OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
Was that because John felt the yellow peril tend to cheat at croquet?
I'm off to Perthshire on Monday. Nowhere better in Europe* for Autumn colours. I know this is far from the biggest concern, but I'm hoping the storm doesn't prematurely remove the goldens and browns from the trees.
*I have travelled nowhere near enough to know whether this is true, but it seems feasible.
It is fabulous. The hillside to the north and east of Perth is excellent already and will get better but the trees and walks around Dunkeld are hard to beat. Do the river walk there. So many different mature trees from all around the world.
This storm is looking ominous though. The woods near me haven’t recovered from the storm 3? years ago. In fact they won’t in my lifetime.
Yes, we're staying just outside Dunkeld. We did the same trip last year. I loved it. I would describe the Tay there as 'muscular'; quite an awesome volume of water surging past. I'm hoping to do Ben Vrackie, if the kids are up to it; and also possibly the Falls of Bruar. We're also (following last year's recommendation by, I think, @Luckyguy1983 ) going to do the Enchanted Forest again. Hopefully schedule in a castle of some sort. But basically just spend a few days together as a family. The kids are absolutely running on empty leading up to half term - haven't needed a holiday as much as this in a long time!
Blair Castle is great if you want to see a massive baronial (Ducal in this case) pile. Should fit in with Bruar quite well. So glad you enjoyed last year's visit - sure this one will be even better.
Thanks - we did Blair Castle last year; loved it. Not least because I realised when I arrived that I had been there before, when I was, ooh, four, and had indeed camped in the campsite next door. There's something magical about a memory from that far back that you had forgotten even having. Also something magical about a lone piper playing outside a Baronial (/ducal) pile at 3pm with a backdrop of thousands of acres of empty highland landscape - which is also probably another only half-remembered childhood memory. So we may well do Blair Castle again!
looking at the Perth/Angus/Aberdeen area weather forecast, I would invest in lifejackets...
"Emma Holland-Lindsay, the Lib Dem candidate, insisted she is the true local candidate, with ancestors going back generations. “People like the fact that I’m Bedfordshire through and through,” she said."
My school in Bedford was about 60% non-white, and almost half of kids didn't speak English at home.
Showing that pride in local roots = racism is ipso facto BS.
Of course, it MAY be that, but in this case seems a streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetch.
Yes but presumably very few of the non-white kids at rcs100's school had ancestors in Bedfordshire going back generations.
I think, if not pride, it must at least be interesting to be that deeply rooted in a place. (None of my grandparents came from within 80 miles of any of the others.) But I don't think it confers any sort of moral advantage.
We've traced my family back to at least the 11th century, in Cornwall
Given that the Cornish arrived in Cornwall (as Celts) in about 2000BC it is highly likely my extended family (most of whom are down in Cornwall still) are living within a few miles of where the airncestors arrived four thousand years ago, some might be living within a few hundred yards of the same
It is a slightly strange feeling. Such deep roots. I wonder if it is that that gives me this massive wanderlust, this urge to be UNrooted
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
Is it because you are abroad?
No. This happened before I fled to the US. The result is that I mostly use SpreadEx for my trading.
But they're not carrying any markets on the byelections.
According several U.S. Defense Officials, they now believe to have Direct Evidence that it was a Misfired-Rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad which Destroyed the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in the Northern Gaza Strip last night.
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
Is it because you are abroad?
No. This happened before I fled to the US. The result is that I mostly use SpreadEx for my trading.
But they're not carrying any markets on the byelections.
Smarkets have byelection markets, though much less liquidity than Betfair exchange.
> Jim Jordan is hoping to pick up votes at this 11 a.m. vote, but a key ally — Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus — is trying to roll back expectations. “Just so there’s no surprises: Jordan will likely have FEWER votes today than yesterday — as I expected,” Perry wrote just now on social media. “This is the fight — which Jim Jordan represents — to end the status quo, and it ain’t easy.”
> As he left the office of the Republican whip, one G.O.P. lawmaker who opposed Jordan, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, tells reporters it’s increasingly unlikely Jordan will prevail as mainstream conservatives stand strong against him.
“I think it gets more and more difficult for him every day.”
> Jordan indicates he will support a vote on a proposal to empower McHenry as temporary speaker if he doesn’t prevail. He tells reporters: “People are talking about this resolution. I told leadership: ‘Call the question. Let’s find out.’”
SSI - the last (and most recent) item above, suggests (to me anyway) that Jockstrap Jim does NOT have the votes today.
"Sweden offers limp response to Belgium shootings Leading politicians appear more concerned about Swedes 'moderating their tone' By Ivar Arpi
The reaction to the killing of two Swedish football fans in Belgium has, in my home country, been rather curious. Following the terrorist attack, Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats and our former prime minister, urged Swedes to moderate their tone and to avoid expressing strong emotions. Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister and leader of the Moderate Party, said that “one has to be very, very careful right now. Words that admittedly are legal can have consequences. All that is lawful is not appropriate.” "
The BBC are leading with 'they're still collecting the dead'.
I find it hard to believe that this is true. I find it very easy to believe that it's completely worthless journalism and a smokescreen to cover yesterdays BBC news car crash.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
I despise the Tories over Labour big time, and I'm looking forward to a Labour Government, but there is a sense of entitlement in Labour opposite the LibDems that really rankles. "Do as you're told. You're a minor party. Know your place" There are consequences. It ruined the possible coalition negotiations with Labour in 2010 - though the numbers were also against it.
The BBC are leading with 'they're still collecting the dead'.
I find it hard to believe that this is true. I find it very easy to believe that it's completely worthless journalism and a smokescreen to cover yesterdays BBC news car crash.
"Emma Holland-Lindsay, the Lib Dem candidate, insisted she is the true local candidate, with ancestors going back generations. “People like the fact that I’m Bedfordshire through and through,” she said."
My school in Bedford was about 60% non-white, and almost half of kids didn't speak English at home.
My maternal ancestors were millers just outside Bedford. The mill is still there, although of historic interest only now. The family has diversified into a wide range of activities. None, as far as I am concerned o aware, especially lucrative!
Which mill, if you don't mind me asking.
Bromham, to the West of Bedford town.
Know it well. I've spent many a few happy hours fishing the Great Ouse - particularly a stretch a bit down from Bromham, at Harrold mill.
My gt-grandfather was the miller there in the late 19thC, succeeded by his eldest son. My grandfather was third son so had to make his own way. The censuses show him, as an adult, as progressing from cowman via farm manager to tenant farmer. My mother was youngest but two of his large family, and married late, so I never knew him. He died a year before I was born.
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
I despise the Tories over Labour big time, and I'm looking forward to a Labour Government, but there is a sense of entitlement in Labour opposite the LibDems that really rankles. "Do as you're told. You're a minor party. Know your place" There are consequences. It ruined the possible coalition negotiations with Labour in 2010 - though the numbers were also against it.
That may have been as much the arrogance that develops in government over a long period of time as the natural position of Labour to the LDs (though it was that too). Compare and contrast the Tories then and now. But then if the LDs go for decades building up anti-Tory coalitions, who else do they expect to head them?
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
I've had £5 on the conservatives with Ladbrokes on Mid beds at evens, and £5 on them to win Tamworth at 23/10. These are yesterday's prices, though.
"Emma Holland-Lindsay, the Lib Dem candidate, insisted she is the true local candidate, with ancestors going back generations. “People like the fact that I’m Bedfordshire through and through,” she said."
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
It’s Catch 22. By the time any referendum happened, the coalition Gvt that called it will be in mid-term unpopularity, and any “no” campaign would focus on the 10-15 coalition and things like tuition fees too. Add in a bit of Cummings “it will cost cash we can spent out OUR NHS instead”, a large rebellious Labour “no” group, the and the PR referendum loses nine times out of ten.
The BBC are leading with 'they're still collecting the dead'.
I find it hard to believe that this is true. I find it very easy to believe that it's completely worthless journalism and a smokescreen to cover yesterdays BBC news car crash.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
I'm off to Perthshire on Monday. Nowhere better in Europe* for Autumn colours. I know this is far from the biggest concern, but I'm hoping the storm doesn't prematurely remove the goldens and browns from the trees.
*I have travelled nowhere near enough to know whether this is true, but it seems feasible.
It is fabulous. The hillside to the north and east of Perth is excellent already and will get better but the trees and walks around Dunkeld are hard to beat. Do the river walk there. So many different mature trees from all around the world.
This storm is looking ominous though. The woods near me haven’t recovered from the storm 3? years ago. In fact they won’t in my lifetime.
Yes, we're staying just outside Dunkeld. We did the same trip last year. I loved it. I would describe the Tay there as 'muscular'; quite an awesome volume of water surging past. I'm hoping to do Ben Vrackie, if the kids are up to it; and also possibly the Falls of Bruar. We're also (following last year's recommendation by, I think, @Luckyguy1983 ) going to do the Enchanted Forest again. Hopefully schedule in a castle of some sort. But basically just spend a few days together as a family. The kids are absolutely running on empty leading up to half term - haven't needed a holiday as much as this in a long time!
Blair Castle is great if you want to see a massive baronial (Ducal in this case) pile. Should fit in with Bruar quite well. So glad you enjoyed last year's visit - sure this one will be even better.
Thanks - we did Blair Castle last year; loved it. Not least because I realised when I arrived that I had been there before, when I was, ooh, four, and had indeed camped in the campsite next door. There's something magical about a memory from that far back that you had forgotten even having. Also something magical about a lone piper playing outside a Baronial (/ducal) pile at 3pm with a backdrop of thousands of acres of empty highland landscape - which is also probably another only half-remembered childhood memory. So we may well do Blair Castle again!
looking at the Perth/Angus/Aberdeen area weather forecast, I would invest in lifejackets...
Happily we're not going until Monday! Just hoping that there's no serious after effects.
I suspect it was their clinging to the claim that it was an Israeli bomb attack on the hospital.
Commercial satellite imagery is cheap, and sub 1m resolution now - some is 30cm.
Why has the BBC not bought some? Unless such imagery is being blocked via the mostly US firms that sell it. If so, the BBC should report that.
This would give us verifiable truth on the question of whether the hospital has been blown up or not.
The claimed images of the explosion don’t match the previous narrative of hundreds dead and a hospital destroyed.
The main thing i get from the Twatter images up thread is how *small* whatever it was, was. A couple of cars in the car park knocked over, but the rest burnt where they sat.
Aircraft bombs have hundreds of kilos of high explosive and are designed to create a storm of fragments. The trees would have been stripped of foliage or torn up, all the windows smashed, building caved in etc.
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
I despise the Tories over Labour big time, and I'm looking forward to a Labour Government, but there is a sense of entitlement in Labour opposite the LibDems that really rankles. "Do as you're told. You're a minor party. Know your place" There are consequences. It ruined the possible coalition negotiations with Labour in 2010 - though the numbers were also against it.
I am a bit surprised by that. We both vote LD yet I dislike* Labour over the Tories (*despise is too strong for me!).
How did you feel when LDs were in government with the Conservatives?
The BBC are leading with 'they're still collecting the dead'.
I find it hard to believe that this is true. I find it very easy to believe that it's completely worthless journalism and a smokescreen to cover yesterdays BBC news car crash.
The BBC are leading with 'they're still collecting the dead'.
I find it hard to believe that this is true. I find it very easy to believe that it's completely worthless journalism and a smokescreen to cover yesterdays BBC news car crash.
'Feared to have killed hundreds of people' - they just can't let go of their failed reporting despite the story then making it obvious that it was a bomb in a car park.
The BBC are leading with 'they're still collecting the dead'.
I find it hard to believe that this is true. I find it very easy to believe that it's completely worthless journalism and a smokescreen to cover yesterdays BBC news car crash.
They don't have one single piece of evidence that indicates that Israel caused it. The evidence they do have seems to suggest that it was from Gaza and not Israeli. Still, they seem to find it hard to come to any conclusion or even what on the balance of probabilities it is the result of. Also, no mention of the 500 casualties that were originally reported. Not doing a very good job of verifying anything.
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
"Emma Holland-Lindsay, the Lib Dem candidate, insisted she is the true local candidate, with ancestors going back generations. “People like the fact that I’m Bedfordshire through and through,” she said."
My school in Bedford was about 60% non-white, and almost half of kids didn't speak English at home.
But how many of them could say they had "[Bedfordshire-resident] ancestors going back generations"?
There is an unpleasant air to the comment that implies that families that have lived in the county for generations are somehow more deserving of representing it - which would inevitably exclude most, if not all, non-white residents, depending on how many generations / decades are considered qualifying.
Even taking the minimum - two, given the plural in her quote - and using my own case as an example, I had two grandparents who lived in what's now the Wakefield district so could have made the same claim. They moved in when they got married, in 1937, well before mass immigration. Certainly, some non-white 20-/30-somethings will have had UK-born grandparents but even that would be a relative minority.
Even leaving the racial angle aside, I just don't like the inherited ultra-localism which runs very counter to any kind of best-person-for-the-job meritocracy, or battle of arguments and policies.
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
I despise the Tories over Labour big time, and I'm looking forward to a Labour Government, but there is a sense of entitlement in Labour opposite the LibDems that really rankles. "Do as you're told. You're a minor party. Know your place" There are consequences. It ruined the possible coalition negotiations with Labour in 2010 - though the numbers were also against it.
I am a bit surprised by that. We both vote LD yet I dislike* Labour over the Tories (*despise is too strong for me!).
How did you feel when LDs were in government with the Conservatives?
Initially glad, then, quickly, suspicious and finally disappointed!
Canada, the Liberals have the advantage of constituency boundaries in their favour and the likelihood of squeezing the NDP vote, but having said that their time is probably up, just on the swing of the pendulum, three wins is enough for any PM, not a fourth. Mid Beds: The Lib Dem canvassers continue to report good doorstep body language when they call. Either they are being conned, are conning themselves or they are indeed close to victory. We shall see. To day is of course their "blue letter" delivery day
Well, they could be conning us, but I'm sure no self-respecting LD would ever dream of such a thing.
Shurley not? I mean the stories we have read about them telling porkies on the doorstep that the Labour candidate doesn't live in the seat are clearly lies themselves!!
Interesting. There are people on Midjourney trying to create the most detailed, plausible photos of Palestinian resilience and defeat, via AI
The way Midjourney works, a lot of prompts are public
Here's a snippet:
"color photo of a single child sitting in destroyed house rubbles in Palestine , a hauntingly beautiful portrait capturing the resilience and innocence of a child amidst the devastation. The child's eyes reflect a mix of sadness, determination, and hope, drawing the viewer in. The environment surrounding the scene is filled with rubble and debris, remnants of what was once a vibrant home. The walls are crumbling, windows shattered, and the roof partially collapsed. The destruction serves as a powerful symbol of the hardships faced by the people in Palestine. The mood of the scene is somber yet filled with resilience. There is a sense of stillness and quiet amidst the chaos, as if time has stood still in this moment. The atmosphere is heavy, laden with emotions of loss, displacement, and the indomitable spirit of the people. The camera used is a vintage Leica M6, capturing the scene with stunning detail and clarity. The color film used is Kodak Portra 400, enhancing the muted tones and evoking a sense of nostalgia. The lens choice is a Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2, allowing for a natural perspective and shallow depth of field...."
Is this people literally trying to fake Gaza images right now? That prompt was inputted about an hour ago
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
Priti Patel nobbling the mayoral elections has put paid to the notion that changing the voting system requires a referendum.
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
The Lib Dems were there to be barged aside, weren't they?
It is some entitlement to think that the main opposition should go easy in an election it could win, merely to allow a much smaller party, which finished a considerable way back in third, to have a clearer run.
Indeed. Crackers.
Yet it seems Labour are the ones getting most upset and having a sense of entitlement and that is after they did f*** all for weeks while the LDs worked it. Some Lab supporters really have no sense of irony when complaining about a political party having the nerve to challenge them in an election.
Yes @Anabobazina has an advanced sense of entitlement. There are a lot of Labour supporters like him unfortunately. But not all.
LOL.
You are the one saying that the THIRD PLACE party should be given a free pass by Labour.
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
I despise the Tories over Labour big time, and I'm looking forward to a Labour Government, but there is a sense of entitlement in Labour opposite the LibDems that really rankles. "Do as you're told. You're a minor party. Know your place" There are consequences. It ruined the possible coalition negotiations with Labour in 2010 - though the numbers were also against it.
I am a bit surprised by that. We both vote LD yet I dislike* Labour over the Tories (*despise is too strong for me!).
How did you feel when LDs were in government with the Conservatives?
I resigned from the party. Not because of the coalition with the Conservatives which I supported as a member, but because of the broken promises. I think Clegg was in favour of student fees and austerity all along but misled us in the campaign. I'm glad he's gone.
I'm not in favour of a coalition with Labour either but C&S is fine.
There are Blue LibDems and Red LibDems (and orange ones). We are a broad church just like the other parties.
OT. If LibDems cost Labour the seat could have pretty negative consequences for Davey. A significant number of anti-Tory voters likely to reflexively vote Labour at the GE and not "risk" a LibDem vote even in seats where the LibDems are challengers. Not everyone is clued in sufficiently to realise where the value lies.
If LibDems don't win the seat, I hope the Tories win it rather than Labour.
It will make little difference to the current parliamentary arithmetic.
It will show Labour that barging the LibDems aside has consequences.
It will encourage more cooperation between Labour and LibDems on tactical voting.
It may encourage the Tories and reduce the number of Tory losses in the GE making a minority rather than majority Labour government more likely.
I suspect that whoever wins will have much less impact. Most of the public won’t notice. Others will see one day’s headlines.
Obviously, people in parties do pay more attention, but even then, the Labourites who like cooperation with the LibDems will still like cooperation with the LibDems and those who don’t will still not. Any Tories who think winning on ~30% because they got lucky on a split opposition vote is a big success or a winning strategy for the general election is a fool. Sure, milk the headlines if you win, but don’t get carried away!
As a PR supporter who has advocated Lib-Lab cooperation for years and practiced it both as an MP and currently in council coalition, it does plenty to discourage me. If the Tories win the seat, as Barnesian revealingly hopes in the absence of an unlikely LibDem win, we will certainly blame the LibDems, and apparently they will blame us. Encourage cooperation? No.
But we should park the argument till Friday when we find out what actually happened, eh?
It makes me sad to see that some LibDems say that - but I've seen quite a lot of Labour people saying they'd prefer a Con win to a LibDem win, so it cuts both ways. Both parties have their convinced partisans, and their pragmatic dealmakers (other adjectives are available in both cases). I've always thought that a) voters really really want one party they can get behind b) that an as easily mean a party that's seen to make an effort, as the previous runner-up c) that doesn't mean not standing a candidate for those who really really want to vote their first choice as opposed to most likely to win, it means standing a candidate and not working hard for it d) a lot of people are going to disagree with me as soon as they read this.
John Prescott always despised the LibDems over the Tories.
I despise the Tories over Labour big time, and I'm looking forward to a Labour Government, but there is a sense of entitlement in Labour opposite the LibDems that really rankles. "Do as you're told. You're a minor party. Know your place" There are consequences. It ruined the possible coalition negotiations with Labour in 2010 - though the numbers were also against it.
I post this at least every month, but yes, absolutely that:
I suspect it was their clinging to the claim that it was an Israeli bomb attack on the hospital.
Commercial satellite imagery is cheap, and sub 1m resolution now - some is 30cm.
Why has the BBC not bought some? Unless such imagery is being blocked via the mostly US firms that sell it. If so, the BBC should report that.
This would give us verifiable truth on the question of whether the hospital has been blown up or not.
The claimed images of the explosion don’t match the previous narrative of hundreds dead and a hospital destroyed.
The main thing i get from the Twatter images up thread is how *small* whatever it was, was. A couple of cars in the car park knocked over, but the rest burnt where they sat.
Aircraft bombs have hundreds of kilos of high explosive and are designed to create a storm of fragments. The trees would have been stripped of foliage or torn up, all the windows smashed, building caved in etc.
It took the Israelis the best part of a week to identify and move 250 bodies at the festival. Different circumstances of course in Gaza, but are we to accept that 500 bodies have been moved in under 24 hours ?
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
There seem to be PBers betting on opposite outcomes in the by-elections. Why not cut out the middle man and bet with each other?
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
Priti Patel nobbling the mayoral elections has put paid to the notion that changing the voting system requires a referendum.
There have been many changes to the voting and electoral systems over the last 200 years. Only one was put to a referendum and that was down to an intra-government split and the oddity of a coalition government. The idea that the PCC / mayoral change from SV to FPTP represents any kind of significant precedent is nonsense. Blair's change of the Euro-election voting system was more meaningful and parliament enacted that by itself (and yes, it was partly down to a European agreement but that wasn't put to a referendum either).
Canada, the Liberals have the advantage of constituency boundaries in their favour and the likelihood of squeezing the NDP vote, but having said that their time is probably up, just on the swing of the pendulum, three wins is enough for any PM, not a fourth. Mid Beds: The Lib Dem canvassers continue to report good doorstep body language when they call. Either they are being conned, are conning themselves or they are indeed close to victory. We shall see. To day is of course their "blue letter" delivery day
Well, they could be conning us, but I'm sure no self-respecting LD would ever dream of such a thing.
Shurley not? I mean the stories we have read about them telling porkies on the doorstep that the Labour candidate doesn't live in the seat are clearly lies themselves!!
Was he living in Mid Bedfordshire throughout his ten years as a local councillor in Walthamstow, which ended last month, out of interest? Or did he obtain an address in the constituency more recently?
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
If PR forced the Lib Dems to actually believe in and advocate a coherent set of values - liberalism, maybe? - rather than just game FPTP, that would be a very good thing all round.
Interesting. There are people on Midjourney trying to create the most detailed, plausible photos of Palestinian resilience and defeat, via AI
The way Midjourney works, a lot of prompts are public
Here's a snippet:
"color photo of a single child sitting in destroyed house rubbles in Palestine , a hauntingly beautiful portrait capturing the resilience and innocence of a child amidst the devastation. The child's eyes reflect a mix of sadness, determination, and hope, drawing the viewer in. The environment surrounding the scene is filled with rubble and debris, remnants of what was once a vibrant home. The walls are crumbling, windows shattered, and the roof partially collapsed. The destruction serves as a powerful symbol of the hardships faced by the people in Palestine. The mood of the scene is somber yet filled with resilience. There is a sense of stillness and quiet amidst the chaos, as if time has stood still in this moment. The atmosphere is heavy, laden with emotions of loss, displacement, and the indomitable spirit of the people. The camera used is a vintage Leica M6, capturing the scene with stunning detail and clarity. The color film used is Kodak Portra 400, enhancing the muted tones and evoking a sense of nostalgia. The lens choice is a Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2, allowing for a natural perspective and shallow depth of field...."
Is this people literally trying to fake Gaza images right now? That prompt was inputted about an hour ago
Sounds like a bit of a faff. Can't they just get someone with a camera phone in Gaza to take a piccie?
Interesting. There are people on Midjourney trying to create the most detailed, plausible photos of Palestinian resilience and defeat, via AI
The way Midjourney works, a lot of prompts are public
Here's a snippet:
"color photo of a single child sitting in destroyed house rubbles in Palestine , a hauntingly beautiful portrait capturing the resilience and innocence of a child amidst the devastation. The child's eyes reflect a mix of sadness, determination, and hope, drawing the viewer in. The environment surrounding the scene is filled with rubble and debris, remnants of what was once a vibrant home. The walls are crumbling, windows shattered, and the roof partially collapsed. The destruction serves as a powerful symbol of the hardships faced by the people in Palestine. The mood of the scene is somber yet filled with resilience. There is a sense of stillness and quiet amidst the chaos, as if time has stood still in this moment. The atmosphere is heavy, laden with emotions of loss, displacement, and the indomitable spirit of the people. The camera used is a vintage Leica M6, capturing the scene with stunning detail and clarity. The color film used is Kodak Portra 400, enhancing the muted tones and evoking a sense of nostalgia. The lens choice is a Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2, allowing for a natural perspective and shallow depth of field...."
Is this people literally trying to fake Gaza images right now? That prompt was inputted about an hour ago
Sounds like a bit of a faff. Can't they just get someone with a camera phone in Gaza to take a piccie?
To be honest, your way sounds rather more of a faff.
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
I've had £5 on the conservatives with Ladbrokes on Mid beds at evens, and £5 on them to win Tamworth at 23/10. These are yesterday's prices, though.
I used to have a modest amount in a Ladbrokes account, but I emptied it betting on the Conservatives in Chesham & Amersham.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
In PR elections such as the Euros LDs Greens and UKIP/BXP all did better than in national elections.
This shows that many support their policies, but also why Con and Lab prefer the cosy duopoly of FPTP.
I'm off to Perthshire on Monday. Nowhere better in Europe* for Autumn colours. I know this is far from the biggest concern, but I'm hoping the storm doesn't prematurely remove the goldens and browns from the trees.
*I have travelled nowhere near enough to know whether this is true, but it seems feasible.
It is fabulous. The hillside to the north and east of Perth is excellent already and will get better but the trees and walks around Dunkeld are hard to beat. Do the river walk there. So many different mature trees from all around the world.
This storm is looking ominous though. The woods near me haven’t recovered from the storm 3? years ago. In fact they won’t in my lifetime.
Yes, we're staying just outside Dunkeld. We did the same trip last year. I loved it. I would describe the Tay there as 'muscular'; quite an awesome volume of water surging past. I'm hoping to do Ben Vrackie, if the kids are up to it; and also possibly the Falls of Bruar. We're also (following last year's recommendation by, I think, @Luckyguy1983 ) going to do the Enchanted Forest again. Hopefully schedule in a castle of some sort. But basically just spend a few days together as a family. The kids are absolutely running on empty leading up to half term - haven't needed a holiday as much as this in a long time!
Blair Castle is great if you want to see a massive baronial (Ducal in this case) pile. Should fit in with Bruar quite well. So glad you enjoyed last year's visit - sure this one will be even better.
Thanks - we did Blair Castle last year; loved it. Not least because I realised when I arrived that I had been there before, when I was, ooh, four, and had indeed camped in the campsite next door. There's something magical about a memory from that far back that you had forgotten even having. Also something magical about a lone piper playing outside a Baronial (/ducal) pile at 3pm with a backdrop of thousands of acres of empty highland landscape - which is also probably another only half-remembered childhood memory. So we may well do Blair Castle again!
looking at the Perth/Angus/Aberdeen area weather forecast, I would invest in lifejackets...
Happily we're not going until Monday! Just hoping that there's no serious after effects.
Dunkeld House Hotel? I've had a couple of good Xmas nights out there.
I suspect it was their clinging to the claim that it was an Israeli bomb attack on the hospital.
Commercial satellite imagery is cheap, and sub 1m resolution now - some is 30cm.
Why has the BBC not bought some? Unless such imagery is being blocked via the mostly US firms that sell it. If so, the BBC should report that.
This would give us verifiable truth on the question of whether the hospital has been blown up or not.
The claimed images of the explosion don’t match the previous narrative of hundreds dead and a hospital destroyed.
The main thing i get from the Twatter images up thread is how *small* whatever it was, was. A couple of cars in the car park knocked over, but the rest burnt where they sat.
Aircraft bombs have hundreds of kilos of high explosive and are designed to create a storm of fragments. The trees would have been stripped of foliage or torn up, all the windows smashed, building caved in etc.
It took the Israelis the best part of a week to identify and move 250 bodies at the festival. Different circumstances of course in Gaza, but are we to accept that 500 bodies have been moved in under 24 hours ?
There aren't 500 dead in this incident though are there? (Just a claim from Hamas)
Interesting. There are people on Midjourney trying to create the most detailed, plausible photos of Palestinian resilience and defeat, via AI
The way Midjourney works, a lot of prompts are public
Here's a snippet:
"color photo of a single child sitting in destroyed house rubbles in Palestine , a hauntingly beautiful portrait capturing the resilience and innocence of a child amidst the devastation. The child's eyes reflect a mix of sadness, determination, and hope, drawing the viewer in. The environment surrounding the scene is filled with rubble and debris, remnants of what was once a vibrant home. The walls are crumbling, windows shattered, and the roof partially collapsed. The destruction serves as a powerful symbol of the hardships faced by the people in Palestine. The mood of the scene is somber yet filled with resilience. There is a sense of stillness and quiet amidst the chaos, as if time has stood still in this moment. The atmosphere is heavy, laden with emotions of loss, displacement, and the indomitable spirit of the people. The camera used is a vintage Leica M6, capturing the scene with stunning detail and clarity. The color film used is Kodak Portra 400, enhancing the muted tones and evoking a sense of nostalgia. The lens choice is a Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2, allowing for a natural perspective and shallow depth of field...."
Is this people literally trying to fake Gaza images right now? That prompt was inputted about an hour ago
Sounds like a bit of a faff. Can't they just get someone with a camera phone in Gaza to take a piccie?
Well, maybe, but once you've got the template, you can cut and paste with tiny tweaks. Which is exactly what they are doing, as they hone in on the precise image they want
And the results are impressive. Perhaps the mods will forgive me if I post just one? (I promise not to post any more, it is just impossible to make this point without an example)
That's a low res version, the real thing is even more persuasive
If I saw that on a news site, would I know it was fake? I don't believe so - especially if I was the average Joe al-Schmovitz, unaware of the abilities of AI image-making. I'd probably think "Wow, what a haunting portrait of Palestinian resilience, capturing the defiance of these oppressed people", or just "wow, poor Palestinian kid"
Job done. I seriously doubt I would search the image carefully for signs of fakery
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
Priti Patel nobbling the mayoral elections has put paid to the notion that changing the voting system requires a referendum.
Changing the voting system to anything other than FPTP requires a referendum.
The real scandal was Blair inventing a new system in 2000 when the office of Mayor was brought in.
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
There seem to be PBers betting on opposite outcomes in the by-elections. Why not cut out the middle man and bet with each other?
I'm all green though mainly on Lab/Con/LD (if the Indie wins I'm in trouble...): I agree the Tories could be value in Tamworth at 3.75 - I've been told that it's "close". LDs in mid-Beds are 5.6 on Betfair - personally I wouldn't now take anything under 10, but others here disagree. I don't know the odds on other sites, though.
I suspect it was their clinging to the claim that it was an Israeli bomb attack on the hospital.
Commercial satellite imagery is cheap, and sub 1m resolution now - some is 30cm.
Why has the BBC not bought some? Unless such imagery is being blocked via the mostly US firms that sell it. If so, the BBC should report that.
This would give us verifiable truth on the question of whether the hospital has been blown up or not.
The claimed images of the explosion don’t match the previous narrative of hundreds dead and a hospital destroyed.
The main thing i get from the Twatter images up thread is how *small* whatever it was, was. A couple of cars in the car park knocked over, but the rest burnt where they sat.
Aircraft bombs have hundreds of kilos of high explosive and are designed to create a storm of fragments. The trees would have been stripped of foliage or torn up, all the windows smashed, building caved in etc.
It took the Israelis the best part of a week to identify and move 250 bodies at the festival. Different circumstances of course in Gaza, but are we to accept that 500 bodies have been moved in under 24 hours ?
There aren't 500 dead in this incident though are there? (Just a claim from Hamas)
> Representative Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, said going into the chamber that he’d vote again for Lee Zeldin for speaker. Zeldin, who won a few votes on Tuesday from New Yorkers opposing Jordan, is a fellow Long Islander, a former House member and a failed gubernatorial candidate.
LaLota reiterated that he needed “some darn good clarity” from Jordan on things Hurricane Sandy funding and keeping the government funded in order to potentially fall in line.
> Hearing from multiple lawmakers and staff that the resolution being discussed to empower McHenry as temporary speaker would run through Jan. 3. That would give the House time to deal with some of the most pressing crises, including a mid-November government shutdown, as well as funding for wars raging in Israel and Ukraine.
The BBC, SKY etc push a false story about Israel bombing a Gaza hospital (it was a Palestinian-fired rocket). And this in turn pushes genocidists-in-waiting to process to their next stage. Nice team-work, guys.
Quote Chris Williamson @DerbyChrisW · 20h Israel has forfeited any right to exist.
Looks more like my neighbours driveway, which they are currently digging it up to replace some bricks.
I’m unclear what the debate is here. The atom bomb over Hiroshima didn’t produce a crater, but it still killed a lot of people! Do any of these commentators or us here have relevant forensics experience as to what different explosions would produce?
The issue is that we were told early on that Israel had dropped bombs there. If Israel had dropped one of their bombs then there would have been a massive crater. We were also told the hospital had collapsed and yet it still seems to be standing. Lies from the very start. Just like Hamas lied when they said they don't attack civilians. Why should anyone trust a single word Hamas says?
I don’t think we should trust what Hamas say. I wouldn’t trust the IDF much either, who have told plenty of lies in the past. We should avoid rushing to conclusions.
I am also quite sceptical of armchair “experts” on social media who have suddenly become so knowledgeable on explosion forensics, having recently been experts on drone warfare in Ukraine, or epidemiology during COVID-19…
That's the point - you don't need to be a forensic explosives expert to see that there is no huge crater, the building is still standing and that there was a larger fire at Luton airport last week. Yet, despite this, many people just repeated the lies that they had been told unquestioningly.
I think we need to know - for one thing - how many people were at the hospital.
Media on the spot eg BBC correspondents have been reporting 50-100 people in single houses.
How many thousand were present at the hospital? It is an 80 bed hospital founded by CMS in 1882, and run by the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East. We will get accurate reports.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Leon has, quite early on today as well. Roger is still claiming it is all the fault of the evil Israelis and scorning anyone who suggests Hamas might be lying.
Not heard if Trudeau or the BBC correpondent have apologised yet.
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
There seem to be PBers betting on opposite outcomes in the by-elections. Why not cut out the middle man and bet with each other?
There have been personal wagers placed via this website (I was on the wrong end of a fairly sizeable one myself) but the inclusion of a middle-man does have the huge advantage that the risk of default is much lower.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
This is spot on. In the event there was PR, then all the political parties would split to some extent. There would be at least seven different parties with decent representations:
Reclaim / UKIP Traditional Conservatives Cameroon Conservatives Liberally Party Social Democratic Party Traditonal Left Wing Party Greens
I suspect the Liberally Party wouldn't get many more seats than they do now. And I suspect Reclaim and the Greens would be the major beneficiaries.
> Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “all options are on the table” for Democrats in terms of their response to some mainstream Republicans’ resolution to empower Patrick McHenry as a temporary speaker. He reiterated House Democrats’ two goals: preventing a Jordan speakership, and keeping the government funded and running.
> Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a veteran lawmaker and the chairman of the House Rules Committee, has risen to nominate Jim Jordan as speaker. The entire nomination choreography we saw play out Tuesday will be repeated again.
ADDENDUM - NYT live blog
> Cole recalls that two weeks ago he stood on the House floor and warned against McCarthy’s ouster, saying it would plunge the House into chaos. Those remarks, he said, have been vindicated. He framed this vote as an opportunity for Republicans to pull themselves out of the paralysis they sowed.
SSI - hardly a rallying cry for Jockstrap Jim. Rather a dog whistle to anti-JJ GOPers, along lines of "Do NOT read my lips, instead keep sticking it to 'my good friend".
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
This is spot on. In the event there was PR, then all the political parties would split to some extent. There would be at least seven different parties with decent representations:
Reclaim / UKIP Traditional Conservatives Cameroon Conservatives Liberally Party Social Democratic Party Traditonal Left Wing Party Greens
I suspect the Liberally Party wouldn't get many more seats than they do now. And I suspect Reclaim and the Greens would be the major beneficiaries.
Oooh agree with that just add others and youre there though I cant see there being a place for the Cameroon conservatives. Theyd either go traditional or Liberally.
On support Id guess
Reclaim / UKIP - 10% Traditional Conservatives 30% Liberally Party 10% Social Democratic Party 30% Traditonal Left Wing Party 7% Greens 8% Others 5%
NYT live blog - The pitch Cole is making now is intended to win over the appropriators who opposed Jordan, the lawmakers who write the spending bills that fund the government. He is reminding lawmakers that Jordan pitched a short-term, stopgap spending bill to avert a shutdown — but many lawmakers are worried that his plan also includes across the board cuts, including to the military.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
There seem to be PBers betting on opposite outcomes in the by-elections. Why not cut out the middle man and bet with each other?
There have been personal wagers placed via this website (I was on the wrong end of a fairly sizeable one myself) but the inclusion of a middle-man does have the huge advantage that the risk of default is much lower.
if you think BF is more trustworthy it doesn't say much for us lot.
Looks more like my neighbours driveway, which they are currently digging it up to replace some bricks.
I’m unclear what the debate is here. The atom bomb over Hiroshima didn’t produce a crater, but it still killed a lot of people! Do any of these commentators or us here have relevant forensics experience as to what different explosions would produce?
The issue is that we were told early on that Israel had dropped bombs there. If Israel had dropped one of their bombs then there would have been a massive crater. We were also told the hospital had collapsed and yet it still seems to be standing. Lies from the very start. Just like Hamas lied when they said they don't attack civilians. Why should anyone trust a single word Hamas says?
I don’t think we should trust what Hamas say. I wouldn’t trust the IDF much either, who have told plenty of lies in the past. We should avoid rushing to conclusions.
I am also quite sceptical of armchair “experts” on social media who have suddenly become so knowledgeable on explosion forensics, having recently been experts on drone warfare in Ukraine, or epidemiology during COVID-19…
That's the point - you don't need to be a forensic explosives expert to see that there is no huge crater, the building is still standing and that there was a larger fire at Luton airport last week. Yet, despite this, many people just repeated the lies that they had been told unquestioningly.
I think we need to know - for one thing - how many people were at the hospital.
Media on the spot eg BBC correspondents have been reporting 50-100 people in single houses.
How many thousand were present at the hospital? It is an 80 bed hospital founded by CMS in 1882, and run by the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East. We will get accurate reports.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Kudos to you.
And fair play to you, you were right to be more skeptical of the Palestinian claims. I should have been warier
As @Malmesbury pointed out (I think it was him/her) one striking anomaly was the LACK of cameraphone footage of people being dragged out of burning buildings, dug up out of rubble, the desperate search for life in the bomb zone. There was just one video of an interior fire, which I now suspect was a "fake" -real footage but from somewhere else like the Syrian war
If such a massive bomb had flattened a hospital, there would have been dozens or hundreds of urgent, harrowing videos from all the citizens with smartphones. Yet not
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (to much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accounatablity.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
If PR forced the Lib Dems to actually believe in and advocate a coherent set of values - liberalism, maybe? - rather than just game FPTP, that would be a very good thing all round.
I believe the leader of the LibDems has a first edition of John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It's passed on from leader to leader. It is our bible.
Chris Williamson @DerbyChrisW · 20h Israel has forfeited any right to exist.
To quote Jeremy Corbyn, "Chris Williamson is a very good, very effective Labour MP. He's a very strong anti-racist campaigner. He is not anti-semitic in any way."
He did eventually cut Williamson adrift under extreme pressure, but my goodness it was a grim period. The bloke's Twitter feed now is an absolute bin-fire.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.
Agree. AV, much maligned, has the one thing needed: a route to new political entrants who have patience, campaigning ability and competence.
It simply allows voter X to vote for new or small party A without wasting their vote, because with AV they can vote Con/Lab as well.
At every actual election millions of voters (and me) will only vote for the party that can come first or second. AV would change, slowly but massively, the way politics works but in a very traditional and incremental way.
I suspect it was their clinging to the claim that it was an Israeli bomb attack on the hospital.
Commercial satellite imagery is cheap, and sub 1m resolution now - some is 30cm.
Why has the BBC not bought some? Unless such imagery is being blocked via the mostly US firms that sell it. If so, the BBC should report that.
This would give us verifiable truth on the question of whether the hospital has been blown up or not.
The claimed images of the explosion don’t match the previous narrative of hundreds dead and a hospital destroyed.
The main thing i get from the Twatter images up thread is how *small* whatever it was, was. A couple of cars in the car park knocked over, but the rest burnt where they sat.
Aircraft bombs have hundreds of kilos of high explosive and are designed to create a storm of fragments. The trees would have been stripped of foliage or torn up, all the windows smashed, building caved in etc.
It took the Israelis the best part of a week to identify and move 250 bodies at the festival. Different circumstances of course in Gaza, but are we to accept that 500 bodies have been moved in under 24 hours ?
There aren't 500 dead in this incident though are there? (Just a claim from Hamas)
Well from the pictures you wouldn't have wanted to be the driver of that Toyota Yaris.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
Each constituency would have to have around a quarter of a million voters, unless you expand the number of MPs enormously, which I don't think anyone is in favour of. That would mean somewhere like Somerset having just one constituency instead of 5. It's much easier to introduce STV in small countries like Ireland or New Zealand because the constituencies can still be fairly small without having a huge number of MPs.
I now have a small wager on the LDs in Mid Beds, and on the Conservatives in Tamworth.
Erm, you do know 99.9 per cent of OGH's betting headers come from Smarkets? Maybe it is only me who reads the old boy's ravings.
Yes, I thought that. Can't believe Smarkets has slipped his radar.
No, its just cheeky reverse psychology marketing by rcs1000.
'Never ask a question, to which you don't already know the answer.' - By feigning ignorance and asking the question rather he's now fished dozens of people into talking about how great Smarkets are.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Maybe not Hamas or the IDF. Israeli fingers are being pointed at Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Sadly, I can't get Betfair to reopen my account (it is apparently, "unappealable"). So does anyone have any recommendations about other sites where I might be able to bet on these byelections?
I'm thinking a little snifter on the Conservatives in Tamworth, and on the LDs in mid-Beds.
There seem to be PBers betting on opposite outcomes in the by-elections. Why not cut out the middle man and bet with each other?
There have been personal wagers placed via this website (I was on the wrong end of a fairly sizeable one myself) but the inclusion of a middle-man does have the huge advantage that the risk of default is much lower.
if you think BF is more trustworthy it doesn't say much for us lot.
It's had some poorly worded markets, with some controversy over that. But, to be fair, it has to settle markets one way or another (it can't pay out both sides) and, ultimately, the risk of a random on the internet not writing a cheque is quite clearly larger.
Normally a situation like this is a chance for the PM to be a statesman and get a few brownie points. Okay, a lot of don't knows - well done those people for being honest - but I'm surprised how negative the views are.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Kudos to you.
And fair play to you, you were right to be more skeptical of the Palestinian claims. I should have been warier
As @Malmesbury pointed out (I think it was him/her) one striking anomaly was the LACK of cameraphone footage of people being dragged out of burning buildings, dug up out of rubble, the desperate search for life in the bomb zone. There was just one video of an interior fire, which I now suspect was a "fake" -real footage but from somewhere else like the Syrian war
If such a massive bomb had flattened a hospital, there would have been dozens or hundreds of urgent, harrowing videos from all the citizens with smartphones. Yet not
Something to note in future
Worth remembering in your defence that at the time of the Anders Brevik massacres, you and I were about the only people saying it was more likely to be a right wing nutter when everyione was screaming about an islamist attack.
Have @Leon@Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
Yes, I have walked back my thoughts. Did it this morning. I haven't apologised - I made a sincere call that the default assumption was an Israeli strike, pending further info
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
Kudos to you.
And fair play to you, you were right to be more skeptical of the Palestinian claims. I should have been warier
As @Malmesbury pointed out (I think it was him/her) one striking anomaly was the LACK of cameraphone footage of people being dragged out of burning buildings, dug up out of rubble, the desperate search for life in the bomb zone. There was just one video of an interior fire, which I now suspect was a "fake" -real footage but from somewhere else like the Syrian war
If such a massive bomb had flattened a hospital, there would have been dozens or hundreds of urgent, harrowing videos from all the citizens with smartphones. Yet not
Something to note in future
As per usual, Pb last night was a far superior and better informed news source than any of the legacy media. So is Twitter so long as you know how to use it as an objective news source (alas the owner struggles with that)
> Representative Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, gives a nominating speech again for Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader. He gave a very tough speech on Tuesday excoriating Jordan as “the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection inciter.”
> Today, Aguilar is going after Jordan as someone with no legislative record. “Gutting Medicare, gutting Social Security and giving cover to Jan. 6 attackers,” he says of what Jordan stands for. He says “the country can’t afford more delays and more chaos.”
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.
AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.
"(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges The reality is the BBC can no longer be viewed as a credible, impartial source on the Gaza conflict. It reported Hamas claims uncritically. Forget the handbags over “terrorists”. That is a terrible place for the organisation to be. There needs to be a serious investigation. 8:48 AM · Oct 18, 2023"
Looks more like my neighbours driveway, which they are currently digging it up to replace some bricks.
I’m unclear what the debate is here. The atom bomb over Hiroshima didn’t produce a crater, but it still killed a lot of people! Do any of these commentators or us here have relevant forensics experience as to what different explosions would produce?
The issue is that we were told early on that Israel had dropped bombs there. If Israel had dropped one of their bombs then there would have been a massive crater. We were also told the hospital had collapsed and yet it still seems to be standing. Lies from the very start. Just like Hamas lied when they said they don't attack civilians. Why should anyone trust a single word Hamas says?
I don’t think we should trust what Hamas say. I wouldn’t trust the IDF much either, who have told plenty of lies in the past. We should avoid rushing to conclusions.
I am also quite sceptical of armchair “experts” on social media who have suddenly become so knowledgeable on explosion forensics, having recently been experts on drone warfare in Ukraine, or epidemiology during COVID-19…
That's the point - you don't need to be a forensic explosives expert to see that there is no huge crater, the building is still standing and that there was a larger fire at Luton airport last week. Yet, despite this, many people just repeated the lies that they had been told unquestioningly.
I think we need to know - for one thing - how many people were at the hospital.
Media on the spot eg BBC correspondents have been reporting 50-100 people in single houses.
How many thousand were present at the hospital? It is an 80 bed hospital founded by CMS in 1882, and run by the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East. We will get accurate reports.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.
AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.
You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.
Labour lead down to 12 points with More in Common . Fieldwork 14 to 16 October
Lab 42 Con 30 Lib Dem 12 Reform 7 Green 6 SNP 3
I think events in the Middle East are helping the Cons with attention away from domestic issues .
The combined Con and Reform at 37 would seriously worry Labour . I think a few weeks back I’d have backed Labour for both by-elections . Now I think they’re more likely to take Tamworth than Mid-Beds . The split votes there and drop in national lead might be too much of a climb . In Tamworth the Tory candidate might have harmed his hopes with Fxckgate.
This is a swing of 12% since the general election, and Labour need a 10% swing to win a majority with the old boundaries. I think we're heading for a Lab/LD coalition, (which would hopefully introduce proportional representation).
Such a coalition might want to introduce PR, but they'd probably have to have a referendum on it, and I'm not sure the public would back it, whatever the opinion polls say, since it would mean that Labour and Conservative supporters (usually around 70-75% of the electorate) would have to kiss goodbye to ever having majority governments run by their Party again. Also there's the well known tendency to default to the status quo in anoraky questions as we just saw in the Aussie referendum.
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
There wouldn't need to be a referendum if PR were in the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. It is in the LibDem one. The challenge is getting it into the Labour manifesto - even if it is in very small print on page 46.
What always makes me laugh about those who want to change the constitution, is they think that people will vote exactly the same way if it was changed.
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
Yes - UKIP/REF and also the Greens would do much better under PR - and so they should.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
I would prefer constituencies kept the same size and just the single MP but chosen by AV.
AV avoids tactical voting which is good. But if you support a particular party, you have to vote for whoever that party puts up. There is no competition between contenders from the same party. It gives the parties too much power over voter choice, in my opinion.
You don't think they could exercise exactly the same control over 3 or 4 candidates as they do over 1? They would still be choosing who those candidates are no matter how many of them you have to choose from.
You also end up with situations like Ireland where if a constituency has 5 seats / positions, most parties will only have 2 to 3 candidates standing (based on the number of seats they expect to win) to ensure their candidates have a chance of winning..
Comments
With the former providing comic relief from the latter.
Given that the Cornish arrived in Cornwall (as Celts) in about 2000BC it is highly likely my extended family (most of whom are down in Cornwall still) are living within a few miles of where the airncestors arrived four thousand years ago, some might be living within a few hundred yards of the same
It is a slightly strange feeling. Such deep roots. I wonder if it is that that gives me this massive wanderlust, this urge to be UNrooted
A good range of political markets in general too.
> Jim Jordan is hoping to pick up votes at this 11 a.m. vote, but a key ally — Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus — is trying to roll back expectations. “Just so there’s no surprises: Jordan will likely have FEWER votes today than yesterday — as I expected,” Perry wrote just now on social media. “This is the fight — which Jim Jordan represents — to end the status quo, and it ain’t easy.”
> As he left the office of the Republican whip, one G.O.P. lawmaker who opposed Jordan, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, tells reporters it’s increasingly unlikely Jordan will prevail as mainstream conservatives stand strong against him.
“I think it gets more and more difficult for him every day.”
> Jordan indicates he will support a vote on a proposal to empower McHenry as temporary speaker if he doesn’t prevail. He tells reporters: “People are talking about this resolution. I told leadership: ‘Call the question. Let’s find out.’”
SSI - the last (and most recent) item above, suggests (to me anyway) that Jockstrap Jim does NOT have the votes today.
Leading politicians appear more concerned about Swedes 'moderating their tone'
By Ivar Arpi
The reaction to the killing of two Swedish football fans in Belgium has, in my home country, been rather curious. Following the terrorist attack, Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats and our former prime minister, urged Swedes to moderate their tone and to avoid expressing strong emotions. Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister and leader of the Moderate Party, said that “one has to be very, very careful right now. Words that admittedly are legal can have consequences. All that is lawful is not appropriate.” "
https://unherd.com/thepost/sweden-offers-limp-response-to-belgium-shootings/
(But of course I've been wrong often before - I didn't think we'd vote to leave the EU until a day or two before the vote).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67144061
The censuses show him, as an adult, as progressing from cowman via farm manager to tenant farmer. My mother was youngest but two of his large family, and married late, so I never knew him. He died a year before I was born.
“A democratic coalition government is a nonstarter,” he tells reporters. “We’re going to get Jim done today.”
SSI - seems to me that statement supports more than one interpretation!
Why has the BBC not bought some? Unless such imagery is being blocked via the mostly US firms that sell it. If so, the BBC should report that.
This would give us verifiable truth on the question of whether the hospital has been blown up or not.
The claimed images of the explosion don’t match the previous narrative of hundreds dead and a hospital destroyed.
The main thing i get from the Twatter images up thread is how *small* whatever it was, was. A couple of cars in the car park knocked over, but the rest burnt where they sat.
Aircraft bombs have hundreds of kilos of high explosive and are designed to create a storm of fragments. The trees would have been stripped of foliage or torn up, all the windows smashed, building caved in etc.
How did you feel when LDs were in government with the Conservatives?
Yeah, shame that wasn’t really the message last night….
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/mid-bedfordshire-by-election/winner
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/tamworth-by-election/winner
You may also want to look at https://oddspedia.com/politics/british-politics as well, but its not a easily searchable site
I know lots of people who have voted LD; only a few of them are actual supporters of the party. It is currently a catchall vote for both anti Tory and anti Labour depending upon constituency.
UKIP/REF, meanwhile, would do much better under PR, I suspect....
There is an unpleasant air to the comment that implies that families that have lived in the county for generations are somehow more deserving of representing it - which would inevitably exclude most, if not all, non-white residents, depending on how many generations / decades are considered qualifying.
Even taking the minimum - two, given the plural in her quote - and using my own case as an example, I had two grandparents who lived in what's now the Wakefield district so could have made the same claim. They moved in when they got married, in 1937, well before mass immigration. Certainly, some non-white 20-/30-somethings will have had UK-born grandparents but even that would be a relative minority.
Even leaving the racial angle aside, I just don't like the inherited ultra-localism which runs very counter to any kind of best-person-for-the-job meritocracy, or battle of arguments and policies.
The way Midjourney works, a lot of prompts are public
Here's a snippet:
"color photo of a single child sitting in destroyed house rubbles in Palestine , a hauntingly beautiful portrait capturing the resilience and innocence of a child amidst the devastation. The child's eyes reflect a mix of sadness, determination, and hope, drawing the viewer in. The environment surrounding the scene is filled with rubble and debris, remnants of what was once a vibrant home. The walls are crumbling, windows shattered, and the roof partially collapsed. The destruction serves as a powerful symbol of the hardships faced by the people in Palestine. The mood of the scene is somber yet filled with resilience. There is a sense of stillness and quiet amidst the chaos, as if time has stood still in this moment. The atmosphere is heavy, laden with emotions of loss, displacement, and the indomitable spirit of the people. The camera used is a vintage Leica M6, capturing the scene with stunning detail and clarity. The color film used is Kodak Portra 400, enhancing the muted tones and evoking a sense of nostalgia. The lens choice is a Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2, allowing for a natural perspective and shallow depth of field...."
Is this people literally trying to fake Gaza images right now? That prompt was inputted about an hour ago
You are the one saying that the THIRD PLACE party should be given a free pass by Labour.
Mad. Utterly deluded.
I'm not in favour of a coalition with Labour either but C&S is fine.
There are Blue LibDems and Red LibDems (and orange ones). We are a broad church just like the other parties.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/31/only-way-labour-win-ditch-labourism-corbyn
Different circumstances of course in Gaza, but are we to accept that 500 bodies have been moved in under 24 hours ?
I now have a small wager on the LDs in Mid Beds, and on the Conservatives in Tamworth.
Have @Leon @Roger and others who last night rushed to judgment condemning Israel for the Gaza hospital incident apologised yet for rushing to judgment and making false claims?
Now the Americans have confirmed that it was PIJ, the BBC all but confirm it too on Verify on their website, as do security experts elsewhere.
Occam's Razor always said it was an accidental Gazan misfire, shame those who love to race ahead and blame Israel chose to go with the illogical and completely false outcome.
This shows that many support their policies, but also why Con and Lab prefer the cosy duopoly of FPTP.
if you need excursion ideas, this is a great site:
https://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/perthshire/
And the results are impressive. Perhaps the mods will forgive me if I post just one? (I promise not to post any more, it is just impossible to make this point without an example)
That's a low res version, the real thing is even more persuasive
If I saw that on a news site, would I know it was fake? I don't believe so - especially if I was the average Joe al-Schmovitz, unaware of the abilities of AI image-making. I'd probably think "Wow, what a haunting portrait of Palestinian resilience, capturing the defiance of these oppressed people", or just "wow, poor Palestinian kid"
Job done. I seriously doubt I would search the image carefully for signs of fakery
The real scandal was Blair inventing a new system in 2000 when the office of Mayor was brought in.
> Representative Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, said going into the chamber that he’d vote again for Lee Zeldin for speaker. Zeldin, who won a few votes on Tuesday from New Yorkers opposing Jordan, is a fellow Long Islander, a former House member and a failed gubernatorial candidate.
LaLota reiterated that he needed “some darn good clarity” from Jordan on things Hurricane Sandy funding and keeping the government funded in order to potentially fall in line.
> Hearing from multiple lawmakers and staff that the resolution being discussed to empower McHenry as temporary speaker would run through Jan. 3. That would give the House time to deal with some of the most pressing crises, including a mid-November government shutdown, as well as funding for wars raging in Israel and Ukraine.
@DouglasKMurray
The BBC, SKY etc push a false story about Israel bombing a Gaza hospital (it was a Palestinian-fired rocket). And this in turn pushes genocidists-in-waiting to process to their next stage. Nice team-work, guys.
Quote
Chris Williamson
@DerbyChrisW
·
20h
Israel has forfeited any right to exist.
https://google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/israel-hamas-war-at-least-500-people-killed-in-hospital-bombing-in-gaza-palestinian-officials-claim-12986454
10:24 AM · Oct 18, 2023"
https://twitter.com/DouglasKMurray/status/1714573062928998796
Media on the spot eg BBC correspondents have been reporting 50-100 people in single houses.
How many thousand were present at the hospital? It is an 80 bed hospital founded by CMS in 1882, and run by the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East. We will get accurate reports.
The Australian Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres has reported thousands sheltering there:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/what-we-know-about-al-ahli-hospital-blast-in-gaza/102990176
How many will be admitted or sheltering there at a time like this?
500 seems quite credible, to me.
I'm not in favour of a list system (too much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accountability.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for, perhaps dramatically. But's that OK. That's good. It would be a more honest vote.
Not heard if Trudeau or the BBC correpondent have apologised yet.
Reclaim / UKIP
Traditional Conservatives
Cameroon Conservatives
Liberally Party
Social Democratic Party
Traditonal Left Wing Party
Greens
I suspect the Liberally Party wouldn't get many more seats than they do now. And I suspect Reclaim and the Greens would be the major beneficiaries.
> Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “all options are on the table” for Democrats in terms of their response to some mainstream Republicans’ resolution to empower Patrick McHenry as a temporary speaker. He reiterated House Democrats’ two goals: preventing a Jordan speakership, and keeping the government funded and running.
> Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a veteran lawmaker and the chairman of the House Rules Committee, has risen to nominate Jim Jordan as speaker. The entire nomination choreography we saw play out Tuesday will be repeated again.
ADDENDUM - NYT live blog
> Cole recalls that two weeks ago he stood on the House floor and warned against McCarthy’s ouster, saying it would plunge the House into chaos. Those remarks, he said, have been vindicated. He framed this vote as an opportunity for Republicans to pull themselves out of the paralysis they sowed.
SSI - hardly a rallying cry for Jockstrap Jim. Rather a dog whistle to anti-JJ GOPers, along lines of "Do NOT read my lips, instead keep sticking it to 'my good friend".
And we now have further info. It seems rather unlikely this is an Israeli bomb, and rather more likely it is some smaller ordnance, very possibly Hamas missiles. Also the claim of "500 dead" now appears a real stretch, and there is no demolished hospital
https://x.com/einatwilf/status/1714597280139878555
On support Id guess
Reclaim / UKIP - 10%
Traditional Conservatives 30%
Liberally Party 10%
Social Democratic Party 30%
Traditonal Left Wing Party 7%
Greens 8%
Others 5%
In WWII there were several cases of aircraft bombs hitting air raid shelters. That kind of death toll didn’t happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion
0.5-1kt - a small *nuke* of yield in the heart of a busy city. 218 dead.
The scene in picture is more like the aftermath of a car bombing in NI.
As @Malmesbury pointed out (I think it was him/her) one striking anomaly was the LACK of cameraphone footage of people being dragged out of burning buildings, dug up out of rubble, the desperate search for life in the bomb zone. There was just one video of an interior fire, which I now suspect was a "fake" -real footage but from somewhere else like the Syrian war
If such a massive bomb had flattened a hospital, there would have been dozens or hundreds of urgent, harrowing videos from all the citizens with smartphones. Yet not
Something to note in future
I'm not in favour of a list system (to much power to the Parties and no choice for the voter and no local accounatablity.
I'm in favour of a Single Transferable Vote in constituencies of 4 or 5 members where there is competition between members of the same party and also local accountability.
I'm not in favour of it for party advantage. I'm in favour of it because it would be fairer and more democratic and lead to better government. It would also as a bonus avoid all the tactical voting shenanigans.
I agree that it may change which party people vote for I believe the leader of the LibDems has a first edition of John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty". It's passed on from leader to leader. It is our bible.
He did eventually cut Williamson adrift under extreme pressure, but my goodness it was a grim period. The bloke's Twitter feed now is an absolute bin-fire.
It simply allows voter X to vote for new or small party A without wasting their vote, because with AV they can vote Con/Lab as well.
At every actual election millions of voters (and me) will only vote for the party that can come first or second. AV would change, slowly but massively, the way politics works but in a very traditional and incremental way.
'Never ask a question, to which you don't already know the answer.' - By feigning ignorance and asking the question rather he's now fished dozens of people into talking about how great Smarkets are.
Marketing masterclass.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/10/18/938ed/1
Normally a situation like this is a chance for the PM to be a statesman and get a few brownie points. Okay, a lot of don't knows - well done those people for being honest - but I'm surprised how negative the views are.
> Representative Pete Aguilar, the No. 3 House Democrat, gives a nominating speech again for Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader. He gave a very tough speech on Tuesday excoriating Jordan as “the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection inciter.”
> Today, Aguilar is going after Jordan as someone with no legislative record. “Gutting Medicare, gutting Social Security and giving cover to Jan. 6 attackers,” he says of what Jordan stands for. He says “the country can’t afford more delays and more chaos.”
live stream link from US House
https://live.house.gov/
"(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
The reality is the BBC can no longer be viewed as a credible, impartial source on the Gaza conflict. It reported Hamas claims uncritically. Forget the handbags over “terrorists”. That is a terrible place for the organisation to be. There needs to be a serious investigation.
8:48 AM · Oct 18, 2023"
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1714548973401153766
And already Kevin McCarthy has two votes.
CORRECTION - make that one vote for KMcC = Bacon of Nebaska
500 from one bomb is an enormous number. The worst single incident in the Blitz killed 450 (Sept 7, 1940, West Ham)
That’s the first flip of the day, and it is not in Jordan’s direction.