrong never works.
Try living in the red wall for a while? Excuse me, I do live in the Red Wall, you don't.
There is new housing estates all over the place. You know, all those homes you keep complaining about because you want to excuse the NIMBY scum? All those new homes have voters.
The Red Wall fell because of construction, because the likes of Barratt etc got people on the property ladder, NOT because poor people suddenly became fed up of Labour not doing anything for them.
You're in Birchwood aren't you? Cheshire daaaaarling.
I've moved around a bit, I'd rather not say where I live if you don't mind, but Birchwood is not a bad example. Warrington North is a safe Labour seat, or used to be, like much of the North West its seen massive construction recently and its trended away from Labour as the share of owner occupier voters in the constituency has risen.
Just like the neighbouring constituency of Leigh. What you'd think of as Leigh is still just as grotty terraced homes as it always was, but its surrounded by new estates of semi-detached homes with gardens and driveways for 2 parking spaces each.
Drive around the new estates of Leigh, versus the old streets of Leigh, and its hardly a surprise voting levels have changed. The voting is changing not because people are suddenly fed up of Labour, but because Leigh itself, much of the North itself, is changing. The houses people are living in - and increasingly owning - are not the same homes that existed thirty years ago.
And constituencies that were predominantly owner occupied in the past, that are now unaffordable and NIMBYs are blocking construction, are seeing trends away from the Tories.
Its housing, stupid.
Again again, I hope your Tory friends go and argue your points on the doorstep. They will be annihilated.
I don't think Bart is presenting an argument why people in Warrington North or Leigh SHOULD vote Tory - he is saying that where there has been a long term shift to owner occupation, especially of new builds - such as Warrington North, Leigh, Blyth, Rother Valley, and dozens of others - there has been a long term shift to the Tories. This seems inarguable to me. I also agree with the implication that the Tories would be well served to try to maximise the number of owner occupiers.
Bingo. You've nailed it completely.
Essentially Britain votes by housing. Renters as a class tend to vote Labour. Owned outright tend to vote Tory. Owned with a mortgage, are the swing voters, who in recent years have voted Tory but in Blair's time voted Labour.
In much of the country renting has become more common, but in parts of the North owner occupiers have become more common due to vast amounts of new builds. That has meant more Tory voters, but since those voters have mortgages they're not safe Tory.
The idea that the North swung Tory because voters were pissed off and angry misses the transformation in housing that has happened. Drive around the North outside the cities, and yes if you're here you're driving to get around, and there has been major new housing developments and those developments lead to new owner occupiers which changes how people think about voting.
There have been suggestions of this voting-by-housing-tenure hypothesis before. It is interesting and believable, but I don't know of studies that examine it carefully. Do you?
I've seen many studies on it before, none to hand, but this excellent chart is in the article I linked to above and sums it up well.
The vast construction in the Red Wall, one of the only places in the country where there has been a semi-reasonable amount of construction, has led to home ownership rates here moving from Labour levels to Tory levels. The seats then swung accordingly.
Home ownership and GE2019 As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
That's a bit jarring, seeing "scum" affixed to NIMBYs. Don't think I've ever come across it before. Really quite unusual.
When the world owes you a 5 bed detached des res, waiting to collect can get to you.
Especially if deleting the pampering of Tory-approved standard nuclear families under the current IHT regulations, and imposing wealth tax on landed property, are active subjects for discussion to remedy the chaos of the last few years.
Only 9% of voters want IHT to rise, the lowest of any tax.
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
No, it says 9% of voters included inheritance tax in the top three taxes they want held constant.
Obviously people want taxes on other, higher-income people to go up, though they also love the public services those people pay for by building businesses in the UK or working in jobs that are created in the UK, so it's a bit of a bind.
Belgium has a big welfare state by taxing ordinary people at 30% from euro one. The average Brit wants to pay something like 10%, so of course they get less stuff from government.
So does Sweden have a big welfare state but also no inheritance tax at all.
There are also examples in Europe of lower tax, lower spend nations than the UK eg Switzerland
In fact, the main reason you are worried about IHT is that your Topry voters will be bribed with our money so they don't have to spend their own savings on looking after themselves. Using that purpose for savings is what ordinary self-respecting civilised non-selfish citizens used to.
Comments
@lmharpin
Spoken to two Tory MPs this afternoon who seemed quite deflated by Rishi Sunak's performance at #PMQs.
"Starmer walked all over him," said one.
https://twitter.com/lmharpin/status/1587846614693052416
It is genuinely hard to gauge these things. I thought SKS was the better, sure, but the mehness of the whole thing was its outstanding characteristic.
"I'm like 95 per cent he's going to run," said Reince Priebus, Trump's former White House chief of staff."
Telegraph live US blog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6dzAyee1w
It may originate in large part in the predominance of right-handedness, but in any case it's a cinematic convention now. Doing it the other way round looks weird.
https://nofilmschool.com/2016/02/left-or-right-why-characters-lateral-movement-screen-matters-film
He also seems to be trying too hard to emulate Boris. He needn’t. I thought he was good in the leadership debates when we answered seriously and directly and delivered hard truths. Now he seems to want to deflect and obfuscate.
Lesson to future time travellers who want to "explore" this time period: never ever accept a job offer from Henry VIII.
"WILL THE TORIES EVER GET OVER KWARTENG’S BUDGET?" @MikeSmithson asks
'Ever?' yes
'When?' It will take a generation.
This is Black Wednesday only much, much, worse. Instead of 5 years out there's now 2 max and unlike 1997 the economy is in dire straits.
Bet against Labour winning an outright majority and you may as well be throwing your tenners on the fire. Well that's one way of heating the home.
Not to mention American influences that arrive in different ways?
Tonight on BBC 2:
https://www.radiotimes.com/programme/b-k9ufog/first-contact-an-alien-encounter/
...and Count Arthur Strong, although I doubt anyone could label that as comedy.
It's absurd
It says that Albanians still make up just a "small minority" of the total
They're ONE IN SIX
Of all the asylum seekers from all of the world coming to this country
From a country of fewer than three million people
A country that's one thousand five hundred miles away
That's an ENORMOUS minority
They should be less than one percent of asylum seekers in this country, especially since they have freedom to go anywhere in the EU without a dangerous boat crossing
But at least I'm moving for positive rather than negative reasons. I don't feel like I've been driven out.
Home ownership and GE2019
As in previous years, homeowners were more likely to vote Conservative in the 2019 election. According to Ipsos MORI’s figures, 57% of voters who owned their home outright voted Conservative, as did 43% of people with mortgages. By contrast, 45% of social renters and 46% of private renters voted Labour.
The 2011 Census tells us how many homeowners were in each constituency. At the time, around 64% of UK households owned their home, either outright or with a mortgage. 315 of the Conservatives’ 365 seats (86%) had home ownership levels above this average, compared with 53 of Labour’s 202 seats (26%). Nine of the Lib Dems’ 11 seats had above-average home ownership levels (82%).
86% above average ownership for Tories, 26% for Labour.
Home ownership is far and away what affects voting in this country. NIMBY scum like our Essicks Massiv that wants to invade Scotland, or the first son of Abraham, are doing their level best to discourage people from voting Tory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_Albania
and are also no slouches when it comes to organ harvesting. Lovely blokes.
It gets seriously nasty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pXyRifZMzI
I am not persuaded that Tory policies are directed to my advantage, and not to those with a order of magnitude more affluence.
Old Harry’s game by Andy Hamilton is amusing and clever. Bleak Expectations was probably my favourite comedy programme tv or radio but sadly not on sounds right now.
“The day today” and as you said Alan Partridge were great.
There are some good, sometimes seriously good like League of Gentlemen programmes that started there but you have to cut through a lot of dross.
The worst things are the topical comedy programmes the last few years.
What I hadn't bargained for was the Social Democrats making a second gain to end up on 50 seats and thus, with their allies, reaching 90 and a majority, albeit a pretty skinny majority (one to be precise).
Friday will see the start of the Government formation negotiations known (if I've translated it correctly) as the Queen's Round as the Monarchy invites the political leaders to begin the process of talks about creating a Government with a majority in the new Folketing.
To round up the vote shares, the centre left got 48% and the centre right 41.1% with the Moderates polling 9.3% putting them in third place overall.
Apparently the Moderates leader, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, in a desperate attempt to prevent a centre-left majority, called one of the Greenland members and asked her to jump ship to the blue block but as she represents the democratic socialist Inuit Ataqatigiit which as we all know means "community of the people" she told Rasmussen where to get off.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen may have her majority and 50 of her own party in the centre left bloc but many of the other 40 are well to the left of the Social Democrats and would run a mile if she attempted to form a broad based centrist government with the Moderates or anyone else.
Add the Moderates and Venstre together and you get 39 seats which would mean a coalition with the Social Democrats would have 89 seats and technically be a minority but in fact it seems unlikely the other parties would ever combine to defeat the Government. That may yet be Rasmussen's card but his hand is a lot weaker than it seemed at this time yesterday evening.
The silence was truly defeaning.
I have no clue how he got out alive.
If you like that sort of thing The Now Show on radio 4 is Punt and Dennis still doing the same stuff.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.179676748
Really like David Mitchell's The Unbelievable Truth too
So, Susan Collins wins in a Biden Blue state in a year where the Dems flip both Georgia Senate seats.
I could easily see a scenario where Dems lose Nevada but (just and not by Betfair Rules) retaining the Senate.
I hope not because (1) they need to be taught a sharp lesson and (2) they don't deserve to.
It wasn't the name, it's the utter shitness of the drink. It makes no sense. Boilermakers yes, cream no.
Can't say I was blown over by the experience.
That's perfectly possible: look at the Kansas result, to see that people really do care. But it does require the Dems to make the election an abortion referendum.
But I suspect that either the polls are understating the Republicans by 3-4%, in which case they win AZ, NV, GA and hold PA. Or it's the other way around, and the Dems hold all their marginal seats and grab PA.
I think I'll have to, given your +1s!
Well, you can fill in the rest..
Yes we need more affordable housing, especially in brownbelt areas of London where home ownership is at its lowest and Labour has gained lots of former Conservative seats.
Build all over the greenbelt however and you will see lots of formerly safe Conservative seats like Chesham and Amersham go Liberal Democrat
Biden still has to compromise with the GOP either way to get his budget etc through Congress.
Only difference it might make is on approval of foreign treaties and getting some SC justices he proposes approved, so they might need to be a bit more moderate and less liberal.
He is however unlikely to be in a position to need to. None of them look to be about to shuffle off this mortal coil, and there is zero chance of a liberal justice like Sotomayor retiring if there are question marks over a replacement.
If they do exit polls for these mid-terms an early indication will be the make up of the electorate . The Dems as you suggested need woman to make up an ever bigger proportion of voters .
Though yes wealth taxes on million pound plus properties might not be too unpopular if Labour proposes them (outside of a few central London Labour target seats like Kensington and Cities of London and Westminster)
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1587413703930036224?s=20&t=i3gJyCy53EC3uP7eG4lANg
FWIW I've bet on 50 GOP seats.
The Dems have a huge lead in mail in votes by 70 to 20 over the GOP.
"Glasgow City Council faces £119m budget shortfall as inflation soars"
A sign of what's to come across the country I guess.
Obviously people want taxes on other, higher-income people to go up, though they also love the public services those people pay for by building businesses in the UK or working in jobs that are created in the UK, so it's a bit of a bind.
Belgium has a big welfare state by taxing ordinary people at 30% from euro one. The average Brit wants to pay something like 10%, so of course they get less stuff from government.
I've just found a really good, really old one, from 2010
Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeroes
Does anyone know them?
There are also examples in Europe of lower tax, lower spend nations than the UK eg Switzerland
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/content/uploads/2022/09/Rightmove-HPI-26th-September-2022-Final.pdf