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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The impacts of the floods on the 2015 General Election
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The impacts of the floods on the 2015 General Election
The Times have a piece today (££) which has analysed the constituencies that have suffered most with the recent extreme weather and there’s quite a few marginals affected. Out of the Tories 40 most marginal seats, 15 have been affected by the recent extreme weather. For the Lib Dems, out of their 20 most marginal seats, 12 have been affected by the recent extreme weather.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2561696/Revealed-Labours-plot-unseat-Clegg-Party-drawn-plans-decapitate-Lib-Dems-forcing-deputy-PM-General-Election.html
As any fule knows, and the great British public will clearly acknowledge at election time, the root cause of this problem is the lack of investment in infrastructure during the period when the Wotsit Party were in power. Moreover, the Wotsits left a tangle of bureaucracy that meant at critical periods, local and central government have not worked efficiently together. Those Wotsits who are in power at local and national level have hardly helped by making a mess of all the key decisions since the crisis broke. They are a bunch of shoddy amateurs and it is costing Britain dearly.
Also, let us not forget the hot air that the Wotsits have been making about climate change, but to no avail in terms of practical policies. During their last period of office, where was the long-term green investment that could prevent extreme weather in the future? They also failed to take leadership in world affairs by getting the USA and China to agree to serious emissions reductions.
We PBThingies may laugh at their ineptitude, but we must stifle our giggles as the seriousness of the task ahead of us becomes clear. Unless the Thingy Party wins the 2015 election, Britain will literally be up the creek.
Fortunately the hardest-hit communities have recognised the Thingy Party for our leadership and the practical, action-oriented approach that we stand for. They have been swayed by the knee-deep photo-opportunities that our senior politicians have waded into, and now realise how sincerely we care.* While the Wotsits offer more incompetence and pandemonium, only the Thingies can deliver joined-up government that will help local people co-ordinate with government agencies to strategise synergistically against any future extreme weather events. A Thingy government post 2015 will be able to restore the defences that the Wotsits had eroded through their long-term neglect. Only the vision of the Thingy Party can return Britain to a respected place on the world stage, and force the large, polluting countries to acknowledge their responsibility to humanity by cutting CO2.
Overall the message is clear. Down with the Wotsits. Vote Thingy.
* Fortunately the public was not foolish enough to be swayed by the opportunistic PR stunts of soaked-through Wotsit has-beens. How pathetic they looked in their damp attire, pretending to care sincerely about people well out of their natural habitat. Their deceitful ruse was revealed by how "fish out of the water" they appeared; all the Normal politicians are Thingy.
Ike's tree, the loblolly pine on the 17th fairway at Augusta National Golf Club, fell victim to the ice storm and has been cut down and removed.
Incidentally, I would not be too cocky about what E&W (&NI) voters want if I were you. They are generally much more pleasant, sensible and pragmatic than their elected representatives. And not nearly as nasty, vindictive and bullying.
If the Scottish voters fall for it, so be it.
"RT @STForeignDesk #Thai police officer killed by gunshot in #Bangkok clash: Police chief"
bit.ly/1ckfAxD pic.twitter.com/kAtyL8w7s1
Hear, hear.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2561685/Love-sight-Its-myth-How-quickly-did-fall-half-Six-couples-utterly-enchanting-stories.html
As was being suggested here a couple of days ago .... is summat afoot?
I said it would prove a fine opportunity for UKIP to advance in the flood-hit region, and I still say it.
2 hours
Or, more likely I would think, there could be a large swing towards a third-party. Given that these floods have primarily affected the South, where Labour is currently weak, that third party could be UKIP.
On the other hand, UKIP haven't had a boost in the polls in the way that Hague's Tories enjoyed during the fuel crisis of 2000, say. Why is that?
A majority say that the Coalition have handled the floods badly, but perhaps that is a marginal judgement and most people recognise that with record rainfall it would have been damn hard to handle the floods well.
"My caveats are that the 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis started a few months before and continued during the General Election campaign, whereas hopefully the flooding and associated problems will soon end and not continue until May 2015!"
The word from the Environment Agency is that the ground is so saturated across much of the south of England that there will be groundwater flooding problems for months to come. These won't be as dramatic as the "out of bank" state of the Severn and Thames rivers, but while the news cameras will largely ignore it the people affected will not be able to.
Incidentally, Monbiot has another excellent article on the flooding, with a video on the Guardian (warning: video autoplays and starts with an annoying advert).
Please see my comment on the Scottish currency issue that I mistakenly left at the top of the Miller thread this am.
On thread, North Devon is imv a UKIP target.
"The children of UK professionals scored an average of 526 points in maths. But this was overshadowed by an average score of 656 registered by the children of professionals in Shanghai-China and 569 among children of the country’s elementary workers. The children of parents in unskilled jobs in the UK scored an average of 461, the equivalent of two and a half years behind."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10645090/Chinas-poorest-beat-our-best-pupils.html
(Edit because I forgot Labour. Oh, how I wish ...)
1 The floods?
2 The reduced energy consumption (and therefore bills) after a very mild winter?
Most houses will be dry and repaired well before then.
Other 'events' will be dominating.
The budget is quite soon...
The second F1 test starts tomorrow. Huzzah!
Will Red Bull manage more than 10 laps at a time? Will the Caterham nose (vaguely) resemble a beluga? Will Maldonado crash into something?
Edited extra bit: oh, and I flicked Newsnight on to see if they'd covered Salmond's speech, and there was not a whisper about it. Regardless of your view on independence or Salmond himself, it was the most newsworthy political event yesterday and for Newsnight to appear not to cover it (I saw the headlines and then switched off) is pretty bloody poor.
That's the talk of religious fanatics...
I do not see a lot of votes shifting over this. More likely is that by dominating the news agenda, and crowding out issues such as immigration, the UKIP surfers will stall.
1 hour 1 minute 1 second
Compare and contrast
Islamic fundamentalist: A cartoon of The Prophet denigrates Islam
ScotNat FundaMentalist: A cartoon of Eck 'The Prophet' Salmond denigrates Scotland
Salmond is not Scotland.
I love Scotland. I have no love for Salmond. I haven't drunk the KoolAid. I don't believe his agenda is good for Scotland or Scots.
(You'll need to scroll down to the second article.)
Why would those Brits want to share their currency – and the risks such an arrangement would bring – with the government of a country that discriminates against their kids like that?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/SNP/10644062/Smart-Alex-Salmond-has-had-a-nasty-run-in-with-reality.html
He said that dredging would have had minimal effect on the somerset levels this winter, and likely made things significantly worse in Taunton and Bridgewater which is where most of the people actually live. The biggest cause of the problem is converting woods, hedges and scrubland into large fields which instead of pulling the water underground just runs off into the rivers and flood plains.
The fly-away period is distinct because all the teams are based in Europe (most in a little triangle of England) and getting parts out for testing is, obviously, more time-consuming and difficult than it is when they're in Europe. As recent seasons have shown us, it's all very well if your wind tunnel makes something look as sleek as an otter in a wetsuit, but if it doesn't work on track that's not much use. Plus, if Red Bull are grappling with chronic reliability woe then they won't be able to assess, test and improve performance, whereas the other teams will be doing so.
@KennyFarq: So, Salmond says Three Chancellors' intervention on currency is an offence to "the Scottish character". More nationalisation of nationalism.
And how many hedges and woods have been removed from the Somerset levels? -very few I believe.
The effects of twenty years of deliberate neglect by the Environment Agency are well illustrated here. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2561435/Pictures-Somerset-river-1960s-today-width-halved-leading-flooding-Environment-Agency-stopped-dredging-regularly.html
I have little respect for GM. When he moved to Machynlleth, he said he was against private transport and people should use public transport to be green and save using hydrocarbons. He then went and bought a Mercedes car! Obviously he did not want to use the local bus service.
"This winter", yes. The previous two years of flooding, and future years, where the rain was not quite so persistent, it may well have helped.
If you've read my previous posts, you'll see that I agree with restricting water flow in a river's upper reaches to restrict and even out peak flows downstream - for instance I witter endlessly and to everyone's annoyance about the peat 'sponge' of the Peak District, and the attempts to improve its capacity and ecology by reseeding bare peat.
Also, I'm a firm believer in new developments using whatever pieces of the SuDS concept are applicable: parts of my own village are a trial of many of these techniques.
I also agree that removal of woodland can make matters worse: the ground under trees can store much more water than that under grass.
But these are all solutions for the uplands. When the water is in big rivers, it needs to make its way to the sea as quickly and efficiently as possible. Allowing the rivers to silt up just makes matter worse (storage rivers aside). And the situation is made worse on the levels by the fact that some of the rivers are tidal many miles inland.
ARSE- Never Knowingly Undersold
F1 trying to go green is particularly hilarious. All the carbon fibre in the cars this year is from entirely natural sources, and hand-crafted using traditional techniques. Ahem.
I actually respect GM a little: he tries to think independently and come up with his own ideas and solutions. It's just that on this I think he's wrong.
He's also big enough to admit when he's done something silly.
I don't share Eck's vision of the future. My principles are to oppose him.
Land-use practices, things that sound as simple as not leaving the ground bare in winter - it doesn't necessarily have to be covered in trees - can have a much larger impact.
The thing that particularly impresses me about Monbiot is that he follows things through and gets into the detail - in this case he's using a scientific paper from December 2013 that all but predicted the floods as a result of removing regulations on soil erosion prevention for farmers growing maize.
Much more convincing than the dredging drones.
Furthermore, disliking Salmond or even the SNP is not the same thing as disliking Scotland. Some of the nicest posters on pb.com are Scottish, and I strongly hope the union remains intact. I rather dislike Salmond, not merely his political position, because it's divisive and even deceitful. In one breath he claims (post-independence) England and Scotland will be 'best pals' and in another he attempts to propose to inflict a currency union on a country he hopes to leave and threatens to ignore 100% of Scotland's debts* if he doesn't get his way.
It's not a fantastic way to encourage bilateral trade if independence should occur.
*Technically, Scotland would not have any debt. But tell that to Englishmen, Welshmen and Northern Irishmen who have seen two Scottish Chancellors and a Scottish Prime Minister prop up two Scottish banks with British taxpayers' money and then Scotland taking no debt whatsoever.
There's still a long way to go. Perhaps the debate will become more cordial. I suspect it will become more acrimonious.
As you are interested in Scotland's future, what do you think the currency plan should be, now that currency union is off the table?
1. Bluff
2. Bluster.
3. Blubbering
We eagerly await
4. Beans!
The criticism I have of ASalmond (and in many respects I admire him as a conviction politician) is that he is "neglecting" to tell the Scottish electorate just what a currency union actually means with the consequent loss of fiscal and monetary autonomy (I'm sure the fiscal pact and banking union issues could be addressed).
This verges on disingenuousness and for that reason it is legitimate to criticise him.
Can I claim royalties on the 60M tshirts sold with this logo on it ?
He doesn't specify how much of it is grown in the watersheds of the Thames, Severn or Parrett rivers.
The breaking news is that WIND is reporting to the JNN the contents of the latest McARSE Scottish Referendum Projection :
Should Scotland Be An Independent Country ?
YES 36% .. No 64%
Turnout Projection 79%
.......................................
WIND - Whimsical Independent News Division
JNN - Jacobite News Network
McARSE - Magnificent Caledonian Anonymous Random Selection of Electors
May I inquire if you have lived on either of the two Somerset levels?
I have, as my parents owned a dairy farm on the North Somerset Levels - the one based around the River Yeo.
Less than 35% and its ugly.
From the abstract:
"Field investigations between 2002 and 2011 identified soil structural degradation to be widespread in SW England with 38% of the 3243 surveyed sites having sufficiently degraded soil structure to produce observable features of enhanced surface-water runoff within the landscape....Late-harvested crops such as maize had the most damaged soil where 75% of sites were found to have degraded structure generating enhanced surface-water runoff....The intensive use of well-drained, high quality sandy and coarse loamy soils has led to soil structural damage resulting in enhanced surface-water runoff from fields that should naturally absorb winter rain. Surface water pollution, localized flooding and reduced winter recharge rates to aquifers result from this damage."
The unionists seem determined to make it acrimonious as they have little positive to offer.
As ever your myopic view regarding UK banks regulated by Westminster is rather disingenuous.
Westminster caused the problem and then bailed out UK banks, Scotland had little say in the regulation of the bankers and therin lies the problem. A nameplate in Edinburgh does not make a bank Scottish.
18/02/2014 08:08
In 2012 the UK sent £27.4m from our aid budget to China...#wonderful
Lord Ashcroft (@LordAshcroft)
18/02/2014 08:11
The UK spent £15m on an initiative to reduce the flatulence of Columbian cattle as part of a drive to combat climate change #wonderful
Lord Ashcroft (@LordAshcroft)
18/02/2014 08:16
The UK spent £25m on a scheme that included helping "rainmakers" in Kenya, who predict weather by observing the movement of ants #wonderful
Added to that it's now electorally unpopular in rUK, why would an rUK government agree to it?
It's dead. Move on.
Random fact: The furthest north I have ever lived has been 52 degrees, 12 minutes and almost 17 seconds north of the equator.
Today's YouGov has lots of questions about how people feel about Tory and Labour governments. Broadly speaking, majorities eye us both with apprehension. I won't quote the anti-Tory ones selectively, but one pair of results is interesting. 50-36, including a quarter of Labour voters, do think that the Tories have made the "tough but necessary decisions to get Britain going again". On the other hand, only 31% (including a mere 3% of Labour voters) think they're the best party on the economy (Labour 23, LD 5, others 6). Leaving aside what we think of these propositions, and keeping in mind that it's the same people who are giving Labour a 7-point lead, they appear to suggest quite a large chunk who are saying "OK, you did a job that needed doing, now goodbye".
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/5ijj3746it/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-170214.pdf
As for Devo Max that will come Scotland's way regardless of the scale of the YES defeat.
To my mind the 79% turnout figure looks rather high. In 1978 the turnout was only 63%, in a time when electoral turnouts were rather higher generally.