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Some context for budget week – politicalbetting.com
Some context for budget week – politicalbetting.com
When @IpsosUK ask people what the most important issue facing the country is the NHS is now number one.Budget this week. Wonder how much we will hear about GP appointments / waiting lists?We talk about disconnect between political class & voters a lot. Feels big here. https://t.co/3QDqjLQdLp
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrE2LeJqJHk
The risk for the Tories is that they just talk about tax cuts (whilst continuing to raise them overall anyway) and not deliver on the rest.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68440150
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26329969/call-british-troops-ukraine-intercepted-russia-security-breach-germany/
This story has been posted here before. Russia hacked into a German government Webex (think Zoom on steroids) call in which German military officers mentioned there are British troops in Ukraine. Russia recorded and then broadcast the call.
One theory is that Russia did not hack into Webex at all, but simply joined the conference call by dialling into it like any other participant. Shades of the Battle of the Atlantic when U-boats would join allied convoys to sink them from within.
Oops. Stay safe.
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-death-clock-71b807a65973
I found it interesting anyway. I think punters and pundits are underestimating what is heading our way. I don't see a tiny tax cut altering that prospect.
https://shop.conservatives.com/pop art framed print.html
Pop art print of four iconic leaders: Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher and... um... Sunak
@drelidavid
🚨 Breaking: “Innocent Palestinian civilians” killed the driver of an Egyptian humanitarian aid truck, and looted the truck 👇
Barbarians...
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1764297717264597030
Most days it's "zero" but once or twice a week there's a surge of 250-300 in one go: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats/migrants-detected-crossing-the-english-channel-in-small-boats-last-7-days
It looks down compared to 2022 and 2023 for the first two months of this year, but May to October is the peak season and we'll only really know then.
A friend-of-a-friend who worked for Médecins Sans Frontières told some stories of how, after major catalysts, wars etc, the first in had to be very very careful. People would do stuff like drive without stopping and throwing aid off the truck. Or dumping it out of a hovering helicopter, out of reach.
Many, many times, secure communications systems have been made vulnerable by errors in operation. It is not well known, but some Enigma networks were never broken - discipline and good procedure protected them.
There should really be sackings over this; its effect in the information warspace alone is massive to Russia. Until people lose their jobs, they won't consider the effort worth it.
Here's a recent example that Brits would appreciate.
Britain 🇬🇧 has fallen. Ramadan lights on Oxford street 👇
And before you give the "multiculturalism" BS, are lights added for Jewish Hanukkah?
https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1763558011044295110
Turns out they are added for Hanukkah, and here's footage of Sadiq Khan doing so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NtUPvoahTU
There are limits to how much of the current cake the NHS can have. If we want to spend more on it, and indeed everything else, we need to find ways to grow.
It does make you wonder that the financial institution I work for takes securing calls more seriously than the German military.
I can only hope the Germans and the Western allies are engaging in an Operation Fortitude/Bodyguard.
If Sunak has any balls he will stick to plan A and go for 2nd May. Launch a campaign straight off the back of a budget which throws in a Labour-confusing curve ball and then keep banging away at it. Hope that with even a bit of momentum going into the election that you can pull off some kind of result.
On practically every metric is is the right play. But he won't. He will be indecisive and miss the deadline. Once they slide on past May it turns into an avalanche, and all of the reasons why they slid past May repeat again for any other date. Which is how we get to 12th December (5th anniversary) or 23rd January as the two options.
It is in nobody's interests - especially Starmer's - for there to be a Labour mega-landslide. No matter how much of a kicking people want to give the Tories. BTW there would be tactical switching - it would be a LD pick-up in places like Hunt's seat, not Labour. But even so.
Attempting to logon/connect to everything is very common.
The classic works like this. Mike’s email at the bank is mike.surname@thebank.com. Trivial to figure that out. Mike reuses passwords because he is a bit of an idiot. So when a company has a data breach and a zillion passwords get stolen, the account with userid mike.surname@gmail.com is compromised.
Instead of playing games with Mike’s Gmail, someone uses other stolen data to link it to LinkedIn - and figures out where Mike works. They work out his work email address from his name. So they try logging in as Mike. If that doesn’t work, they try varying the password.
2FA is a very good idea…
We’ve no way of knowing if immigration is up or down right now because the only people who do know are those in the home office issuing visas. Because legal immigration is overwhelmingly the dominant source. And of course we have no idea about emigration.
But numbers of asylum seekers arriving on small boats: that we do know, and they are visible.
So people hear “immigration” and think small boats, when the latter is only a small part of the story.
A family friend in his sixties started suffering palpitations and other issues, his wife rang 999 worried it was a stroke/heart attack, was told they would send out an ambulance, got a follow up call 30 mins saying the ambulance would likely be four to five hours.
She rang my Mum who promptly sent my father and myself to their house and we took him to the hospital where it turns out he had a very mild heart attack.
One of the worst culprits for not investing is the public sector. We have refused to invest anything like enough in training, technology and support "So We Can Prioritise The Front Line". So you get doctors and nurses doing way to much of their own admin. See also teachers. And that's been true for decades.
It's a long time since I had to think about military strategy, but my recollection is that unsupported front lines tend to collapse.
But to return to the header, tax cuts really aren't going to help here, especially when they are based on fantasy spending plans.
This, of course, is 1 day before Super Tuesday when Trump is expected to seal the GOP nomination. It would be genuinely astonishing if they upheld the decision to exclude him but it will be interesting to see what hurdles might remain in the future. Would, for example, conviction in the Jan 6th Trial exclude him?
Reports of Russian spies in the German military, intelligence services and political class are not exactly rare.
If those conditions persist, how can the seats outcome not be between a rout and a disaster?
It needs to be the other way around. You remove unnecessary work - and a lot of it is very unnecessary - and that way you don't need the support structure that used to perform those tasks any more.
Milei seems to be making exactly the same mistake in Argentina. And will probably have the same result.
PBers will know they can type their own email addresses into Have I Been Pwned? which will tell them if those addresses have been involved in data breaches.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/
The slim but real possibility that the LDs get more seats than the Conservatives.
If the Torys aren't even the official opposition, Sunak's legacy will be the death of the party.
Is an extra few months of helicopter rides worth that?
Thankfully all was ultimately well.
Kamala Harris issues sharp rebuke of Israel over ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ in Gaza
Vice-president calls for ceasefire and immediate hostage release, in comments that appear to be strongest yet by a US leader on Gaza
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/04/kamala-harris-israel-idf-gaza-catastrophe-ceasefire-hamas-hostage-deal
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley has finally won one so it will not quite be a clean sweep for The Donald.
Nikki Haley beat Donald Trump for the very first time in the Washington, D.C., Republican primary Sunday night handing her what might be her only win heading into Super Tuesday.
The D.C. Republican Party reported Haley won 62 percent compared to Trump's 33 percent with only 2,035 voters participating. That makes Haley the first Republican woman to ever win a primary in U.S. history.
The result in D.C. comes one day after Trump's clean sweep of GOP primaries in Idaho, Michigan and Missouri on Saturday as he inches closer to a rematch with Biden in November.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13147327/donald-trump-nikki-haley-washington-dc-primary.html
Firstly, you can't just stop HMG from publishing data on it and, secondly, people aren't stupid and experience it through their own lives.
But. Alastair is quoting the public polls. It has been reported that the Tories have internal polls showing the situation being much better. In the Tory polls there is no ELE risk...
There's something discombobulating about Keiran Pedley heading towards middle age.
The failure of admin systems to support and not actively hinder those at the sharp end is by no means restricted to the public sector, of course, but it does seem particularly prevalent there. It requires a change of mindset but that is not something we talk about, preferring instead to focus on the gross numbers of doctors, nurses etc rather than what they are being required to do with their time.
It's pointing out that government isn't publishing regular data for most immigration.
My best guess is the Tories get 27-28% of the vote, if only with lots of clothes pegs on noses.
It's much easier to count 4-5 boats and the people in them each week, particularly when the waters are actively policed and each is greeted on landing.
If salience of immigration were based mainly on people’s experiences in day to day life it would be much more salient in London than elsewhere. I’m sure that’s part of it in specific areas, but it doesn’t explain the waxing and waning of nationwide levels of interest.
I also sense it’s one of those issues that rises in salience when not crowded out by others like the economy. Environmental concerns, EU relations, foreign affairs all follow a similar pattern.
Bloody hell, it reckons I'm going to live to 103. That's 44 years, more than my whole adult life so far. What on earth am going to do to keep myself amused?
Lab: 42%
Con 31%
LD 9%
Ref 7%
Grn 4%
SNP 4%
Other 3%
You are starting from the point of desiring a Tory wipeout and then working out your reasoning back from there.
Lord Nelson was 5ft 6in.
His statue is 17ft 4in.
That’s Horatio of 3:1.
I suspect an awful lot of Tory voters are thinking the same now - we don't like Starmer but compared to this mess of a Tory party Labour can't do a worse job.
And be honest - anyone with a vague plan would be doing better than this Government that is completely bereft of any ideas..
There should be a metric for quality of life in the elderly: those I know vary from waiting for God, to living very mentally, if not physically, active lives.
Contrary to what Tory members think, their core voter is someone who sees themselves as moderate and non-political; the type of person who might look up at the TV, comment that "this Cameron seems like a sensible fellow" and then go back to doing the crossword. And not the rabid anti-EU, anti-immigration, anti-woke, anti-21st century brigade who have been allowed to come to the fore under the clown and since.
Pandering to the latter will put the Tories into opposition for a very long time...
It would probably still be cheaper than Rwanda *and* would stop the asylum seekers getting here.
https://warontherocks.com/2017/02/the-emergence-of-horatio-nelson-lessons-for-leaders/
...After his ship had sustained heavy damage from the fire of not less than five enemy vessels, Nelson ordered Captain to be crashed alongside the nearest, the San Nicolás, and personally led the boarding parties — the first British flag officer to do so since the 16th century — with a cry of “Westminster Abbey or glorious victory!”..
It's true that it's very hard to detect enthusiasm for Labour, unlike 1997.
But Sunak is also a far weaker candidate than Major, even in his death throes. So the gap between the parties is pretty much 1997-like.
I wonder where this story ends.
https://x.com/danneidle/status/1764568353148973422?s=61
...At the upper bound of what we can reasonably currently expect, we are looking at something close to a one party Parliament the like of which has not been seen before in Britain. I do not think that government, MPs, the media or the public have begun to absorb this. It’s about time that they did.
Unlikely, perhaps. But it's far from impossible.
The Conservative Party are not trying to appeal to Joe and Jane Public; just an internal circle-jerk of right-wingers, ever-decreasing in size.
(*) IMV 'diseased' rather than 'pure'.
Betting PostGood morning, everyone.
F1: Perez still 11 (12 with boost) each way to win in Saudi Arabia. Given his record at the circuit and the way last race went, I think it's worth backing.
You may be right in terms of voters' thoughts but individuals can't vote for a small Labour majority or a hung parliament. Each voter has one vote; there is no groupthink that can organise such an outcome.
The French/Spanish fleet had poor seamanship skills and it didn't require him to sacrifice himself in the thick of the fighting.
I just don't agree with the assertion that voters I don't like will stay at home whereas those who do will enthusiastically turn out in droves.
Trouble is you'd probably be equally frustrated professionally. Very unlikely to get the top senior roles at that age, although not impossible. And also slightly at odds with having a very "good time".
Which coincidentally is another story I’ve long thought about.
🤔🤔🤔🤔