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LAB lead drops to just 10% in latest Opinium poll – politicalbetting.com
LAB lead drops to just 10% in latest Opinium poll – politicalbetting.com
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LAB lead drops to just 10% in latest Opinium poll – politicalbetting.com
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The important thing is that "10 points behind + swingback to come = game on" doesn't work. To a decent approximation, the swingback is already there.
Mostly not going to Keir "second referendum" Starmer.
There is another difference: there will be Green candidates in many more constiuencies than Reform candidates (I assume).
Watching Match of the Day, looks like another very bad day for VAR.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66973987
How will Europe weather a second winter without gas from Russia?
EU states have worked hard to secure supplies and storage – while the UK seems just to be hoping it stays mild
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/30/how-will-europe-weather-a-second-winter-without-gas-from-russia
For anyone who's serious about cutting the size of the state though, I think you need to be prepared to say what does the state currently does that it should not.
I can give a few examples. Number one being planning.
Pembrokeshire Council urgently trying to work out what to do with St Davids.
Like last winter, we will have surplus to pipe to the continent.
It's not that difficult to stand lots of candidates- Natural Law managed 310 in 1992, and James Goldsmith 547 in 1997.
They will pretty much all be paper candidates, but unless they want to stand down, there's little intrinsic barrier to RefUK putting up a full slate. (After all, the Brexit party ended up choosing not to stand in Conservative 2017 seats.) The deposits would be pocket change for their leadership.
Our media never learns.
There will be Corbynites voting Green certainly, and there will be Faragistes and grumpy types who may flirt with the idea of Ref too. But not 7% each.
Still, the LLG vs RefCon shares are more stable than Con vs Lab. In this latest Opinium it’s 58:36. The higher ones recently have been 62-63 plays 33-36. Pretty consistent with the difference you expect from Opinium’s swingback methodology,
My insurance is also due for renewal soon. Seems from shopping around that the insurance premium on EVs currently significantly exceeds that.
Its a shame, considering that road tax is going to be applied to EVs before long, hopefully the insurance premium on EVs comes down soon.
So an extremely bad day.
"British troops will be deployed in Ukraine for the first time under plans being discussed with military chiefs, the new Defence Secretary has disclosed.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Grant Shapps said that he had held talks with Army leaders about shifting an official British-led training programme “into Ukraine” rather than relying on UK and other Nato members’ bases. He also called on more British defence firms to set up factories in Ukraine. "
SKS Party on less than Corbyn 2017
SKS Tory Fans please Explain
Smer-S&D: 26%
Hlas-S&D: 18% (-1)
PS-RE: 10% (+1)
OĽaNO+-EPP|ECR: 9% (+1)
KDH-EPP: 7%
SNS→ECR: 6%
Aliancia-EPP: 6% (-2)
Republika-NI: 5% (-1)
SaS-ECR: 4% (+1)
SR-ID: 3%
...
+/- vs. 3% counted
#Slovakia #Voľby2023
➤ europeelects.eu/slovakia
https://x.com/europeelects/status/1708241761158430769?s=46
But caveat that it’s early and those are largely rural votes. The exit polls had Progressives (PS-RE above) winning narrowly.
...European governments expect the seaborne gas to keep coming. Currently, Spain, the UK and France have the highest number of terminals for processing imported LNG, collectively making up 60% of the continent’s capacity. But, according to S&P Global’s Atlas of Energy Transition, other European countries are planning to develop new capacity as they look for alternatives to Russian gas...
The point about the UK is that it hasn't the capacity to build up a reserve over the summer months, bought cheaply.
So it is, to a somewhat greater extent, subject to any spikes in market prices over the winter.
...In late September, the gas transmission operator, National Gas, said it was “unlikely” that gas supplies would be at risk this winter unless “a very cold winter … should coincide with a major interruption to one of our gas supply sources”. But the risk of this happening should not be discounted, the operator said...
We'll probably get away with it, but the article seems a fairly balanced analysis to me.
Bad news - Its only been achieved by conceding to Republican demands of stripping Ukraine of any new aid.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66973976
For shame.
I’d have Greens favourite, 1/2 vs 6/4 maybe? I wonder if any bookie will offer it
If Farage became Reform leader that would change things I guess
However the Tories polling worse still than they did in 1997 with RefUK on 7% and the Greens on 7% the main beneficiaries
British firms having presences abroad is absolutely in our interest.
"He is known for working with Republicans on issues such as abortion, immigration, energy policy, and gun control."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Manchin
The funky bit about TRIGA is the core is weapons grade uranium. The even funkier but is that there is enough there for a bomb. The cherry on top is that building a bomb from enriched uranium is extremely easy.
So when North Vietnam went south, there was a comic moment or two until they retrieved the reactor core.
https://nitter.net/Exploding_Heads/status/1707308968421335450#m
https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media/F7GZJx3WgAAfWdW.png
ie new factories, as they do all the time, and as they've already been discussing.
Russia will not stop unless it is stopped. The West must face down the Moscow tyranny, and it is utterly wishful thinking that anything short of the Military defeat of Moscow will save us.
Russian subversion of the US and other Western democracies is very well advanced. We may only have a few months to save ourselves. To lose would see the end of the freedom we have taken for granted. It really is that simple.
Vietnam, FWIW, was a much different situation than Ukraine.
Intervention there started under Truman Eisenhower, who both massively subsidised the French effort to re-establish it as a colony after WWII. Eisenhower wanted to send troops in 1954, but Congress refused.
The Kennedy administration intervention, urged on him by the military and the hawks in the administration, was always intended to go beyond a pure training role.
(Though it's quite likely that he'd have pulled out had he survived to win a second term.)
It was entirely because of the GOP in the House of Representatives, where the fight over the 'debt limit' - a constitutionally dubious concept - originated.
Even this country is not immune: we came near to a Corbyn government, and we know what position he would have taken on issues such as Ukraine. The "It's our fault!" approach to defeating fascism.
They are educating us in what not to do in education.
Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again,
Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilderoy’s kite.
We have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right!
Turns out the poster in question might have been wrong, but it was still a brilliant skewering.
Unless confirmed in other polling after conference season is over,, I wouldn't take it too seriously.
The BBC has finally written a report with some actual, useful information on the energy price cap:
Specifically, the price of gas is 6.89p per kilowatt hour (kWh), and electricity is 27.35p per kWh.
Buts it’s going to sail through with Dem and sane Republican support
New Brexit border checks to cost business £320mn a year - https://on.ft.com/3Q1FTC0 via @FT
Amazingly the minister is claiming this cost is actually a saving - as the previous plan would have been £520m more. "You got lucky" said Tory Brexiteers.
What is the point? There is no transition away from the EEA to replace it with other imports from elsewhere. We will always be doing most trade in food with the closest market because of the nature of food.
So we remain attached and should remain aligned. These checks are exactly the kind of mentalist approach that the most mentalist of Brexiteers insisted would never ever be required. And yet here we are.
The turnout assumption is presented as a kind of empirical solution to the hoary problem of former Tory undecideds, but as they start by excluding undecideds and then adjust turnouts for party supporters, it seems a pretty indirect solution, with no guarantee of accuracy in the future just because it would have given a reasonable result in the past. Surely better to try to tackle the problem directly, as Only Living Boy tried to do here a couple of weeks ago?
They are educating us in what not to do in education.
ydoethur said: Malmesbury said: ydoethur said: Eabhal said: BartholomewRoberts said: MattW said: Benpointer said: Casino_Royale said: biggles said: Casino_Royale said: TimS said:The Opinium results since the start of the year are:
45:29
44:28
44:27
44:29
44:29
44:29
41:30
42:28
44:26
43:29
43:28
41:28
44:26
43:28
42:25
40:26
41:26
42:28
41:26
39:29
So it’s Labour’s lowest score of the year, but not hugely out of the ordinary for the Tories.
There’s a trend over the year for Labour to lose a bit of VI - about 2% I’d say on average. Whereas Tory has oscillated around a fairly stable level.
The marginal gainers have been the Lib Dems. Started the year averaging 8-9, now generally 10-11. They’ve gone:
9,9,7,9,8,8,9,10,10,11,9,11,8,9,11,10,11,9,11, 12
Tories going nowhere but that's enough for Labour to be worried if I were Starmer.
Another year of that and he could be into NOM territory.
I find the Reform numbers fascinating. Do that many people even know who they are? But then I was amazed in the local elections in Derby in 2022 when I visited, to see them everywhere and doing well. At first I assumed it was an unfortunately named “Reform Derby” set of indies. But no. Maybe they are doing a LibDem, very local strategy. If so, where could they get a seat?
I think if the Tories were doing Tory things, i.e. cutting tax now rather than having raised it to record highs, then they'd be up at around 34-35%.
They've lost a slice of their base because they're not playing to it.
Do you mean lower taxes by borrowing more or lower taxes by cutting public services?
If the latter, which services would you like to see cut?
Hmmm.
Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Service Support Staff or Care Staff to be slashed?
I'd say they need to recognise we need a period of higher taxation to help deal with national debt, and fund all those Conservative Govt promises.
1,726,000 people employed across civil service, public administration and other seems like quite a lot.
For anyone who's serious about cutting the size of the state though, I think you need to be prepared to say what does the state currently does that it should not.
I can give a few examples. Number one being planning.
How many of the 1.7 million are involved in planning? Not in planning but none of the 11,000 civil servants employed by the DfE, Ofsted and Ofqual are involved in education.
Not true.
They are educating us in what not to do in education.
Not on a single issue, or in one direction or twain,
But conclusively, comprehensively, and several times and again,
Were all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilderoy’s kite.
We have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right!
They can continue to do that in their own time for free as that numpty Sam Freedman does.
I was comparing the value of the education in question to that received from the Boer War.
Perhaps we could send the DfE to clear mines in Ukraine? They would definitely innovate, there.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/01/poll-spells-trouble-for-rishi-sunak-as-voters-who-lent-votes-look-to-take-them-back
https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/governance-and-structure/oflog-chief-to-earn-up-to-149000-14-07-2023/
Regarding Planning, there are hardly any civil servants involved in planning, the number is almost negligible. Maybe 100 or so?
Although of course if they were serious, you don't need a new director to understand the problem. Each year, we cut their real terms funding and mandate they do more and more. Result - cutting corners, demotivation and ultimately failure.
Plus Lozzo is pretty poisonous at the mo and Nige has generally been careful to not step over the line into full-bore nutjob.
I still get Reform and Reclaim mixed up fwiw. There’s no strong brand there.
The tides will still be delivering to our door twice a day though...
But so far, AI and picture generation is beyond me.
Farage has been a full-bore nutjob his whole life
And in the same way that central government can't balance its books by cutting red tape/foreign aid/woke, councils can't do it off councillor allowances, either.
But it's OK, because Rishi is going to give 55 towns some of the "cutting HS2" dividend;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66973899
What's that thing about how Britain has never invested properly and we needed Brexit to somehow fix that?
There are also reasons to be optimistic. The reputation of Russia has been destroyed in the west. The war hasn't gone to plan. It has been hard work for them, the war is not that popular in Russia. They have lost vast amounts of troops. Their visions of imperial expansion have been revealed as fantasies. The Wagner group has imploded. NATO has expanded. The Russian economy - based on oil and gas- is going to get more and more obsolete as alternatives evolve and the war has accelerated this.