Discussion on landlordism from the previous thread. Here is an example of a landlord's monthly income flow. All numbers £ pcm. Rent 1200 To freeholder (service charge) 125 To taxman 355 To bank 520 (excluding repayment of principal) To landlord 200. The landlord just had to install a new boiler that cost almost three years worth of those 200 net monthly payments. Now this landlord perhaps isn't typical as the rent has been set below market rates as the tenants are refugees and the landlord's plan is to more or less break even (in reality make a small loss most likely). But even if the landlord had set a market rent of eg 1500 then the net monthly flows before any repair bills etc would be 375 with almost 500 going to the taxman. This landlord put £140k of equity into the purchase implying a post tax ROE of 3.2% at market rents, assuming zero repair costs, which doesn't seem especially high.
It isn't high. BTL is shit. I've been saying this for years but even more so now.
Property upkeep is always underestimated for one thing, both routine and as caused by the tenant. Risk of non payment of rent = worry and hassle, CGT liability on sale, CGT liability (disgracefully) takes no account of indexation for inflation (like it used to), penalty stamp duty rates, higher mortgage interest rate and arrangement fees (usually), income tax on any profit made, illiquid (you can't sell part of a house).
WTF people do it rather than simply buying a property REIT is beyond me (Or, alternatively, just buy shares in a property developer or two.).
It works if there is no mortgage. A house is inflation proof, tangible and not likely to disappear in a puff of financial engineering.
How many landlords don't have a mortgage
I recon you'd be surprised.
The original plan for BTL was that you pay off the mortgage of your BTL, just when you are ready to retire.
The rental rate generally is that set by the cost of a property with paper on it - most commercial letting businesses are highly leveraged.
So you would have a nice profit margin for your pension.
Of course, many people haven’t paid off their properties - using them as piggy banks…
I’m always interested by the thrashing around. There is always a pot of properties - first flats, second homes, foreigner owned flats - if only we could just take them back and solve the housing crisis in one blow!
It’s a varietal of the search for the Pot of Rich Peoples Gold - the one where we can double spending on the NHS at no cost or pain to anyone we don’t hate….
And equally rubbish. We need millions of properties. And nearly all the properties in the U.K. are already full of people. So we need to build more.
Consider - Cornwall has 30k second homes and lettings. Out of 250k properties. Is building another 50k impossible? Why?
Cornwall could do with replicating what some Mediterranean holiday islands and coastlines have done: build some really good, well serviced communities inland on the hills. Some great examples in Andalusia. They’ll attract a handful of second home owners but most residents will be local. Part of the problem with Cornwall is the housing stock outside the pretty fishing villages is awful. Grey, much of it scarcely better than army barracks.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
Definitely worth doing if either of you is near retirement & is short of enough years to meet the "gets full state pension" threshold.
I asked my accountant if I should top up my state pension contributions (there's a six year gap from my student days).
His answer was 'no' as I have sixteen years banked and in the next thirty years enough of them should hit the threshold that I should comfortably qualify anyway whatever restraints are placed on it. And if it's abolished then I've wasted the money.
Just as well I followed his advice given things got a bit tight in December.
But I can see it would be a different calculation if I were sixty.
I'm sure the fa has it right but isn't this is assuming good health, why not pay the 6 and consider it a cheap insurance policy? Helps if you find a pot of gold and want to retire earlier too!
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
I missed this tip. Is this just for those with incomplete NI contribution history?
Do they advise you when you call them?
You can get an exact figure from them as to what it will cost to buy back past years (it varies because you might have partial years in the past I think?) when you call, but they won’t advise you whether you should pay or not IIRC.
If you have Government Gateway set up you can check what you are entitled to in seconds. I just did it. Link below. It says I am already at maximum £185.15 pw.
Does this mean this top-up business doesn't apply to me?
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
Definitely worth doing if either of you is near retirement & is short of enough years to meet the "gets full state pension" threshold.
I asked my accountant if I should top up my state pension contributions (there's a six year gap from my student days).
His answer was 'no' as I have sixteen years banked and in the next thirty years enough of them should hit the threshold that I should comfortably qualify anyway whatever restraints are placed on it. And if it's abolished then I've wasted the money.
Just as well I followed his advice given things got a bit tight in December.
But I can see it would be a different calculation if I were sixty.
I'm sure the fa has it right but isn't this is assuming good health, why not pay the 6 and consider it a cheap insurance policy? Helps if you find a pot of gold and want to retire earlier too!
In the latter case, I can just top them up from year to year anyway though.
In the former case, yes I see the point but you are forgetting I already have a teacher pension that I could claim early if necessary.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
Definitely worth doing if either of you is near retirement & is short of enough years to meet the "gets full state pension" threshold.
I asked my accountant if I should top up my state pension contributions (there's a six year gap from my student days).
His answer was 'no' as I have sixteen years banked and in the next thirty years enough of them should hit the threshold that I should comfortably qualify anyway whatever restraints are placed on it. And if it's abolished then I've wasted the money.
Just as well I followed his advice given things got a bit tight in December.
But I can see it would be a different calculation if I were sixty.
I'm sure the fa has it right but isn't this is assuming good health, why not pay the 6 and consider it a cheap insurance policy? Helps if you find a pot of gold and want to retire earlier too!
Other point is whether any of the years are incomplete so you don't need a lot of extra money to complete them. They go from FY end to FY end, and it's quite easy to underpay by a little.
With all this aftertiming here's an actual tip on here from 2 November:
"Just an observation, BDEV is down 50% YTD. Seems worth a punt in a 5-10 year view. I have bought some mainly to wind up Barty, because this makes me the good guy in his world picture and undermines his bizarre delusion that I am NIMBY scum."
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
That’s one of Steve Webb’s regular tips. An outlay of about £800 for each year of blank NI contributions, giving you an extra 1/35 of full state pension, assuming you live long enough to start getting it.
I always thought that Sunak's wealth was going to be a much bigger issue for him than it was for Cameron. And so it has transpired.
The Camerons have less than 10% of the net worth of the Sunaks.
Cameron is only posher than Sunak in the sense he went to Eton not Winchester
Cameron is posher than Sunak because his wife is an aristocrat and he is related to the Royal family. This is Sunak's problem - people in the UK are more comfortable with wealth if it is old money.
No, I don't agree there. It was Cameron who was comfortable with his own wealth, and Sunak who seems uncomfortable with his, not the people around them.
As I've said before, I think Sunak probably experienced a lot of snobbery in that very posh school, due to his modest background (not his race). There must be at least a part of him that fist bumps the air when he's described as an out of touch elitist. 'Made it!'
He wouldn’t have got a lot of snobbery, there would have been the odd twat who might make themself feel better on a bad day by handing him a note and asking his mum to hurry up with the prescription but generally it wasn’t a place where money or titles mattered, the competition was firstly academic, secondly sporting and thirdly, when older, social re girls and partying. Actually that’s wrong first was partying and girls for kudos.
Wealth and background weren’t overly important as if you had got in you were measured on your self and what you made of yourself. A bit of ribbing at “poor scholars” but only because it made yourself feel better about them being brighter than you!
Thanks - that's an interesting insight. I would however introduce a note of caution that 'a bit of ribbing' may not seem that way to the ribbee.
The difference at that time between, for example Eton and Winchester, was that to get into Winchester it was pure academic competition to get in so it didn’t matter how wealthy or connected you were if you couldn’t pass entrance then you weren’t getting in so you were all effectively peers in an important way so that academic ability was the key metric not status.
Obviously if you didn’t get financial assistance then it didn’t matter how clever you were as you couldn’t afford it but it was a good leveller that, at your prep school you might have been Lord Social of Chelsea but it didn’t really mean shit at Winchester as there was always someone more intelligent and nobody gave a monkey’s really about your social status. Maybe why Winchester is lower key as more geeky than Eton, Harrow and Westminster and not so tied to the social whirl.
This probably explains Sunak being a bit embarrassed or uncomfortable about the wealth question as it’s likely not been a key driver to his self identity.
So diplomatically put. Those from landed families or whose daddies and granddaddies went to Clarendon schools before them know he's a nouve.
To give him his due, he doesn't pretend not to be.
Possibly more their problem than his.
I reckon being loaded is a big part of his identity.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
That’s one of Steve Webb’s regular tips. An outlay of about £800 for each year of blank NI contributions, giving you an extra 1/35 of full state pension, assuming you live long enough to start getting it.
This is quite useful but NB there is a cutoff date for back payments (well some anyway) of the end of the FY. AIUI they will not permit them any more at all after the 5th April.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
That’s one of Steve Webb’s regular tips. An outlay of about £800 for each year of blank NI contributions, giving you an extra 1/35 of full state pension, assuming you live long enough to start getting it.
But! Only do this if you’re not going to meet the threshold for the full state pension which is 35 years of meeting the minimum contribution / year.
Cameron came in post Labour which seemed to have lost touch, largely due to Iraq etc and the GFC. He was seen as a change to that which had come before. Wealth wasn't much of a consideration in that thinking.
The problem Sunak has is not that he's rich, it's that he's running a Government that is out of touch and failing. That is why people have more time to attack his character.
I suspect if Brown had been mega wealthy in 2007/2008 onwards they'd have done a lot worse in 2010 than they did.
Cameron was posh but not a toff. Went to Eton but didn't have a ludicrous JRM style voice so got away with it. Jacket off, sleeves rolled up, lets get to business.
Sunak appears less posh but is far far richer and more disconnected from normal than Cameron was. Genuinely think his bacon sandwich moment was the "oh look I drive a Kia lets pay for petrol" disaster.
So yes I agree - out of touch on an almost comedic scale. Leading a corrupt party that is failing to deliver on every measure other than diverting public money into their spivvy pockets.
It didn’t take much for Cameron's inner-toff to surface - see comments about counting the silver after Salmond had been round.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
That’s one of Steve Webb’s regular tips. An outlay of about £800 for each year of blank NI contributions, giving you an extra 1/35 of full state pension, assuming you live long enough to start getting it.
This is quite useful but NB there is a cutoff date for back payments (well some anyway) of the end of the FY. AIUI they will not permit them any more at all after the 5th April.
You will still be able buy back past years after this April, but only for the past 6 six years I think.
There’s some sort of special arrangement that lets you buy contributions for tax periods that are more than 6 years ago if you’re a certain age range, but that expires this April so if you want to buy back some past years check now just in case.
I always thought that Sunak's wealth was going to be a much bigger issue for him than it was for Cameron. And so it has transpired.
The Camerons have less than 10% of the net worth of the Sunaks.
Cameron is only posher than Sunak in the sense he went to Eton not Winchester
Cameron is posher than Sunak because his wife is an aristocrat and he is related to the Royal family. This is Sunak's problem - people in the UK are more comfortable with wealth if it is old money.
No, I don't agree there. It was Cameron who was comfortable with his own wealth, and Sunak who seems uncomfortable with his, not the people around them.
As I've said before, I think Sunak probably experienced a lot of snobbery in that very posh school, due to his modest background (not his race). There must be at least a part of him that fist bumps the air when he's described as an out of touch elitist. 'Made it!'
He wouldn’t have got a lot of snobbery, there would have been the odd twat who might make themself feel better on a bad day by handing him a note and asking his mum to hurry up with the prescription but generally it wasn’t a place where money or titles mattered, the competition was firstly academic, secondly sporting and thirdly, when older, social re girls and partying. Actually that’s wrong first was partying and girls for kudos.
Wealth and background weren’t overly important as if you had got in you were measured on your self and what you made of yourself. A bit of ribbing at “poor scholars” but only because it made yourself feel better about them being brighter than you!
Thanks - that's an interesting insight. I would however introduce a note of caution that 'a bit of ribbing' may not seem that way to the ribbee.
The difference at that time between, for example Eton and Winchester, was that to get into Winchester it was pure academic competition to get in so it didn’t matter how wealthy or connected you were if you couldn’t pass entrance then you weren’t getting in so you were all effectively peers in an important way so that academic ability was the key metric not status.
Obviously if you didn’t get financial assistance then it didn’t matter how clever you were as you couldn’t afford it but it was a good leveller that, at your prep school you might have been Lord Social of Chelsea but it didn’t really mean shit at Winchester as there was always someone more intelligent and nobody gave a monkey’s really about your social status. Maybe why Winchester is lower key as more geeky than Eton, Harrow and Westminster and not so tied to the social whirl.
This probably explains Sunak being a bit embarrassed or uncomfortable about the wealth question as it’s likely not been a key driver to his self identity.
So diplomatically put. Those from landed families or whose daddies and granddaddies went to Clarendon schools before them know he's a nouve.
To give him his due, he doesn't pretend not to be.
Possibly more their problem than his.
I reckon being loaded is a big part of his identity.
Would I be wrong to presume you are a Wok?
He wrote a 1000 word dissertation on the place at the time of Sunaks ascent to the throne which was so accurate that I would be very very worried about someone who knew that much about it without having been there.
I always thought that Sunak's wealth was going to be a much bigger issue for him than it was for Cameron. And so it has transpired.
The Camerons have less than 10% of the net worth of the Sunaks.
Cameron is only posher than Sunak in the sense he went to Eton not Winchester
Cameron is posher than Sunak because his wife is an aristocrat and he is related to the Royal family. This is Sunak's problem - people in the UK are more comfortable with wealth if it is old money.
No, I don't agree there. It was Cameron who was comfortable with his own wealth, and Sunak who seems uncomfortable with his, not the people around them.
As I've said before, I think Sunak probably experienced a lot of snobbery in that very posh school, due to his modest background (not his race). There must be at least a part of him that fist bumps the air when he's described as an out of touch elitist. 'Made it!'
He wouldn’t have got a lot of snobbery, there would have been the odd twat who might make themself feel better on a bad day by handing him a note and asking his mum to hurry up with the prescription but generally it wasn’t a place where money or titles mattered, the competition was firstly academic, secondly sporting and thirdly, when older, social re girls and partying. Actually that’s wrong first was partying and girls for kudos.
Wealth and background weren’t overly important as if you had got in you were measured on your self and what you made of yourself. A bit of ribbing at “poor scholars” but only because it made yourself feel better about them being brighter than you!
Thanks - that's an interesting insight. I would however introduce a note of caution that 'a bit of ribbing' may not seem that way to the ribbee.
The difference at that time between, for example Eton and Winchester, was that to get into Winchester it was pure academic competition to get in so it didn’t matter how wealthy or connected you were if you couldn’t pass entrance then you weren’t getting in so you were all effectively peers in an important way so that academic ability was the key metric not status.
Obviously if you didn’t get financial assistance then it didn’t matter how clever you were as you couldn’t afford it but it was a good leveller that, at your prep school you might have been Lord Social of Chelsea but it didn’t really mean shit at Winchester as there was always someone more intelligent and nobody gave a monkey’s really about your social status. Maybe why Winchester is lower key as more geeky than Eton, Harrow and Westminster and not so tied to the social whirl.
This probably explains Sunak being a bit embarrassed or uncomfortable about the wealth question as it’s likely not been a key driver to his self identity.
So diplomatically put. Those from landed families or whose daddies and granddaddies went to Clarendon schools before them know he's a nouve.
To give him his due, he doesn't pretend not to be.
Possibly more their problem than his.
I reckon being loaded is a big part of his identity.
Would I be wrong to presume you are a Wok?
He wrote a 1000 word dissertation on the place at the time of Sunaks ascent to the throne which was so accurate that I would be very very worried about someone who knew that much about it without having been there.
Crikey, I thought he was older than me and I only had one year crossover there with the little Trantite jun man!
I always thought that Sunak's wealth was going to be a much bigger issue for him than it was for Cameron. And so it has transpired.
The Camerons have less than 10% of the net worth of the Sunaks.
Cameron is only posher than Sunak in the sense he went to Eton not Winchester
Cameron is posher than Sunak because his wife is an aristocrat and he is related to the Royal family. This is Sunak's problem - people in the UK are more comfortable with wealth if it is old money.
No, I don't agree there. It was Cameron who was comfortable with his own wealth, and Sunak who seems uncomfortable with his, not the people around them.
As I've said before, I think Sunak probably experienced a lot of snobbery in that very posh school, due to his modest background (not his race). There must be at least a part of him that fist bumps the air when he's described as an out of touch elitist. 'Made it!'
He wouldn’t have got a lot of snobbery, there would have been the odd twat who might make themself feel better on a bad day by handing him a note and asking his mum to hurry up with the prescription but generally it wasn’t a place where money or titles mattered, the competition was firstly academic, secondly sporting and thirdly, when older, social re girls and partying. Actually that’s wrong first was partying and girls for kudos.
Wealth and background weren’t overly important as if you had got in you were measured on your self and what you made of yourself. A bit of ribbing at “poor scholars” but only because it made yourself feel better about them being brighter than you!
Thanks - that's an interesting insight. I would however introduce a note of caution that 'a bit of ribbing' may not seem that way to the ribbee.
The difference at that time between, for example Eton and Winchester, was that to get into Winchester it was pure academic competition to get in so it didn’t matter how wealthy or connected you were if you couldn’t pass entrance then you weren’t getting in so you were all effectively peers in an important way so that academic ability was the key metric not status.
Obviously if you didn’t get financial assistance then it didn’t matter how clever you were as you couldn’t afford it but it was a good leveller that, at your prep school you might have been Lord Social of Chelsea but it didn’t really mean shit at Winchester as there was always someone more intelligent and nobody gave a monkey’s really about your social status. Maybe why Winchester is lower key as more geeky than Eton, Harrow and Westminster and not so tied to the social whirl.
This probably explains Sunak being a bit embarrassed or uncomfortable about the wealth question as it’s likely not been a key driver to his self identity.
So diplomatically put. Those from landed families or whose daddies and granddaddies went to Clarendon schools before them know he's a nouve.
To give him his due, he doesn't pretend not to be.
Possibly more their problem than his.
I reckon being loaded is a big part of his identity.
Would I be wrong to presume you are a Wok?
He wrote a 1000 word dissertation on the place at the time of Sunaks ascent to the throne which was so accurate that I would be very very worried about someone who knew that much about it without having been there.
Crikey, I thought he was older than me and I only had one year crossover there with the little Trantite jun man!
Sorry, re-read and properly comprehended your post. Thought he had written about it at the time Sunak was there but I’m obviously not raising books this Half.
Anyway, there must be a slim chance that the Tories will boot the dismal decline-manager before the next election, meaning that 'next PM' would be a Tory unless Charles decides to insist on a GE (which I would not discount entirely). Does anyone have any small stakes on?
Yes. Truss. Pile in while you can.
I’d put more water in it, if I were you..
Sadly I don't think Truss is listed on BF!
You’re right. That’s an inexcusable oversight. I shall complain.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
I missed this tip. Is this just for those with incomplete NI contribution history?
Do they advise you when you call them?
You can get an exact figure from them as to what it will cost to buy back past years (it varies because you might have partial years in the past I think?) when you call, but they won’t advise you whether you should pay or not IIRC.
If you have Government Gateway set up you can check what you are entitled to in seconds. I just did it. Link below. It says I am already at maximum £185.15 pw.
Does this mean this top-up business doesn't apply to me?
If both green bars are full, then you are correct. If one of them is lower, then it depends on whether you can expect to work enough years before hitting state retirement age I think.
I've just invested £4k at 32.5% return, indexed linked...
...topped up mine and Mrs P's NI contribution history - Thanks MikeL for the tip.
(Ok, my capital is lost but the return is gilt-edged for life.)
That’s one of Steve Webb’s regular tips. An outlay of about £800 for each year of blank NI contributions, giving you an extra 1/35 of full state pension, assuming you live long enough to start getting it.
This is quite useful but NB there is a cutoff date for back payments (well some anyway) of the end of the FY. AIUI they will not permit them any more at all after the 5th April.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
Just glancing at the data tables behind the latest polls from PeoplePolling and Techne.
Looking at the former and the 2019 Conservative GE vote splits 37% Conservative, 29% Don't Know, 11% Labour and 9% Reform which seems out of line with other polls and may explain the lower Conservative vote share with this pollster.
My eye is also drawn to the London regional sub sample (Lab 60%, LD 13%, Con 11%) and Scotland (SNP 49%, lab 21%, LD 17%, Con 5%). NO giggling in the cheap seats, please.
On then to Techne and the 2019 Conservative vote splits 51% Conservative, 17% Labour, 11% Reform and 10% Don't Know.
29% DKs from the 2019 Conservative vote share in one poll and just 10% in another - hmmm...
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
"Boris Johnson to 'come out all guns blazing' over hated Brexit deal as he eyes comeback," says the Daily Express. Just to be clear, that's the "hated deal" Johnson himself negotiated and agreed as prime minister. So, he's going to come out all guns blazing against himself? https://twitter.com/NicholasTyrone/status/1621541545005518848
The difference between Cameron and Sunak is simple.
Cameron was there, in 1992, when it all went to shit for the Tories. He entered Parliament in 2001, when the Tories lost by a landslide for a second time. He knew that the Tories had to work hard to earn the trust of the British people, and he did that, and he put himself forward with things like the Cameron Direct events which would have helped him gain an understanding of the British public.
Sunak entered Parliament in the Tory victory of 2015. His first years in the Commons were spent watching Labour fight against itself, seeing May almost snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and Johnson storm to victory despite the polling nadir of the Brexit impasse.
He just hasn't had to graft for success in politics in the same way. He feels entitled to Tory dominance. I fully expect him to walk away from frontline politics after election defeat. He doesn't have the stomach for the hard work of opposition that Cameron had.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
Putin is well aware what the use of nukes will mean. Allegedly even Xi has been reading him the riot act over their use.
I'd expect him to go for something more deniable, such as an 'incident' at a nuclear plant - which might actually cause the west (and Europe) more bother.
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
I'm not suggesting appeasement at all. I just think we need to be prepared for further escalation.
Berlin goes to the polls on Sunday week (the city, not the whole of Germany).
For those who follow these things, this may seem a bit odd as the city only voted in September 2021 but that election was ruled invalid last November due to numerous irregularities and so it's another vote.
In 2021, the SPD topped the poll with 21.4% winning 36 seats, closely followed by the Greens on 18.9% (32 seats) and the CDU on 18% (30 seats). Linke won 24 seats with 14.1% of the vote, AfD won 13 seats with 8% and even the FDP got in on the act winning 12 seats with 7.1% of the vote.
The fragmented vote did however allow an SPD-Green-Linke coalition to take over with a big majority .
There are 130 seats (maybe a fair few more) in the Abgeordeneten Haus (or Landtag) so 66 for a majority but could be a bit higher as we know in the German electoral system.
The current polls have the CDU topping the poll across the city for the first time since 2001 with 24%. The SPD are on 21%, the Greens on 18%, Linke on 11%, the AfD on 10% and the FDP on 6%.
The CDU will advance on those numbers and top the poll in terms of seats but the governing coalition should hold its majority on these numbers.
It's interesting even after 34 years to see the political split between East and West Berlin (to be fair, East and West London are politically different as well). In West Berlin, the CDU leads with 27% with the Greens second on 22%. In East Berlin, the CDU and Greens are tied on 18% with the SPD on 17%. Both Linke and the AfD get most of their support from the east of the city.
Several polls this week with notable outside moe Labour collapse. Interesting.
You are either a WUM or the most ill-informed poster on PB. It's not even worth engaging with you sadly
Then why did you? 😁 the very fact you did more than answers that question.
The Shares of the parties are very consistent, stable over the last three months, with a small drift down for the Tories. The Labour lead is about 20% - down quite a bit from Truss given highs but largely plateauing at 20%.
Any problems with this psephology of mine so far?
If you are saying there weren’t two polls this week with -3 -4 falls in Labour share, you are a dangerous liar, because it’s factually true. So what exactly is the problem with any poster choosing to flag that polling fact up?
Here’s a smart piece of psephology, those big falls for Labour, quite often regained in next poll by same pollster is actually caused by Labours top of the flag poll support, over about 44 and around 50% being patchy across the country much like green, reform and Libdem also not universal but patchy enclaves, this makes it tricky for pollsters, so Labour flaps about up and down at the very top end rather like Green, Reform and Lib Dem often do in polls too. For Greens or reform to drop from 7 to 4 is almost like 50% collapse, but it’s just their support isn’t all over but localised like I’m suggesting Labours is over a more consistent 44% in general. What happens on Election Day backs up what I’m saying - Labour failing to get 5% swing to take a seat, not so far away they get one on 9% swing.
Admit it Olly - you were sucked by PBs Pantomime Horse hyperbolic assault on me, post after post from him, not actually reading the very consistent and balanced picture what I was actually been posting all thread, all day and all week. Ever since I got here two years ago.
The problem is that you leap on the one where the Tories went up and ignored the one where the Tories went down.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
I'm not suggesting appeasement at all. I just think we need to be prepared for further escalation.
Putin's grip on power was already weakened when he tried to announce a major mobilization and then was forced to back down while the TV channels played the national anthem. He then negotiated all night and announced a mediocre compromise in the morning.
Cameron came in post Labour which seemed to have lost touch, largely due to Iraq etc and the GFC. He was seen as a change to that which had come before. Wealth wasn't much of a consideration in that thinking.
The problem Sunak has is not that he's rich, it's that he's running a Government that is out of touch and failing. That is why people have more time to attack his character.
I suspect if Brown had been mega wealthy in 2007/2008 onwards they'd have done a lot worse in 2010 than they did.
Cameron was posh but not a toff. Went to Eton but didn't have a ludicrous JRM style voice so got away with it. Jacket off, sleeves rolled up, lets get to business.
Sunak appears less posh but is far far richer and more disconnected from normal than Cameron was. Genuinely think his bacon sandwich moment was the "oh look I drive a Kia lets pay for petrol" disaster.
So yes I agree - out of touch on an almost comedic scale. Leading a corrupt party that is failing to deliver on every measure other than diverting public money into their spivvy pockets.
It didn’t take much for Cameron's inner-toff to surface - see comments about counting the silver after Salmond had been round.
His comments about not seeing anything wrong with giving an internship at the top of central government to his neighbour's kid also stands out.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
I'm not suggesting appeasement at all. I just think we need to be prepared for further escalation.
Putin's grip on power was already weakened when he tried to announce a major mobilization and then was forced to back down while the TV channels played the national anthem. He then negotiated all night and announced a mediocre compromise in the morning.
Bird flu is a much bigger threat.
I think it a mistake to underestimate the threat; it remains possible.
But giving in to nuclear blackmail, whatever the correct estimate of its credibility might be, is probably more dangerous than resisting it.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
I'm not suggesting appeasement at all. I just think we need to be prepared for further escalation.
Putin's grip on power was already weakened when he tried to announce a major mobilization and then was forced to back down while the TV channels played the national anthem. He then negotiated all night and announced a mediocre compromise in the morning.
Bird flu is a much bigger threat.
I think it a mistake to underestimate the threat; it remains possible.
But giving in to nuclear blackmail, whatever the correct estimate of its credibility might be, is probably more dangerous than resisting it.
That’s my approach too. I have the escape plan ready to dust down.
These are dire ratings, Sunak should have been able to get them into the 30s. At this rate he's going down back towards Truss - truly we are at the end.
If he squeezes the 6% RefUK rating they will be back the 30s
You might be right but I could make an equally strong case that a good chunk of the RefUK voters are Johnson/Brexit diehards who will simply sit out the next GE if Sunak is leading the Tories. On top of their 47% I also think Labour has a good chance of squeezing the 13% Green/Lib Dem vote, particularly in Con-Lab seats.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
I'm not suggesting appeasement at all. I just think we need to be prepared for further escalation.
Putin's grip on power was already weakened when he tried to announce a major mobilization and then was forced to back down while the TV channels played the national anthem. He then negotiated all night and announced a mediocre compromise in the morning.
Bird flu is a much bigger threat.
I think it a mistake to underestimate the threat; it remains possible.
But giving in to nuclear blackmail, whatever the correct estimate of its credibility might be, is probably more dangerous than resisting it.
That’s my approach too. I have the escape plan ready to dust down.
I have a sense of foreboding that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It feels like they are starting to talk themselves into it as opposed to just making idle threats.
What type? I thought it was said some time ago that NATO would know if the Russians were preparing to use battlefield nukes and would intervene in the conflict long before the Russians could use them.
Strategic ones.
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
We just have to hope that there's enough sensible people between him and the button.
It’s what he wants you all to think. And it seems, despite all evidence to the contrary last year, that it works.
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
I'm not suggesting appeasement at all. I just think we need to be prepared for further escalation.
Putin's grip on power was already weakened when he tried to announce a major mobilization and then was forced to back down while the TV channels played the national anthem. He then negotiated all night and announced a mediocre compromise in the morning.
Bird flu is a much bigger threat.
I think it a mistake to underestimate the threat; it remains possible.
But giving in to nuclear blackmail, whatever the correct estimate of its credibility might be, is probably more dangerous than resisting it.
Russia would become a full on pariah, even to the Indians and Chinese, if they used nukes. Putin would be accelerating his downfall by doing it.
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
The difference between Cameron and Sunak is simple.
Cameron was there, in 1992, when it all went to shit for the Tories. He entered Parliament in 2001, when the Tories lost by a landslide for a second time. He knew that the Tories had to work hard to earn the trust of the British people, and he did that, and he put himself forward with things like the Cameron Direct events which would have helped him gain an understanding of the British public.
Sunak entered Parliament in the Tory victory of 2015. His first years in the Commons were spent watching Labour fight against itself, seeing May almost snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and Johnson storm to victory despite the polling nadir of the Brexit impasse.
He just hasn't had to graft for success in politics in the same way. He feels entitled to Tory dominance. I fully expect him to walk away from frontline politics after election defeat. He doesn't have the stomach for the hard work of opposition that Cameron had.
Cameron enjoyed the good fortune all politicians need.
In 2005, he made the sensible move of trying to "love-bomb" the Liberal Democrats who were heading into their own "Orange Book" phase in response to the huge Labour spending boom and with the departure of Kennedy lacked any kind of response to the new "liberal conservatism" Cameron was peddling.
His second bit of luck was the departure of Blair himself. Blair was the dominant political figure of the early 2000s and would, I think, have had little problem with Cameron but Blair was past his prime and anxious to move on and Brown just wasn't as telegenic a figure as Cameron.
Cameron realised the important lessons - a) nothing succeeds like success and b) imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so he re-invented the Conservative Party as a centrist party and then of course came the Global Financial Crash which destroyed the centre-left's economic management credentials along with its policy. This left a huge gap for an alternative economic prospectus which Osborne was able to fill.
Even with all of that, however, it was still a long way from roughly 200 seats to a majority (equivalent to Starmer's journey in terms of seats though the 2005 result was very different from 2019). Cameron must have realised a Conservative majority in one bound was a non-starter but he had in his back pocket a close personal relationship with Nick Clegg and a brief but valid philosophical convergence between liberal Conservatism and the Orange Bookers which enabled the Coalition to be formed after the 2010 GE. That convergence didn't last.
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
Several polls this week with notable outside moe Labour collapse. Interesting.
You are either a WUM or the most ill-informed poster on PB. It's not even worth engaging with you sadly
Then why did you? 😁 the very fact you did more than answers that question.
The Shares of the parties are very consistent, stable over the last three months, with a small drift down for the Tories. The Labour lead is about 20% - down quite a bit from Truss given highs but largely plateauing at 20%.
Any problems with this psephology of mine so far?
If you are saying there weren’t two polls this week with -3 -4 falls in Labour share, you are a dangerous liar, because it’s factually true. So what exactly is the problem with any poster choosing to flag that polling fact up?
Here’s a smart piece of psephology, those big falls for Labour, quite often regained in next poll by same pollster is actually caused by Labours top of the flag poll support, over about 44 and around 50% being patchy across the country much like green, reform and Libdem also not universal but patchy enclaves, this makes it tricky for pollsters, so Labour flaps about up and down at the very top end rather like Green, Reform and Lib Dem often do in polls too. For Greens or reform to drop from 7 to 4 is almost like 50% collapse, but it’s just their support isn’t all over but localised like I’m suggesting Labours is over a more consistent 44% in general. What happens on Election Day backs up what I’m saying - Labour failing to get 5% swing to take a seat, not so far away they get one on 9% swing.
Admit it Olly - you were sucked by PBs Pantomime Horse hyperbolic assault on me, post after post from him, not actually reading the very consistent and balanced picture what I was actually been posting all thread, all day and all week. Ever since I got here two years ago.
I was responding to your statement earlier today that - "SEVERAL polls this week with notable outside moe LABOUR COLLAPSE. Interesting"
Are you trying to tell me that that is an accurate reading of current polling?
The evidence clearly shows that overall the Labour vote has been consistent for the last 3 months.
Cherry picking a couple of polls that fit your agenda does not constitute rigorous psephology. Extrapolating GE results from a couple of local by-elections does not constitute rigorous psephology.
Berlin goes to the polls on Sunday week (the city, not the whole of Germany).
For those who follow these things, this may seem a bit odd as the city only voted in September 2021 but that election was ruled invalid last November due to numerous irregularities and so it's another vote.
In 2021, the SPD topped the poll with 21.4% winning 36 seats, closely followed by the Greens on 18.9% (32 seats) and the CDU on 18% (30 seats). Linke won 24 seats with 14.1% of the vote, AfD won 13 seats with 8% and even the FDP got in on the act winning 12 seats with 7.1% of the vote.
The fragmented vote did however allow an SPD-Green-Linke coalition to take over with a big majority .
There are 130 seats (maybe a fair few more) in the Abgeordeneten Haus (or Landtag) so 66 for a majority but could be a bit higher as we know in the German electoral system.
The current polls have the CDU topping the poll across the city for the first time since 2001 with 24%. The SPD are on 21%, the Greens on 18%, Linke on 11%, the AfD on 10% and the FDP on 6%.
The CDU will advance on those numbers and top the poll in terms of seats but the governing coalition should hold its majority on these numbers.
It's interesting even after 34 years to see the political split between East and West Berlin (to be fair, East and West London are politically different as well). In West Berlin, the CDU leads with 27% with the Greens second on 22%. In East Berlin, the CDU and Greens are tied on 18% with the SPD on 17%. Both Linke and the AfD get most of their support from the east of the city.
Isn't the federal election being re-run in a small number of districts as well?
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
I rewatched Boys from the Blackstuff (and the original Play for Today) during one of the lockdowns. Really is cracking stuff and takes you right back in a similar way to Auf Wiedersehen Pet.
These are dire ratings, Sunak should have been able to get them into the 30s. At this rate he's going down back towards Truss - truly we are at the end.
If he squeezes the 6% RefUK rating they will be back the 30s
You might be right but I could make an equally strong case that a good chunk of the RefUK voters are Johnson/Brexit diehards who will simply sit out the next GE if Sunak is leading the Tories. On top of their 47% I also think Labour has a good chance of squeezing the 13% Green/Lib Dem vote, particularly in Con-Lab seats.
Absolutely Olly. The more corrupt and useless the Tory’s are revealed to be the one squeezed they might be they by reform one side Lib Dems on other. If there was ever a curcumstance for 7 or 8% of the right to protest against an embarrassing let down of a corrupt party without fear of a Labour government, it’s this one.
2 other things. HY saying most that reform is Tory come GE is absolutely no different than Nick Palmer telling me today most that Green Wall in Bristols will vote Labour come election regardless of Greens targetting the seats. It’s the same dismissive air isn’t it.
And of course, HY is a Tory bigwig in local politics, perhaps he can put us right with canvassing stories, where they said Corruption, small boat invasion, tax, Truss, weak shit leader and more corruption, bugger off we are voting reform now, yet he talked them round and won them over?
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
Haven’t watched it from the start for a million years but beside it being very very funny and well written it’s probably immensely instructive for both sides on the debate about immigrant workers/EU freedom of movement/poles stealing jobs to see the grim reality but also that once upon a time (not really so long ago) those Polish brickies were British brickies living ten to a room etc etc.
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
Haven’t watched it from the start for a million years but beside it being very very funny and well written it’s probably immensely instructive for both sides on the debate about immigrant workers/EU freedom of movement/poles stealing jobs to see the grim reality but also that once upon a time (not really so long ago) those Polish brickies were British brickies living ten to a room etc etc.
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
Haven’t watched it from the start for a million years but beside it being very very funny and well written it’s probably immensely instructive for both sides on the debate about immigrant workers/EU freedom of movement/poles stealing jobs to see the grim reality but also that once upon a time (not really so long ago) those Polish brickies were British brickies living ten to a room etc etc.
Several polls this week with notable outside moe Labour collapse. Interesting.
You are either a WUM or the most ill-informed poster on PB. It's not even worth engaging with you sadly
Then why did you? 😁 the very fact you did more than answers that question.
The Shares of the parties are very consistent, stable over the last three months, with a small drift down for the Tories. The Labour lead is about 20% - down quite a bit from Truss given highs but largely plateauing at 20%.
Any problems with this psephology of mine so far?
If you are saying there weren’t two polls this week with -3 -4 falls in Labour share, you are a dangerous liar, because it’s factually true. So what exactly is the problem with any poster choosing to flag that polling fact up?
Here’s a smart piece of psephology, those big falls for Labour, quite often regained in next poll by same pollster is actually caused by Labours top of the flag poll support, over about 44 and around 50% being patchy across the country much like green, reform and Libdem also not universal but patchy enclaves, this makes it tricky for pollsters, so Labour flaps about up and down at the very top end rather like Green, Reform and Lib Dem often do in polls too. For Greens or reform to drop from 7 to 4 is almost like 50% collapse, but it’s just their support isn’t all over but localised like I’m suggesting Labours is over a more consistent 44% in general. What happens on Election Day backs up what I’m saying - Labour failing to get 5% swing to take a seat, not so far away they get one on 9% swing.
Admit it Olly - you were sucked by PBs Pantomime Horse hyperbolic assault on me, post after post from him, not actually reading the very consistent and balanced picture what I was actually been posting all thread, all day and all week. Ever since I got here two years ago.
The problem is that you leap on the one where the Tories went up and ignored the one where the Tories went down.
Okay. I’ll take that on board. It’s wrong though, because when Tories drop 3 or 4 or down consistently across the polls, I don’t ignore it, I do flag it up. I’m not Tory or spinning for them.
The Savanta one recently posted -3 drop for Tories is quite a lot for one poll, when, as somebody phrased it earlier, there’s not that much blood left in the patient to start with! I wonder if we are seeing proper fed up with strikes and lack of talks, and that frustration directed towards the government, in these backward polls now along with Sunak dropping like stone.
The spreadsheet someone very kindly created for us on last thread though, suggesting despite all sorts of excitement worthy ups and downs week by week, nothing has changed over last three months, should chasten everyone’s excitement at polls when they came out. Month to month movement based on lots of polls is really the best graph to have I now think.
The difference between Cameron and Sunak is simple.
Cameron was there, in 1992, when it all went to shit for the Tories. He entered Parliament in 2001, when the Tories lost by a landslide for a second time. He knew that the Tories had to work hard to earn the trust of the British people, and he did that, and he put himself forward with things like the Cameron Direct events which would have helped him gain an understanding of the British public.
Sunak entered Parliament in the Tory victory of 2015. His first years in the Commons were spent watching Labour fight against itself, seeing May almost snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and Johnson storm to victory despite the polling nadir of the Brexit impasse.
He just hasn't had to graft for success in politics in the same way. He feels entitled to Tory dominance. I fully expect him to walk away from frontline politics after election defeat. He doesn't have the stomach for the hard work of opposition that Cameron had.
Fair enough, but this misses out a bit.
Cameron, having done the tough bit as described then forgot to have a plan for getting a proper deal out of the EU prior to forgetting to ensure that an unlosable referendum wasn't lost followed by immediately resigning (in truth because he forgot to plan for this eventuality) instead of seeing out well the consequences of his own bad strategy and ensuring the best possible Brexit. Meanwhile he tried, again, to get us into an unwinnable war in the middle east.
No. Hard graft; tough years; the real problems of statecraft. Cameron is a massive fail, sadly, on all fronts. Of his four successors Sunak has the merit of still being there doing the difficult stuff despite the (entirely justified) virtual impossibility of the Tories winning in 2024. He is the best of the bunch.
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
These are dire ratings, Sunak should have been able to get them into the 30s. At this rate he's going down back towards Truss - truly we are at the end.
If he squeezes the 6% RefUK rating they will be back the 30s
You might be right but I could make an equally strong case that a good chunk of the RefUK voters are Johnson/Brexit diehards who will simply sit out the next GE if Sunak is leading the Tories. On top of their 47% I also think Labour has a good chance of squeezing the 13% Green/Lib Dem vote, particularly in Con-Lab seats.
Absolutely Olly. The more corrupt and useless the Tory’s are revealed to be the one squeezed they might be they by reform one side Lib Dems on other. If there was ever a curcumstance for 7 or 8% of the right to protest against an embarrassing let down of a corrupt party without fear of a Labour government, it’s this one.
2 other things. HY saying most that reform is Tory come GE is absolutely no different than Nick Palmer telling me today most that Green Wall in Bristols will vote Labour come election regardless of Greens targetting the seats. It’s the same dismissive air isn’t it.
And of course, HY is a Tory bigwig in local politics, perhaps he can put us right with canvassing stories, where they said Corruption, small boat invasion, tax, Truss, weak shit leader and more corruption, bugger off we are voting reform now, yet he talked them round and won them over?
I think Nick is right re Bristol. Time and time again we see Lib Dems performing very strongly in a local area only to see it fail to repeat at GE's.
Green voters will often vote their preference in seats where Labour is strong and likely to win anyway but vote tactically in seats where the Tories might win. Anyway, apologies for my comments earlier, I was probably too harsh on you but I still can't see any evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls!
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
Haven’t watched it from the start for a million years but beside it being very very funny and well written it’s probably immensely instructive for both sides on the debate about immigrant workers/EU freedom of movement/poles stealing jobs to see the grim reality but also that once upon a time (not really so long ago) those Polish brickies were British brickies living ten to a room etc etc.
You can go mad looking at the sub samples - they are too small and therefore look ridiculous. Whether that undermines the whole poll I don't know. I like to look at the whole England figure but if that is made up of a number of small and silly sub samples (say that with your teeth out) you're just left with a large and silly number.
The Red and Blue Wall polling from Redfield & Wilton only tells the story in those seats but it's a start. We could do with some more defined regional polling and I suspect both Labour and the Conservatives do this (I would if I were them). The South West is not the North East, London is not rural Shropshire- the trends can be different and in essence the next GE is basically 650 separate by elections.
Said trends mean in a GE with a big swing you can huge variations in seat swings and if you're starting with a 17% swing you're going to see some seats swinging less and some swinging more and it's not always easy to identify which is which.
The May local elections will be some help but not as much as you might think - they are by definition local - independent candidates will do much better and we know many people split their local and national votes.
So we come back to the imperfect data with which we are regularly presented - polls are good for "trends" but that's about all. It's a bit like studying weather maps after day 5 - they are highly unlikely to verify but can be indicative of a direction of travel albeit that in itself can be misleading.
What we can say is the current polls suggest, were a General Election to be held now, Labour would win a big majority. As we know, the election isn't being held now so that in itself renders the exercise theoretical. How people vote and how they will vote in October 2024 is impossible to know - we can only go day by day, week by week.
I think there may be undercurrents in some of the lower level questioning which will be worth watching - rather like a weather pattern change, the signs it may be happening aren't always evident on the published maps but delve a little into the data and the evidence is there. Shifts in views on policy questions may presage VI changes (or they may not).
These are dire ratings, Sunak should have been able to get them into the 30s. At this rate he's going down back towards Truss - truly we are at the end.
If he squeezes the 6% RefUK rating they will be back the 30s
You might be right but I could make an equally strong case that a good chunk of the RefUK voters are Johnson/Brexit diehards who will simply sit out the next GE if Sunak is leading the Tories. On top of their 47% I also think Labour has a good chance of squeezing the 13% Green/Lib Dem vote, particularly in Con-Lab seats.
Absolutely Olly. The more corrupt and useless the Tory’s are revealed to be the one squeezed they might be they by reform one side Lib Dems on other. If there was ever a curcumstance for 7 or 8% of the right to protest against an embarrassing let down of a corrupt party without fear of a Labour government, it’s this one.
2 other things. HY saying most that reform is Tory come GE is absolutely no different than Nick Palmer telling me today most that Green Wall in Bristols will vote Labour come election regardless of Greens targetting the seats. It’s the same dismissive air isn’t it.
And of course, HY is a Tory bigwig in local politics, perhaps he can put us right with canvassing stories, where they said Corruption, small boat invasion, tax, Truss, weak shit leader and more corruption, bugger off we are voting reform now, yet he talked them round and won them over?
I think Nick is right re Bristol. Time and time again we see Lib Dems performing very strongly in a local area only to see it fail to repeat at GE's.
Green voters will often vote their preference in seats where Labour is strong and likely to win anyway but vote tactically in seats where the Tories might win. Anyway, apologies for my comments earlier, I was probably too harsh on you but I still can't see any evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls!
There is no evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls, and there is no evidence that I ever said there was.
I don’t think it will be entirely fair to dismiss HY getting most the reform on the big day, but agree with Nick Labour will get most the green. For one thing, many of those greens could be now momentum corbynites like BJO for example, for another in some select areas the Greens really have moved the dial since the last general election, they will have a lot of foot soldiers swarming Bristol targetting those constituency’s.
These are dire ratings, Sunak should have been able to get them into the 30s. At this rate he's going down back towards Truss - truly we are at the end.
If he squeezes the 6% RefUK rating they will be back the 30s
You might be right but I could make an equally strong case that a good chunk of the RefUK voters are Johnson/Brexit diehards who will simply sit out the next GE if Sunak is leading the Tories. On top of their 47% I also think Labour has a good chance of squeezing the 13% Green/Lib Dem vote, particularly in Con-Lab seats.
Absolutely Olly. The more corrupt and useless the Tory’s are revealed to be the one squeezed they might be they by reform one side Lib Dems on other. If there was ever a curcumstance for 7 or 8% of the right to protest against an embarrassing let down of a corrupt party without fear of a Labour government, it’s this one.
2 other things. HY saying most that reform is Tory come GE is absolutely no different than Nick Palmer telling me today most that Green Wall in Bristols will vote Labour come election regardless of Greens targetting the seats. It’s the same dismissive air isn’t it.
And of course, HY is a Tory bigwig in local politics, perhaps he can put us right with canvassing stories, where they said Corruption, small boat invasion, tax, Truss, weak shit leader and more corruption, bugger off we are voting reform now, yet he talked them round and won them over?
I think Nick is right re Bristol. Time and time again we see Lib Dems performing very strongly in a local area only to see it fail to repeat at GE's.
Green voters will often vote their preference in seats where Labour is strong and likely to win anyway but vote tactically in seats where the Tories might win. Anyway, apologies for my comments earlier, I was probably too harsh on you but I still can't see any evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls!
There is no evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls, and there is no evidence that I ever said there was.
I don’t think it will be entirely fair to dismiss HY getting most the reform on the big day, but agree with Nick Labour will get most the green. For one thing, many of those greens could be now momentum corbynites like BJO for example, for another in some select areas the Greens really have moved the dial since the last general election, they will have a lot of foot soldiers swarming Bristol targetting those constituency’s.
My portfolio is oscillating between extremely sensitive, and borderline traumatised.
"Well, put it this way, I feel very low in myself. I can't see much in the future, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me." [slumps into Beans on Naan]
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
If anyone wants a nostalgia trip, or any younger PB’ers want to see how shit life was, Auf Wiedersehen Pet is on ITVX. Can’t believe how happy I am to watch it again.
Three years at what is now Sunderland University means I can watch it without needing subtitles!
Haven’t watched it from the start for a million years but beside it being very very funny and well written it’s probably immensely instructive for both sides on the debate about immigrant workers/EU freedom of movement/poles stealing jobs to see the grim reality but also that once upon a time (not really so long ago) those Polish brickies were British brickies living ten to a room etc etc.
Come back when you've compared FTSE 100 performance since June 2016 to other major stock indices.
Sorry that should’ve been directed at @Casino_Royale not yourself. If your Sterling portfolio is not doing quite well at the moment something is far wrong.
I agree the international comparisons are not particularly favourable.
How people vote and how they will vote in October 2024 is impossible to know
That's why betting can exist. All polls are unverifiable apart from John Curtice's on election day. Which is what makes him and his team so admired.
I much prefer the more immediate uncertainty of the Lingfield card tomorrow.
Ryan Moore is in East Surrey tomorrow and of course every horses he is on is either favourite or near favourite except VADREAM in the Listed sprint (available at 7s).
The question is to what extent is this the bookies running scared of Ryan Moore and shortening the prices of his mounts or is it that as the best jockey he can get on the best horses?
My portfolio is oscillating between extremely sensitive, and borderline traumatised.
"Well, put it this way, I feel very low in myself. I can't see much in the future, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me." [slumps into Beans on Naan]
If you had slumped into Pineapple on Pizza you would have been right!
Europeans already reduced the American population by more than 1000 times that figure in C16th-17th.
You think that there were 100 million native Americans? Off the top of my head I would say that you are out by a factor of 10.
If the figures I have seen are correct it's more like 40. However, any estimates are at best guesses. Equally, I've never yet seen an estimate that hit eight figures.
Europeans already reduced the American population by more than 1000 times that figure in C16th-17th.
There were never anything like 100 million native Americans
I suppose it might work if you included *all* the Americas. Including the Aztecs, and the Incas. There were probably more people in the Inca Empire than in the whole of North America.
But in this context it was, to put it mildly, misleading.
The American historian Dan Carlin deals with the figures at high and low range as a comparator to the Roman destruction of the Gauls in this podcast. If anyone is really bored for five hours or so.
Europeans already reduced the American population by more than 1000 times that figure in C16th-17th.
You think that there were 100 million native Americans? Off the top of my head I would say that you are out by a factor of 10.
Population of the continent as a whole is estimated to be around 60 million prior to the arrival of Columbus. Bearing in mind that the deaths from European contact and settlement were spread over many generations, then I'd say that an estimate of 100 million native American deaths at the hands of Europeans is pretty reasonable.
These are dire ratings, Sunak should have been able to get them into the 30s. At this rate he's going down back towards Truss - truly we are at the end.
If he squeezes the 6% RefUK rating they will be back the 30s
You might be right but I could make an equally strong case that a good chunk of the RefUK voters are Johnson/Brexit diehards who will simply sit out the next GE if Sunak is leading the Tories. On top of their 47% I also think Labour has a good chance of squeezing the 13% Green/Lib Dem vote, particularly in Con-Lab seats.
Absolutely Olly. The more corrupt and useless the Tory’s are revealed to be the one squeezed they might be they by reform one side Lib Dems on other. If there was ever a curcumstance for 7 or 8% of the right to protest against an embarrassing let down of a corrupt party without fear of a Labour government, it’s this one.
2 other things. HY saying most that reform is Tory come GE is absolutely no different than Nick Palmer telling me today most that Green Wall in Bristols will vote Labour come election regardless of Greens targetting the seats. It’s the same dismissive air isn’t it.
And of course, HY is a Tory bigwig in local politics, perhaps he can put us right with canvassing stories, where they said Corruption, small boat invasion, tax, Truss, weak shit leader and more corruption, bugger off we are voting reform now, yet he talked them round and won them over?
I think Nick is right re Bristol. Time and time again we see Lib Dems performing very strongly in a local area only to see it fail to repeat at GE's.
Green voters will often vote their preference in seats where Labour is strong and likely to win anyway but vote tactically in seats where the Tories might win. Anyway, apologies for my comments earlier, I was probably too harsh on you but I still can't see any evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls!
There is no evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls, and there is no evidence that I ever said there was.
I don’t think it will be entirely fair to dismiss HY getting most the reform on the big day, but agree with Nick Labour will get most the green. For one thing, many of those greens could be now momentum corbynites like BJO for example, for another in some select areas the Greens really have moved the dial since the last general election, they will have a lot of foot soldiers swarming Bristol targetting those constituency’s.
You did state "several polls this week with notable outside moe Labour collapse". Anyone reading that comment would conclude that the Labour vote appeared to collapsing this week. I don't know how else you could interpret it.
I wasn't dismissing HY's assertion that the RefUK vote could return to the Tories at the GE I just set out an alternative view as to why they might not.
Europeans already reduced the American population by more than 1000 times that figure in C16th-17th.
You think that there were 100 million native Americans? Off the top of my head I would say that you are out by a factor of 10.
Population of the continent as a whole is estimated to be around 60 million prior to the arrival of Columbus. Bearing in mind that the deaths from European contact and settlement were spread over many generations, then I'd say that an estimate of 100 million native American deaths at the hands of Europeans is pretty reasonable.
That's not what the poster said. He said 'reduced the population by 100 million.' Which is rather different.
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
I see my favourite failed think tank operator is demonstrating yet again that he has difficulty wrestling with facts:
'Experts' for months - Russia forces about to collapse - Russia about to run out of weapons - Russia economy imploding - China about to throw Russia overboard - I'm moving to Mastodon cos Elon suggested diplomacy
In fact, duh, most people including most experts were saying the opposite for months. The Ukrainian resilience and skill has caught pretty much everyone by surprise. Especially the Russian army but also lots of experts.
I see my favourite failed think tank operator is demonstrating yet again that he has difficulty wrestling with facts:
'Experts' for months - Russia forces about to collapse - Russia about to run out of weapons - Russia economy imploding - China about to throw Russia overboard - I'm moving to Mastodon cos Elon suggested diplomacy
In fact, duh, most people including most experts were saying the opposite for months. The Ukrainian resilience and skill has caught pretty much everyone by surprise. Especially the Russian army but also lots of experts.
In fairness there has been a fair bit of Russia having “cumulated” and being on the point of collapse, very little of which has been borne out.
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
The heads of all three government departments run by Dominic Raab warned him about his treatment of officials.
An inquiry into bullying has been told that senior civil servants repeatedly urged the deputy prime minister over four years to moderate the way he dealt with his staff.
The permanent secretaries at the Department for Exiting the European Union, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice are said to have raised informal concerns with Raab about the effect his behaviour was having on junior civil servants.
When Dominic Raab was sacked by Liz Truss as justice secretary on September 6, the department was “breathing a collective sigh of relief”, as one senior official put it. “Champagne corks are metaphorically popping in the private office,” they said at the time, referring to the 90-strong team supporting the justice secretary.
Seven weeks later Raab had returned. “Anxiety levels shot through the roof,” another civil servant in the department said.
Anonymous accounts given to The Times by senior and junior civil servants in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have explained why. One member of staff who has since left the department said they regularly witnessed staff in his private office “in floods of tears” and “physically shaken” after meetings and interactions with Raab. He rejects the bullying complaints against him.
“He was known to be very, very abrasive and leaving people in tears,” the official said. “I saw him being very, very aggressive to senior officials on more than one occasion. He wasn’t as bad a bully as other bullies but this is more about his behaviour catching up with him. I’ve sat in rooms with secretaries of state being very demanding but in a more palatable way and you would see people physically shaken.”
Civil servants said that even when Raab did not leave staff in tears he relished the “imbalance of power” between him as a secretary of state and officials — often in their twenties and at the start of their careers.
Comments
Does this mean this top-up business doesn't apply to me?
https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension
In the former case, yes I see the point but you are forgetting I already have a teacher pension that I could claim early if necessary.
"Just an observation, BDEV is down 50% YTD. Seems worth a punt in a 5-10 year view. I have bought some mainly to wind up Barty, because this makes me the good guy in his world picture and undermines his bizarre delusion that I am NIMBY scum."
30% return in 3 months on that.
https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/state-pension
https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/state-pension/can-i-top-up-my-state-pension-aVwgx1p28af4
There’s some sort of special arrangement that lets you buy contributions for tax periods that are more than 6 years ago if you’re a certain age range, but that expires this April so if you want to buy back some past years check now just in case.
That’s an inexcusable oversight. I shall complain.
Be warned though it can be a long wait on the phone to get through.
https://www.bloomberg.com/energy
I'm not sure that signs of preparing to use something would be sufficient to trigger any direct intervention from NATO.
I could be wrong but Putin is continuing to back himself into a corner, so unless something happens to weaken his grip on power, it's hard to see him giving up without a final attempt at shock and awe.
Just glancing at the data tables behind the latest polls from PeoplePolling and Techne.
Looking at the former and the 2019 Conservative GE vote splits 37% Conservative, 29% Don't Know, 11% Labour and 9% Reform which seems out of line with other polls and may explain the lower Conservative vote share with this pollster.
My eye is also drawn to the London regional sub sample (Lab 60%, LD 13%, Con 11%) and Scotland (SNP 49%, lab 21%, LD 17%, Con 5%). NO giggling in the cheap seats, please.
On then to Techne and the 2019 Conservative vote splits 51% Conservative, 17% Labour, 11% Reform and 10% Don't Know.
29% DKs from the 2019 Conservative vote share in one poll and just 10% in another - hmmm...
Give him land in Ukraine to pacify him and he’ll be back for more before long.
https://twitter.com/NicholasTyrone/status/1621541545005518848
Cameron was there, in 1992, when it all went to shit for the Tories. He entered Parliament in 2001, when the Tories lost by a landslide for a second time. He knew that the Tories had to work hard to earn the trust of the British people, and he did that, and he put himself forward with things like the Cameron Direct events which would have helped him gain an understanding of the British public.
Sunak entered Parliament in the Tory victory of 2015. His first years in the Commons were spent watching Labour fight against itself, seeing May almost snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and Johnson storm to victory despite the polling nadir of the Brexit impasse.
He just hasn't had to graft for success in politics in the same way. He feels entitled to Tory dominance. I fully expect him to walk away from frontline politics after election defeat. He doesn't have the stomach for the hard work of opposition that Cameron had.
https://www.politico.eu/article/china-xi-jinping-warns-vladimir-putin-not-to-use-nuclear-arms-in-ukraine-olaf-scholz-germany-peace-talks/
I'd expect him to go for something more deniable, such as an 'incident' at a nuclear plant - which might actually cause the west (and Europe) more bother.
For those who follow these things, this may seem a bit odd as the city only voted in September 2021 but that election was ruled invalid last November due to numerous irregularities and so it's another vote.
In 2021, the SPD topped the poll with 21.4% winning 36 seats, closely followed by the Greens on 18.9% (32 seats) and the CDU on 18% (30 seats). Linke won 24 seats with 14.1% of the vote, AfD won 13 seats with 8% and even the FDP got in on the act winning 12 seats with 7.1% of the vote.
The fragmented vote did however allow an SPD-Green-Linke coalition to take over with a big majority .
There are 130 seats (maybe a fair few more) in the Abgeordeneten Haus (or Landtag) so 66 for a majority but could be a bit higher as we know in the German electoral system.
The current polls have the CDU topping the poll across the city for the first time since 2001 with 24%. The SPD are on 21%, the Greens on 18%, Linke on 11%, the AfD on 10% and the FDP on 6%.
The CDU will advance on those numbers and top the poll in terms of seats but the governing coalition should hold its majority on these numbers.
It's interesting even after 34 years to see the political split between East and West Berlin (to be fair, East and West London are politically different as well). In West Berlin, the CDU leads with 27% with the Greens second on 22%. In East Berlin, the CDU and Greens are tied on 18% with the SPD on 17%. Both Linke and the AfD get most of their support from the east of the city.
Bird flu is a much bigger threat.
But giving in to nuclear blackmail, whatever the correct estimate of its credibility might be, is probably more dangerous than resisting it.
https://twitter.com/apmassaro3/status/1621567138338152450
GLSDB is quite an interesting technology: put a bog-standard guided small diameter bomb on top of a cheapish and plentiful MLRS rocket. Half the range of the ATACMS, but allegedly much, much cheaper.
https://www.saab.com/products/ground-launched-small-diameter-bomb-glsdb
In 2005, he made the sensible move of trying to "love-bomb" the Liberal Democrats who were heading into their own "Orange Book" phase in response to the huge Labour spending boom and with the departure of Kennedy lacked any kind of response to the new "liberal conservatism" Cameron was peddling.
His second bit of luck was the departure of Blair himself. Blair was the dominant political figure of the early 2000s and would, I think, have had little problem with Cameron but Blair was past his prime and anxious to move on and Brown just wasn't as telegenic a figure as Cameron.
Cameron realised the important lessons - a) nothing succeeds like success and b) imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so he re-invented the Conservative Party as a centrist party and then of course came the Global Financial Crash which destroyed the centre-left's economic management credentials along with its policy. This left a huge gap for an alternative economic prospectus which Osborne was able to fill.
Even with all of that, however, it was still a long way from roughly 200 seats to a majority (equivalent to Starmer's journey in terms of seats though the 2005 result was very different from 2019). Cameron must have realised a Conservative majority in one bound was a non-starter but he had in his back pocket a close personal relationship with Nick Clegg and a brief but valid philosophical convergence between liberal Conservatism and the Orange Bookers which enabled the Coalition to be formed after the 2010 GE. That convergence didn't last.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fentanyl-has-killed-100-000-americans-is-europe-next-c07thbb57
Are you trying to tell me that that is an accurate reading of current polling?
The evidence clearly shows that overall the Labour vote has been consistent for the last 3 months.
Cherry picking a couple of polls that fit your agenda does not constitute rigorous psephology. Extrapolating GE results from a couple of local by-elections does not constitute rigorous psephology.
And btw, a Lib Dem supporter with a spine, even a problematic one, what sort of a cover story is that?
I may have jinxed that of course...
2 other things. HY saying most that reform is Tory come GE is absolutely no different than Nick Palmer telling me today most that Green Wall in Bristols will vote Labour come election regardless of Greens targetting the seats. It’s the same dismissive air isn’t it.
And of course, HY is a Tory bigwig in local politics, perhaps he can put us right with canvassing stories, where they said Corruption, small boat invasion, tax, Truss, weak shit leader and more corruption, bugger off we are voting reform now, yet he talked them round and won them over?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64517179
The Savanta one recently posted -3 drop for Tories is quite a lot for one poll, when, as somebody phrased it earlier, there’s not that much blood left in the patient to start with! I wonder if we are seeing proper fed up with strikes and lack of talks, and that frustration directed towards the government, in these backward polls now along with Sunak dropping like stone.
The spreadsheet someone very kindly created for us on last thread though, suggesting despite all sorts of excitement worthy ups and downs week by week, nothing has changed over last three months, should chasten everyone’s excitement at polls when they came out. Month to month movement based on lots of polls is really the best graph to have I now think.
Cameron, having done the tough bit as described then forgot to have a plan for getting a proper deal out of the EU prior to forgetting to ensure that an unlosable referendum wasn't lost followed by immediately resigning (in truth because he forgot to plan for this eventuality) instead of seeing out well the consequences of his own bad strategy and ensuring the best possible Brexit. Meanwhile he tried, again, to get us into an unwinnable war in the middle east.
No. Hard graft; tough years; the real problems of statecraft. Cameron is a massive fail, sadly, on all fronts. Of his four successors Sunak has the merit of still being there doing the difficult stuff despite the (entirely justified) virtual impossibility of the Tories winning in 2024. He is the best of the bunch.
Green voters will often vote their preference in seats where Labour is strong and likely to win anyway but vote tactically in seats where the Tories might win. Anyway, apologies for my comments earlier, I was probably too harsh on you but I still can't see any evidence of a Labour collapse in the polls!
You can go mad looking at the sub samples - they are too small and therefore look ridiculous. Whether that undermines the whole poll I don't know. I like to look at the whole England figure but if that is made up of a number of small and silly sub samples (say that with your teeth out) you're just left with a large and silly number.
The Red and Blue Wall polling from Redfield & Wilton only tells the story in those seats but it's a start. We could do with some more defined regional polling and I suspect both Labour and the Conservatives do this (I would if I were them). The South West is not the North East, London is not rural Shropshire- the trends can be different and in essence the next GE is basically 650 separate by elections.
Said trends mean in a GE with a big swing you can huge variations in seat swings and if you're starting with a 17% swing you're going to see some seats swinging less and some swinging more and it's not always easy to identify which is which.
The May local elections will be some help but not as much as you might think - they are by definition local - independent candidates will do much better and we know many people split their local and national votes.
So we come back to the imperfect data with which we are regularly presented - polls are good for "trends" but that's about all. It's a bit like studying weather maps after day 5 - they are highly unlikely to verify but can be indicative of a direction of travel albeit that in itself can be misleading.
What we can say is the current polls suggest, were a General Election to be held now, Labour would win a big majority. As we know, the election isn't being held now so that in itself renders the exercise theoretical. How people vote and how they will vote in October 2024 is impossible to know - we can only go day by day, week by week.
I think there may be undercurrents in some of the lower level questioning which will be worth watching - rather like a weather pattern change, the signs it may be happening aren't always evident on the published maps but delve a little into the data and the evidence is there. Shifts in views on policy questions may presage VI changes (or they may not).
I don’t think it will be entirely fair to dismiss HY getting most the reform on the big day, but agree with Nick Labour will get most the green. For one thing, many of those greens could be now momentum corbynites like BJO for example, for another in some select areas the Greens really have moved the dial since the last general election, they will have a lot of foot soldiers swarming Bristol targetting those constituency’s.
That's why betting can exist. All polls are unverifiable apart from John Curtice's on election day. Which is what makes him and his team so admired.
I called my other half my ex's name.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russias-Oil-And-Gas-Revenues-Slump-46-Year-Over-Year.html
January 2023 oil and gas revenues nearly half what they were January last year.
I agree the international comparisons are not particularly favourable.
Ryan Moore is in East Surrey tomorrow and of course every horses he is on is either favourite or near favourite except VADREAM in the Listed sprint (available at 7s).
The question is to what extent is this the bookies running scared of Ryan Moore and shortening the prices of his mounts or is it that as the best jockey he can get on the best horses?
But in this context it was, to put it mildly, misleading.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/dan-carlins-hardcore-history/id173001861?i=1000390870682
I wasn't dismissing HY's assertion that the RefUK vote could return to the Tories at the GE I just set out an alternative view as to why they might not.
'Experts' for months
- Russia forces about to collapse
- Russia about to run out of weapons
- Russia economy imploding
- China about to throw Russia overboard
- I'm moving to Mastodon cos Elon suggested diplomacy
They're ~ as good as 'behavioural science'
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1621433052218941440
In fact, duh, most people including most experts were saying the opposite for months. The Ukrainian resilience and skill has caught pretty much everyone by surprise. Especially the Russian army but also lots of experts.
The heads of all three government departments run by Dominic Raab warned him about his treatment of officials.
An inquiry into bullying has been told that senior civil servants repeatedly urged the deputy prime minister over four years to moderate the way he dealt with his staff.
The permanent secretaries at the Department for Exiting the European Union, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice are said to have raised informal concerns with Raab about the effect his behaviour was having on junior civil servants.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dominic-raab-was-urged-to-change-bullying-behaviour-by-three-top-officials-2tcnm6zvp
Seven weeks later Raab had returned. “Anxiety levels shot through the roof,” another civil servant in the department said.
Anonymous accounts given to The Times by senior and junior civil servants in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) have explained why. One member of staff who has since left the department said they regularly witnessed staff in his private office “in floods of tears” and “physically shaken” after meetings and interactions with Raab. He rejects the bullying complaints against him.
“He was known to be very, very abrasive and leaving people in tears,” the official said. “I saw him being very, very aggressive to senior officials on more than one occasion. He wasn’t as bad a bully as other bullies but this is more about his behaviour catching up with him. I’ve sat in rooms with secretaries of state being very demanding but in a more palatable way and you would see people physically shaken.”
Civil servants said that even when Raab did not leave staff in tears he relished the “imbalance of power” between him as a secretary of state and officials — often in their twenties and at the start of their careers.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/he-enjoys-the-imbalance-of-power-scared-staff-on-life-under-dominic-raab-5ns2g8bp8