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Tears for Keir? – politicalbetting.com
Tears for Keir? – politicalbetting.com
Six in ten (59%) now think the Labour Party is divided, following frontbench resignations this week.The public are still more likely to see the Conservatives (76%) as divided though.https://t.co/c2zXZcFuP5 pic.twitter.com/MPGLaWImTH
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I’ve heard various rumours and theories. None quite suffices
There are some plausible-ish scenarios surrounding actual AGI. That is has been achieved internally and either Sam Altman kept this quiet, or at least muted, within the company - or that there is now a massive dispute as to how they should proceed with such world changing but maybe dangerous technology
Perhaps Altman wanted to sell it for squillions. Perhaps the AGI has invaded his soul
“Theory: AGI / ASI has been achieved internally @OpenAI, so @ilyasut hit the panic button and staged a coup.
Evidence:
10/6: @ilyasut tweets: “If you value intelligence above all other human quality, you’re gonna have a bad time”
10/16: at APEC, @sama proclaims: “4 times in the history of OpenAI––the most recent time was in the last couple of weeks––I’ve gotten to be in the room when we push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward. Getting to do that is the professional honor of a lifetime.”
This would explain everything.”
https://x.com/mattmireles/status/1725765951600443603?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Their support may be a mile wide, but it's an inch deep.
I suspect he knows this.
F1 on ice is awesome.
It's a warning to those who think Labour must trend to 10+ years in office again if they win a landslide next year.
I found this summary graphic of polls, broken down by crosstabs showing the Tory lead pretty damning.
The figure for the Tories for anyone of working age are horrendous.
'On election day I cannot see many voters deciding to cast their votes based on how Labour have handled in opposition events in Israel rather than say, inter alia, the NHS, the economy, schools, or partygate.’
Foreign affairs have little to zero impact on voting in a GE.
However, division can. This would be far more serious for Sir Keir if they were bickering over domestic policies.
You are, however, deluded. (In my opinion.)
I’ve heard this all before. Sir Keir is basically ensuring that he secures middle Britain, which he is and will. Once the first election victory is under his belt he will relax a bit more, as will the electorate. And he will secure a second, and almost certainly a third term. Although by then he will be ageing and it may be the turn for a new Labour leader.
There is no sign of anyone being able to recapture the centre ground or working age vote for the Tories as next leader.
It was the only way that the Conservatives could make themselves feel better about what was coming. They were deluding themselves then. Those repeating it are deluding themselves now.
It will be a long time in the political wilderness.
He will do one term
However, he would be chiding me for getting ahead of myself. ‘Sheffield' and all that.
Starmer’s inheritance is precisely the opposite. High debt high deficit and major structural problems. War in Israel and Ukraine
Massive migration issues. Culture wars. Looming threats everywhere. He has no idea how to handle any of this and whatever he does will be unpopular immediately - if he tries serious reform
The honeymoon will be short and the backlash intense when people realise Labour doesn’t have a clue - and there is no money
Also, it's not the 1990s anymore. Voting loyalties and coalitions are nothing like as stable as they once were.
https://twitter.com/Dylan_Difford/status/1725625492378624146?t=JUhC7R1fEmhMkAjgxXEj3g&s=19
I am no fan of Starmer politically and he is lacking in charisma and campaigning style. His strengths lie elsewhere and I do thing he is a capable manager.
I think Tory hopes of a quick return are delusional. They are a shambolic, incoherent mess with nothing on offer for the working age population economically or socially.
In the last few weeks the proportion of people thinking Labour is divided has almost doubled. That's come out of just one major issue that's emerged due to events. And Starmer's ratings are already negative - before he's even taken office.
Yet here you are taking sentiment that exists, today, and comfortably making predictions way off into a future - a future about which you know absolutely nothing.
Starmer might get 50% of the vote in a snap election. Unless he did the full May.
The 2020s will continue to surprise, and I suspect volatility will only get more extreme
Take AI. And we have to, because it’s coming. By the late 2020s it will likely be massively impacting jobs everywhere
Cui bono? Perhaps us all as we attain an age of abundance (and avoid being destroyed by Skynet). But before that there must surely be incredible economic pain as we adjust. Civil strife is probable
If AGI become ASI we may see civilisational changes. New religions
This is most reassuring as you serve as our bell-weather. Like Dennis Healey we can be sure that whatever you predict the absolute opposite will be the case.
To be more engaging about it, the great plus for Starmer in what you have written is the low base, and the total shitshow, from which he starts. This time things really can ‘only get better.’
Culture wars will be a thing left existing only in the minds of the dying boomer generation. Just as Tony Blair ushered in a huge social change in this country, the same will happen next year with Labour’s majority.
Starmer will sweep the country along and prosperity will, gradually, return. Especially when we rejoin the EU, which we will in some form or other in the next 15 years. The economics will dictate it: the very thing you pin your argument on. Leaving the EU was never an economic argument. When this goes back to the vote, people’s prosperity will talk. We will rejoin.
Keir is playing a very sensible game at the moment. As Napoleon said:
‘Never interfere with your enemies whilst they are making a mistake.'
There is not even a hint of understanding in the Tory party of why they have lost the working age population, let alone a chance of recovering it.
It’s basically sour grapes. The tories are going to lose, heavily, and will be out of office for a very long time and deservedly so. Get used to it. Most of their MPs are …
As for being a ‘fanatic’ I’m afraid that to you anyone left of centre who disagrees with you would be labelled as such.
I expect Labour to make many mistakes and I am not enamoured of all that Keir Starmer says. I will be on here being critical of them when they are in office, as and when it is appropriate.
Generally though, under Labour, this time things really can only get better.
(Unless you’re raging against the dying of the light, in which case that person may become more and more embittered by it all.)
Have a nice day, folks
xx
Zzzz
Looking at economic prospects for next year, with the interest rates hitting remortgages and M4 money contracting there will be few green shoots. Economic cycles do turn though, and there will be a return to steady growth in Starmers first term. More luck than judgement IMO, but New New Labour will get the electoral credit.
*in my experience, people largely make their own luck, through practice and preparation.
Quite something
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/nov/18/rare-1926-macallan-whisky-becomes-worlds-most-expensive-bottle-at-21m
Or is it worth more to show off?
I think I’d buy two. One to drink and one to show off
It really does rank with any other Single Malt that I have had in terms of quality. Quite concentrated flavours from aging in the heat, with a slightly sweet finish from the wood.
At £40 much better value than that bottle of Macallan!
He decided to save it for a very special occasion.
Fast forward nearly 20 years and he gets a new girlfriend, invites her back to his place, she not only opens that bottle she mixed it with Pepsi.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/18/more-than-half-of-hospitals-england-rated-substandard-health-regulator
I have no faith that Streeting has an adequate plan, just more of the same failed privatisation around the edges. It looks very much like that the rest of the NHS will follow the path of NHS dentistry, existing only in theory.
The second one is the clear lead amongst ethnic minority Britons for Labour, despite this being the most multicultural Tory government in history.
I am sticking with my prediction of Con on 150 +/- 75 seats. I don't think that Starmer can beat Blairs majority, but it may well be close.
And our transport system is about to implode due to the infrastructure being totally inadequate and what infrastructure is being built being pared back past reason.
Yet still, somehow, we are spending 100 billion more than we raise in taxes.
Something is fundamentally wrong with this country. It’s no wonder extremist nutcases like Corbyn, Johnson, Farage and Braverman are being listened to.
(Or maybe I’m too drunk in the morning).
Few overtakes, some Ferrari blunders and then Verstappen wins.
Commentator shouldn't give up the day job. 'What Verstappens in Vegas stays in Vegas' FFS.
Some other system of oversight/governance would be necessary (we see now the consequences of Gove’s whizzo idea to not re-inspect schools that had achieved an outstanding) but I dunno how anyone can look at Ofsted and and think ‘yeah, that works fine’.
In large part the decline of our public services is down to a failure of understanding. There is a love of private sector solutions and antipathy to the very idea of public service by the powers that be despite the many manifest failures of that agenda over the last decades.
We are all in favour of "reform", but the problem comes from defining that "reform". All too often it means listening to asset stripping management consultants who understand neither the purpose nor necessity of the service. Sunak is from that background, which is why he is failing so badly.
Good race for Stroll.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/18/dutch-parties-vie-for-voters-with-no-faith-in-government-after-string-of-scandals
It seems that an AI based algorithm was used to search out benefit fraud, driving many into poverty, some to suicide and over a thousand children taken into care.
No appeals, the computer must be right...
We don't want to abolish inspections. Schools need to be checked up on because they are important and there are many things that need checking up on. Just as we shouldn't abolish the HSE just because they sometimes say stupid things, or we would literally have carnage in industry.
At the moment it's a bizarre monolith. It inspects schools, at all levels, social services, residential social care, nurseries, PRUs like @dixiedean 's place, local authorities...you name it, it inspects it. The only group it doesn't inspect are private schools registered with HMC, which are inspected by the considerably more useless (yes, I do mean that) ISI.
All of these however are very different beasts, and it is literally madness to have them all done by the same inspectorate using the same criteria. Of course a PRU will always have bad behaviour. That's the whole fucking point of having them. To judge them on the same basis as a girls' grammar school is just bizarre.
Similarly, having taught in primary and secondary they are very, very different beasts. In primary school, the key should really be to teach the children literacy, numeracy and social skills. The rest is basically gravy and should be geared solely to those ends. In fact, some things - e.g. complex scientific theories - shouldn't really be taught at all because almost all the teachers don't understand them very well, so it means hard work undoing misconceptions when you get to secondary. But they're still judged on the same criteria as a secondary. Or a sixth form college. Which is madness.
You also have inspectors swapping between one and another discipline and not understanding these differences because OFSTED under Spielman despite their statutory duty to train their inspectors don't do so. For example, that inspector who won a case for unfair dismissal after he fondled a six year old boy won because he'd never been told OFSTED had a no touching policy. He didn't realise without being told it was wrong to touch schoolchildren for no reason - and still doesn't apparently - because his background was in residential social care where the dynamic's totally different.(continued)
There are other problems - for example the prewriting of reports to fail them on safeguarding so they can be forced to academise - but most of them stem from the DfE, who use OFSTED to give their actions in this field plausible deniability since they don't technically regulate it.
And that's why I contend the first step to improving things in education is to get rid of the DfE, not just by abolishing it by banning all its current and past staff from working in the public sector or with children. Sure, that will mean a few good people get kicked out too but that would I fear be acceptable collateral damage to finally eliminate eighty years of disastrous failure and ensure all the drunken imbeciles who are currently running it are in a position to do no further damage.
There is some unpleasant medicine to come up, which is a difference between now and 1997. What Starmer has to hope is that that medicine and the passage of time, mean that he can point to things having got a bit better by 2028 or so.
He'll probably be helped in this by the 2025 Conservative leadership election. Because even if they avoid Braverman, who is the brilliant Conservative leader who enthuses the party to go back towards the electorate? Because that's roughly the only thing that has ever worked for an opposition.
If what is rumoured about the autumn statement is true, priorities IHT cuts for the few and hammering benefits while doing nothing for those of us in work then the Tories are just really attempting to shore up the blue wall ahead of next years defeat.
Labour with a small but workable majority, around 40-50.
And I know the Tories' core voters will have at best grandchildren in the former, but hasn't it occurred to the cabinet that they make extensive use of the latter?
The sooner this ends the better.
And Good Morning everyone. As someone who used, in his working life, to be seconded to a predecessor of the CQC I’ve got a lot of sympathy with the views expressed.
Raac in schools: MPs demand answers over dangerous concrete
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67450470
How dare the Public Accounts Committee ask for an update on what surveys have been carried out? Or an action plan for dealing with the problem? They only represent the DfE's bosses.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/18/more-than-half-of-hospitals-england-rated-substandard-health-regulator
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/17/watchdogs-denounce-progress-boris-johnson-flagship-projects (about Mr JOhnson's famous 40 'new' 'hospitals')
“I find that the harder I work, the luckier I get”
The Tories will save this for their manifesto .
* 'Nads'
Again, if Starmer wants a clearout of private schools abolishing the ISI would be a step forward.
It would still require reform of OFSTED though which spends too much time judging on exam results, the exams having been designed in such a way that they enormously favour private schools (who can teach by rote).
As for grade inflation, the worst examples I came across were in the state sector, for example an inner city comp in Plymouth (previous year best grade in English a seven) doling out nines across the board for two years based on questions like 'what is a flower?'
One way they are certainly different is they have coursework options still. But that's not necessarily easier. In fact, the coursework is usually somewhat harder than the exam option although it has other distinct advantages including more time to write it and an ability to focus more carefully on the question in teaching it.
One thing that did set them apart last year is that the iGCSE grades were more relaxed than the standard ones due to the ongoing Covid fallout elsewhere, particularly China. However, my answer to that would be that actually the real issue was the sheer folly of jacking up all the grade boundaries arbitrarily on the say so of a twat like Gibb.
And finally, you should be aware that most private schools don't in fact teach iGCSEs. Why would they need to? The new GCSEs and A-levels are literally tailor made for them.
I once read an interesting study of luck by a psychologist. I don't have the reference to hand, but what the author did was to recruit people who self labelled as lucky or unlucky, and followed them over time.
The two groups had similar life events, from bereavements to promotions etc, but where they differed was how they reacted to incidents. The "lucky" people reacted more flexibly to events, taking the best from what arose, while the "unlucky" focused on what had gone wrong.
So that is what I mean by making your own luck.
Starmer does this. Even a schism over a pointless Parliamentary motion is turned to his advantage, allowing him to marginalise further his internal opposition, and to astutely do it with minimal triumphalism.
And also happy #worldtoiletday
Inevitably teacher assessment favoured grade inflation. A class may have a dozen students capable of getting top marks in the exam, but in reality not all will. One will have a life event, another will misread the question etc but we cannot know in advance which will be those 2, so when assessing the dozen we rightly give them all the top mark.
It means it's your day for cleaning them.
😬
You might be under exaggerating the
damage Starmer's decisions on Palestine are making.
The worst for more than a year*
https://x.com/jebadoo2/status/1725980738615431519?s=61&t=wWWeJB3W_ksMJK4LA1OvkA
And if people can't see this, it is a film from a protestor outside Starmer's constituency office saying-
"The djinn right? They've gone beyond Shaitan you know he's on the list because his wife's a Zionist you know his wife says, you know, Israel and he'll go and support Israel the little shit"
From the latest wave of @BESResearch, preferences on Britain's future membership of the EU by supermarket. A landslide for rejoining among co-op shoppers, finely balanced at M&S, while Iceland shoppers still believe in Brexit.
https://twitter.com/drjennings/status/1726011849844351435
If Brexit is shorthand for "everything this government is doing", trying to please both M&S and Iceland shoppers is why Sunak has way more headaches than Starmer.
Starmer should simply purge the party of the antisemites.
The party would be better off without the likes of Burgon.
If he did, given the state of the Tories, I'd probably vote for his party.
2034 is a long way off. The world could be a very different place by then.
Those like that, and had predicted grades based on Mocks may have done much worse than their counterparts based on how it played out.
So what does that tell you?