Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
PB?
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
Not that interesting. Alastair Meeks basically tells us the polls predict a Labour landslide but it is possible DKs will return to the fold and that Reform is overstated at the expense of the Tories, in which case there will be a smaller Labour win.
Why, I wonder, is Sunak 7/1 and not 33/1 to be PM after the next election (Hills)? I think a NOM result is possible, though receding a bit since Christmas, but not a Tory government.
Not that interesting. Alastair Meeks basically tells us the polls predict a Labour landslide but it is possible DKs will return to the fold and that Reform is overstated at the expense of the Tories, in which case there will be a smaller Labour win.
Though even that result is a Labour landslide, and the other end of the bell curve is approaching total wipeout. Incidentally no tactical vote correction.
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.
I don't think there will be a total wipeout because I don't think people think Labour deserve it and they don't want a Labour administration that's totally unopposed.
My best guess is the Tories get 27-28% of the vote, if only with lots of clothes pegs on noses.
That would require those voters to actually turn out and vote and if you dislike the tory party that much chances are such voters would stay at home. Especially if the election is on a cold, damp dark evening...
This is just wishful thinking.
You are starting from the point of desiring a Tory wipeout and then working out your reasoning back from there.
Aren't you doing much the same from the opposite direction?
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.
How comparatively good Major was in 1997 (and how effective his government was) is a serious factor in any comparison with that time.
Anecdotally, I *despised* the flim-flam of Tony Blair's New Labour (albeit I was apparently in a minority) and genuinely feared they would make a mess of the work Major had done - not just economically. That kept me in the Tory fold through to 2015 (despite assorted misgivings).
(As it happens, that first Blair government capitalized on the outgoing administrations strengths; it was only later that the weaknesses (largely hubris - excessive borrowing in good times, terrible PFI dealmaking, tax complication, foreign wars etc.) dominated. So there is potential for those you cannot stand to surprise on the upside, at least for a while.)
Dan Neidle, who was labelled a Tory stooge by some for daring to raise issues with the recent Angela Rayner story, has this about PPE and Medpro today.
Which coincidentally is another story I’ve long thought about.
Dan was very fair to Rayner and it’s a shame she didn’t seem to take his advice. I think lots of shocked TwiX followers had assumed he would only skewer Tories and decided he was a traitor for discussing her story.
General gist has been once he gets hold of something it’s a bad idea to try to Streisand it away, as Mone attempted to.
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
91 years for me. Which I'd be happy with, as long as I remain relatively sane and healthy until then. Otherwise, let the reaper come early.
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.
The most interesting bit of Alastair's piece was this: ...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.
I've been predicting a humongous Labour majority for some time. They don't deserve it, but the Conservatives sure as heck do deserve a drubbing.
Whether or not they deserve it isn't really the issue. Rather, how well might government function without a serious opposition ?
You don't need a large number of people to form a serious opposition - just a comparatively small number with the capability to hold them to account - especially on committees, but also in the press.
With a following wind, we'll get a few unexpectedly bright people elected who didn't really expect it, on the LD benches. Or maybe a few of those Tory candidates who are replacing the incumbents who don't want to go down in flames will actually hang on and not be terrible. But this feels a bit like straw-clutching. Where do the next generation of quality politicians come from? Or does the whole thing have to fester away until something collapses?
Dan Neidle, who was labelled a Tory stooge by some for daring to raise issues with the recent Angela Rayner story, has this about PPE and Medpro today.
Which coincidentally is another story I’ve long thought about.
Dan was very fair to Rayner and it’s a shame she didn’t seem to take his advice. I think lots of shocked TwiX followers had assumed he would only skewer Tories and decided he was a traitor for discussing her story.
General gist has been once he gets hold of something it’s a bad idea to try to Streisand it away, as Mone attempted to.
Honestly, it is the scariest sentence in the English that Dan Neidle is looking into your tax affairs.
Not that interesting. Alastair Meeks basically tells us the polls predict a Labour landslide but it is possible DKs will return to the fold and that Reform is overstated at the expense of the Tories, in which case there will be a smaller Labour win.
That "smaller Labour win" is a 140 majority landslide...
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.
Unless Hunt is on a total distraction exercise there isn't a plan for a budget timebomb - which is slightly to the government's credit.
SFAICS, unless Labour make Jezza and Galloway joint leader and plan to declare war on Sweden and close down the NHS, Labour have left it late for failing to win at least a NOM government in the GE.
If Trussites were is charge the suicide plan might be: Budget this week with a plan to abolish VAT, Income Tax and NI, cut interest rates to 1% and build 10,000,000 homes this year everywhere but your village or town, abolish judicial review and cure all diseases; with all plans to be legislated and implemented only in June 2024 following a 2nd May election announced at the same time as the budget.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Well here's £170 billion of it. I wonder how much your vote is responsible for.....£170,000.000.000 divided by 17,000,000 =
Dan Neidle, who was labelled a Tory stooge by some for daring to raise issues with the recent Angela Rayner story, has this about PPE and Medpro today.
Which coincidentally is another story I’ve long thought about.
I find it remarkable that despite alleged industrial scale fast track PPE corruption, allegedly benefitting Ministers and their families, the fall guy is a council house skank.
Angela Rayner's council house transaction? Lock her up! Greensill? Move along, nothing to see.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Well here's £170 billion of it. I wonder how much your vote is responsible for.....£170,000.000.000 divided by 17,000,000 =
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
PB?
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
I’m dead already, apparently, and have been for a dozen years!
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Well here's £170 billion of it. I wonder how much your vote is responsible for.....£170,000.000.000 divided by 17,000,000 =
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
91 years for me. Which I'd be happy with, as long as I remain relatively sane and healthy until then. Otherwise, let the reaper come early.
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.
There is a Ricky Gervais routine about health where he points out that any extra years you live come at the end of your life, you don't get another decade of being in your twenties.
It'd be nice to rerun my twenties now, with all the money and confidence I have now. And, yes, the women - amazing.
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".
You can't have it all - but I'm pretty sure I'd make better choices if I were to get the chance.
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
PB?
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
I’m dead already, apparently, and have been for a dozen years!
PB's commentariat seems slightly more diverse than I imagined.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Its not just about how big the economy is or how much of that is spent on the NHS.
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
PB?
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
I’m dead already, apparently, and have been for a dozen years!
"...if you want to improve the economy really seriously you have to stop wealth inequality from increasing or at least make it decrease. You know from the way I see it this wealth inequality is growing really rapidly and it's a cancer in the economy. You can do whatever you like but if you don't fix that cancer we're for a bad time. When I look at Labor's policies I don't see anything that is seriously going to bring wealth inequality down or even in fact stop it growing.
What I see as a party that will most likely decrease the rate at which wealth and equality is increasing so these guys are going to decrease the rate at which the cancer is growing. I mean it's better your cancer grow slowly than it grows quickly but if you don't stop it from growing then your future is going to be bad, right, so it was very difficult for me to be optimistic at this conference, because whilst I'm aware they will probably win I don't believe they're going to do anything serious about wealth inequality.
So I'm trying to talk to the people, because ultimately it is ordinary families that will be hurt by this and I want people to hold parties like Labour's feet to the fire and say "listen it's not enough that you make a few, like, tinkering around the edges, you need to do something serious. Measure what is happening with wealth inequality [and] create systems such that wealth flows out of super wealthy families and into ordinary families. And there's lots of different ways you could do that..."
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Well here's £170 billion of it. I wonder how much your vote is responsible for.....£170,000.000.000 divided by 17,000,000 =
Not that interesting. Alastair Meeks basically tells us the polls predict a Labour landslide but it is possible DKs will return to the fold and that Reform is overstated at the expense of the Tories, in which case there will be a smaller Labour win.
Though even that result is a Labour landslide, and the other end of the bell curve is approaching total wipeout. Incidentally no tactical vote correction.
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.
I don't think there will be a total wipeout because I don't think people think Labour deserve it and they don't want a Labour administration that's totally unopposed.
My best guess is the Tories get 27-28% of the vote, if only with lots of clothes pegs on noses.
That would require those voters to actually turn out and vote and if you dislike the tory party that much chances are such voters would stay at home. Especially if the election is on a cold, damp dark evening...
This is just wishful thinking.
You are starting from the point of desiring a Tory wipeout and then working out your reasoning back from there.
Aren't you doing much the same from the opposite direction?
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.
No, I think a wipeout is perfectly possible.
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.
Surely, on the basis of the polls, this kind of differential turnout is the only thing that could avert a Labour landslide. Either that or a differential movement of Don't Knows to the Tories.
I expect a Labour landslide. I don't expect a Tory wipe out. Why? Well I expect Labour to do very well and possibly too well in the LD/Tory seats. And for a Tory wipe out the LDs have to take a lot of these seats. On the LDs current poll ratings I expect them to take the obvious LD targets but I can see in the rest Labour piling up votes instead of the LDs taking the seats.
I hope I am wrong. I would like to see a Tory wipe out, not because I am anti Tory (I would have been just as happy to see it happen to Labour under similar circumstances), but because I would like to see a realignment of our politics rather than the same old same old.
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
PB?
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
I’m dead already, apparently, and have been for a dozen years!
I just took it and was told I'll die at 73 years old. I thought that's probably because I said I drink daily, so I retried with twice a week but that only got me up to 78. (In reality I drink 4 days a week on average).
Then I changed my outlook from neutral to optimistic and it catapulted me to 93. Still below the average for my BMI. How to get to that average of 100? Choosing Denmark as my home country added another 2 years. Undergoing a sex change got me to 97. But apparently drinking only 2-4 times per month was the key. Bummer.
Three to one also being the odds faced at his first great victory.
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!”..
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
PB?
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
I’m dead already, apparently, and have been for a dozen years!
Blimey - it reckons I'll make it to 90. I'd not budgeted for that.
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
Are there, I've just missed them ?
Perhaps climate change is no longer fashionable.
Gaza is.
Next you'll be telling me they were all marching against the Minneapolis PD four years ago.
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
Are there, I've just missed them ?
The Rentacrowd industry is like any other. It can only attend to X number of things efficiently and logic or reason don't really enter into it. Nor do they have much interest in the boring task of actually making the world a better place.
The stop oil brigade have no interest in the bad environmental record of totalitarian countries; the Gaza brigade have no interest in Sudan or eastern Congo or the Russian invasion of a peaceful neighbour.
"...if you want to improve the economy really seriously you have to stop wealth inequality from increasing or at least make it decrease. You know from the way I see it this wealth inequality is growing really rapidly and it's a cancer in the economy. You can do whatever you like but if you don't fix that cancer we're for a bad time. When I look at Labor's policies I don't see anything that is seriously going to bring wealth inequality down or even in fact stop it growing.
What I see as a party that will most likely decrease the rate at which wealth and equality is increasing so these guys are going to decrease the rate at which the cancer is growing. I mean it's better your cancer grow slowly than it grows quickly but if you don't stop it from growing then your future is going to be bad, right, so it was very difficult for me to be optimistic at this conference, because whilst I'm aware they will probably win I don't believe they're going to do anything serious about wealth inequality.
So I'm trying to talk to the people, because ultimately it is ordinary families that will be hurt by this and I want people to hold parties like Labour's feet to the fire and say "listen it's not enough that you make a few, like, tinkering around the edges, you need to do something serious. Measure what is happening with wealth inequality [and] create systems such that wealth flows out of super wealthy families and into ordinary families. And there's lots of different ways you could do that..."
One aspect of that is that executive earnings have grown too rapidly compared to those of employees, or indeed shareholders.
It doesn't encourage productivity growth if too high a proportion of the resulting gains goes to those at the top rather than those whose productivity is actually increasing.
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
91 years for me. Which I'd be happy with, as long as I remain relatively sane and healthy until then. Otherwise, let the reaper come early.
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.
There is a Ricky Gervais routine about health where he points out that any extra years you live come at the end of your life, you don't get another decade of being in your twenties.
It'd be nice to rerun my twenties now, with all the money and confidence I have now. And, yes, the women - amazing.
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".
You can't have it all - but I'm pretty sure I'd make better choices if I were to get the chance.
I would certainly make changes to my teens and twenties. Not my thirties which was my most active time in life. I wouldn't need the money I have now. Can't think how money would have made any changes to my life then. In fact it would have spoilt some of the fun of changing cars etc if I could have just got what I wanted, which I can now.
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
Are there, I've just missed them ?
Perhaps climate change is no longer fashionable.
Gaza is.
Next you'll be telling me they were all marching against the Minneapolis PD four years ago.
You can be sure that they'll never be marching against anything China, Russia or Iran have done.
This focus by Goldman Sachs on making the slaves work harder is not necessarily reassuring. Government used to be about doing things for people, now it's about doing things to people.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
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.
Once again the political pygmies we've somehow elected have taken stupid risks to look 'well 'ard' to their mates, and now they're upset because they've got caught.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Its not just about how big the economy is or how much of that is spent on the NHS.
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
On the first, the Government moved public health into local council responsibilities and local councils have no money because of central government cuts. Primary care also has an important role to play in encouraging people to take better care of their own health, and primary care needs better funding,
The second won’t have any significant impact on health spending.
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
Are there, I've just missed them ?
One stood in Rochdale and threw confetti over Galloway.
The figures unearthed by Shaw show that out of 973 towns fund projects, only 154 are due to have been completed by the end of February. By the end of November, that figure rises to 385, just 40% of the total.
Given the economic disruptions of recent years and the history of government infrastructure spending its probably a better than expected result.
I note there don't seem to have been any Climate/Just stop Oil protests in the capital or anywhere else this year. Now I didn't always agree with their methods but why have the proponents of the action seem to have gone so quiet recently ?
Are there, I've just missed them ?
Winter. If you plan to glue yourself to the road, it's probably best not to choose a date when there could easily be frost or snow.
This focus by Goldman Sachs on making the slaves work harder is not necessarily reassuring. Government used to be about doing things for people, now it's about doing things to people.
More pertinently, it might persuade NICE and the government that it's worth funding widespread prescriptions - particularly as the UK is likely to negotiate a better price.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Its not just about how big the economy is or how much of that is spent on the NHS.
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
On the first, the Government moved public health into local council responsibilities and local councils have no money because of central government cuts. Primary care also has an important role to play in encouraging people to take better care of their own health, and primary care needs better funding,
The second won’t have any significant impact on health spending.
We're continually told that health spending is increasingly on sick oldies.
And public health is not just about spending money but getting people to take some responsibility for their own lifestyle choices.
This focus by Goldman Sachs on making the slaves work harder is not necessarily reassuring. Government used to be about doing things for people, now it's about doing things to people.
More pertinently, it might persuade NICE and the government that it's worth funding widespread prescriptions - particularly as the UK is likely to negotiate a better price.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Its not just about how big the economy is or how much of that is spent on the NHS.
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
On the first, the Government moved public health into local council responsibilities and local councils have no money because of central government cuts. Primary care also has an important role to play in encouraging people to take better care of their own health, and primary care needs better funding,
The second won’t have any significant impact on health spending.
We're continually told that health spending is increasingly on sick oldies.
And public health is not just about spending money but getting people to take some responsibility for their own lifestyle choices.
What is the magic method for making people take some responsibility for their lifestyle choices without spending any money to do it? I know how to do it with a budget. I don’t know how to do it with zero staff.
Health spending is increasingly on “sick oldies”. I’m unclear what point you’re making.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
91 years for me. Which I'd be happy with, as long as I remain relatively sane and healthy until then. Otherwise, let the reaper come early.
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.
The most interesting bit of Alastair's piece was this: ...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.
It is far from impossible, in fact it is impossible unless the Northern Irish parties, PC and SNP all decide to merge with the Labour Party. Even if you only include England, a 100% Tory wipeout will mean some seats going to the LDs.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Massive Labour lead up 5% yet
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Massive Labour lead up 5% yet
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
This is a larger Labour lead than under Tony Blair.
And Reform only on 8%. Even using Telegraph-style dodgy electoral maths, Labour have a lead of 19ppts.
Keir Starmer must be the luckiest Labour leader in history. One wonders how well he would be doing if the Tories had somebody like David Cameron leading them.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Run that through Electoral Calculus with no adjustments, you end up with a Labour majority of 424.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Its not just about how big the economy is or how much of that is spent on the NHS.
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
On the first, the Government moved public health into local council responsibilities and local councils have no money because of central government cuts. Primary care also has an important role to play in encouraging people to take better care of their own health, and primary care needs better funding,
The second won’t have any significant impact on health spending.
We're continually told that health spending is increasingly on sick oldies.
And public health is not just about spending money but getting people to take some responsibility for their own lifestyle choices.
What is the magic method for making people take some responsibility for their lifestyle choices without spending any money to do it? I know how to do it with a budget. I don’t know how to do it with zero staff.
Health spending is increasingly on “sick oldies”. I’m unclear what point you’re making.
Unhealthy lifestyle = back of the queue.
A stick to go with the carrot.
A healthy lifestyle doesn't need much explaining - eat and drink moderately, exercise regularly, no smoking.
And if the sick oldies have access to assisted suicide then they might not linger in suffering for months or years consuming health resources.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Massive Labour lead up 5% yet
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
This is a larger Labour lead than under Tony Blair.
Is it, SKS is no Tony Blair though with a -26 rating
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Run that through Electoral Calculus with no adjustments, you end up with a Labour majority of 424.
Just a bit of fun.
What odds the Conservatives have more seats in Scotland than England after the GE?
The figures unearthed by Shaw show that out of 973 towns fund projects, only 154 are due to have been completed by the end of February. By the end of November, that figure rises to 385, just 40% of the total.
Given the economic disruptions of recent years and the history of government infrastructure spending its probably a better than expected result.
All were supposed to have been done within three years.
The narrative around the budget is developing and not necessarily to Hunt's advantage. If he goes out there on Wednesday faced with a media story line of tax cuts vs public services, and then delivers a tax cut funded by spending cuts next year, I think he's in real trouble.
That may not be fair - tax take has risen a lot in the last couple of years as a result of fiscal drag - but it's out there. And clearly public opinion at the moment is in favour of more investment for public services, however much Tory politicians may fret about bottomless pits and money-spaffing.
If I were Hunt I would cut my losses and aim for a sensible budget that does a few things to the tax system that consensus says are a "good idea". That means he can potentially do some fiscal loosening and cut the personal tax burden without the same political risk. For example unfreeze income tax thresholds. That potentially costs as much as dropping the headline rate. Do something about the child benefit taper at 50k. Unfreeze the VAT registration threshold (I think that one will happen, though our real problem there is the threshold is way too high). Yes reform the Non Dom regime but do so in a way that encourages international investment by replacing with a temporary incentive. Announce a consultation on reforming business rates. Reshuffle the stamp duty thresholds to get rid of those big cliff edges. And so on.
Hunt's brand, and that of Sunak such as it is, was all about quiet competence. A lot of that has been eroded but it's really all he's got left so why blow it with something that looks nakedly electioneering and won't go down well with the voters?
And Reform only on 8%. Even using Telegraph-style dodgy electoral maths, Labour have a lead of 19ppts.
Keir Starmer must be the luckiest Labour leader in history. One wonders how well he would be doing if the Tories had somebody like David Cameron leading them.
Well Cameron isn't leading them and indeed has to take a fair amount of blame for lighting the blue touchpaper on the current skip fire.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Massive Labour lead up 5% yet
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
This is a larger Labour lead than under Tony Blair.
Is it, SKS is no Tony Blair though with a -26 rating
Previous Conservative low points were 22 per cent under John Major in December 1994 and May 1995, 23 per cent in July 1997 when New Labour was settling into office under Tony Blair, and 23 per cent in December 2022 shortly after Rishi Sunak took over from Liz Truss’s brief and economically catastrophic administration.
I believe we still have maths in this country, so as 27 is larger than 23, then yes it is a larger Labour lead than under Tony Blair.
How many of these did famous election winner Jeremy Corbyn produce?
And Reform only on 8%. Even using Telegraph-style dodgy electoral maths, Labour have a lead of 19ppts.
Keir Starmer must be the luckiest Labour leader in history. One wonders how well he would be doing if the Tories had somebody like David Cameron leading them.
Even more so considering how useless the Lib Dems are. They should really be polling on something like 15-20%.
Well I wish I hadn't done that Death Clock. I don't have long left.
It's an actuarial calculation which doesn't make much sense for a given individual. Being negative about it will worsen your predicted outcome, anyway !
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
Well I wish I hadn't done that Death Clock. I don't have long left.
Mmm, it says I'll live to 99 and a friend will live to 111! We are not taking it too seriously... It's interesting to play with the assumptions, though - diet and attitude (optimistic/pessimistic) trump things like BMI.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Run that through Electoral Calculus with no adjustments, you end up with a Labour majority of 424.
Just a bit of fun.
And the fight for next Tory leader among the rump of 25 is between Barclay and Williamson.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Massive Labour lead up 5% yet
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
My feeling is this coming election will be the least presidential of any election since 1992. It will be party vs party, Labour (or more broadly "not-Tories") vs Conservative. Not Starmer vs Sunak.
People have decided that Sunak isn't sufficiently better or worse than his party to influence their vote. They are voting on the Tory record overall. They also seem to have decided Starmer is inoffensive enough but uninspiring, therefore not really a basis to vote for or against Labour. Likewise Davey. And certainly likewise Reform and Green where nobody knows who leads the Greens and few people have any strong opinion of Tice.
Well I wish I hadn't done that Death Clock. I don't have long left.
Mmm, it says I'll live to 99 and a friend will live to 111! We are not taking it too seriously... It's interesting to play with the assumptions, though - diet and attitude (optimistic/pessimistic) trump things like BMI.
Nick what are your thoughts on the next election outcome? How does it feel compared to 1997?
Dan Neidle, who was labelled a Tory stooge by some for daring to raise issues with the recent Angela Rayner story, has this about PPE and Medpro today.
Which coincidentally is another story I’ve long thought about.
Well for the opportunists among you there's a nice villa in the foothills above Villefranche next door to the villa of the late Tina Turner for sale.........;
And Reform only on 8%. Even using Telegraph-style dodgy electoral maths, Labour have a lead of 19ppts.
Keir Starmer must be the luckiest Labour leader in history. One wonders how well he would be doing if the Tories had somebody like David Cameron leading them.
Even better probably.
Not that it would make any material difference.
The Conservatives crippled themselves with the 'do as I say not as I do' covid hypocrisy and then crippled themselves again with Truss acting like a toddler pressing a row of buttons to see which lights turn on.
Then add in all the financial and sexual sleaze.
Finally the political ineptitude (being loud about things which have gone wrong and quiet about things which have gone right).
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
More unpopular now than Boris Johnson in December 2019.
Well I wish I hadn't done that Death Clock. I don't have long left.
Mmm, it says I'll live to 99 and a friend will live to 111! We are not taking it too seriously... It's interesting to play with the assumptions, though - diet and attitude (optimistic/pessimistic) trump things like BMI.
However one of the most important factor, your genes, is obviously missing, so pretty useless. As they say you can do something about everything else to lengthen your life, but you can't do anything about your genes which is one of if not the major factor.
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
More unpopular now than Boris Johnson in December 2019.
The precedent is set, then. But danger is ahead for him.
And Reform only on 8%. Even using Telegraph-style dodgy electoral maths, Labour have a lead of 19ppts.
Keir Starmer must be the luckiest Labour leader in history. One wonders how well he would be doing if the Tories had somebody like David Cameron leading them.
Even more so considering how useless the Lib Dems are. They should really be polling on something like 15-20%.
(Starmer is attractive to Lib Dem sensibilities?)
I follow the Lib Dems' policy proposals and political commentary on places like TwiX. The content of almost everything the party says is pretty spot on. Unlike Starmer Davey was straight out pointing out the hypocrisy of Sunak's speech on Friday. During the Gaza vote debacle the party behaved impeccably and had the most sensible amendment. On the ground they have been relentless in going after the water companies over sewage. But nobody in the media bothers listening. You could say that's uselessness, but it's useless PR.
Not to say the party doesn't have some bad policies: in particular its opportunistic local nimbyism which is sort of understandable but very annoying, and its fear of reopening the Brexit question but then Starmer is equally guilty of that one.
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
Satisfaction is perception minus expectations and all that. So that might actually benefit Sir Keir if he can surprise on the upside.
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
More unpopular now than Boris Johnson in December 2019.
This is FPTP acting the way it's meant to.
We're always being told that FPTP is great because it lets the people get rid of governments they don't like.
And the people really really don't like this Conservative government. As long as the alternative is a bit less unpopular, nothing else matters.
Well, it certainly doesn't have the cheeriest start for a Monday morning.
I did the Death Clock (I'm on a bus from Ban Phe to Bangkok and have run out of stuff to read so I'm relying on my Dtac data to keep me amused)
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?
91 years for me. Which I'd be happy with, as long as I remain relatively sane and healthy until then. Otherwise, let the reaper come early.
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.
The most interesting bit of Alastair's piece was this: ...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.
It is far from impossible, in fact it is impossible unless the Northern Irish parties, PC and SNP all decide to merge with the Labour Party. Even if you only include England, a 100% Tory wipeout will mean some seats going to the LDs.
If their vote is reduced right down to the most loyal of 'always vote Con' loyalists it won't be much more than 20% and they'll be wiped out. I don't think it will happen but there's more chance of that imo than either hung parliament or Labour getting only a small majority. 125/150 is where I'd pitch it.
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
That very much remains to be seen. He has poor approval ratings at the moment in the wake of the Rochdale debacle, which may fade, and some policy reversals that he would see as clearing the decks of vulnerable areas for the General Election.
Will that continue to polling day? I'm not sure - my prediction is there will be a bit of a charm offensive by Labour in the campaign proper, and he'll probably be only slightly in deficit by polling day. But we'll see.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Massive Labour lead up 5% yet
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
This is a larger Labour lead than under Tony Blair.
Is it, SKS is no Tony Blair though with a -26 rating
Time to hold your fire until after he's elected. He could surprise us. He has a few things going for him. His background doesn't suggest a dilletante like Sunak or Johnson or even Blair and he was stronly pro EU right up untill the loonies took over the asylum.
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
More unpopular now than Boris Johnson in December 2019.
This is FPTP acting the way it's meant to.
We're always being told that FPTP is great because it lets the people get rid of governments they don't like.
And the people really really don't like this Conservative government. As long as the alternative is a bit less unpopular, nothing else matters.
Interestingly if we had PR at the next election there would be a fairly straightforward path to a Labour-LibDem coalition with these numbers. They wouldn't need Green support.
Of course under PR the reality would look different. Con would be even lower, Reform would be touching 20%, Greens probably at least 12-15% and Labour much lower.
What is undeniable, is that SKS will also likely win an election being the most unpopular winner in recent times, not sure if he is yet more unpopular than Boris Johnson?
More unpopular now than Boris Johnson in December 2019.
This is FPTP acting the way it's meant to.
We're always being told that FPTP is great because it lets the people get rid of governments they don't like.
And the people really really don't like this Conservative government. As long as the alternative is a bit less unpopular, nothing else matters.
Indeed, something that the Boris Johnson fanbois and fangirls seem not to wish to acknowledge but rather believe he was awesome in 2019.
Well I wish I hadn't done that Death Clock. I don't have long left.
It's an actuarial calculation which doesn't make much sense for a given individual. Being negative about it will worsen your predicted outcome, anyway !
We're ok now. I changed my drink answer from 'daily' to 'twice a week' and got myself an additional 21 years!
Thing is, the 'daily' is just my couple of tiny sherry glasses of red wine. It doesn't know that. Therefore in a sense me saying 'twice a week' is more accurate.
FWIW we live in a particular period in which it is not feasible for centrist democratic politicians in our bit of the world to be hugely popular. There is nothing for them to be popular about, and no simple programme to implement to engage a popular vision of the near future; (pace Matt Goodwin.)
Starmer knows all this, and will form the next government on the simple campaign of : Not Tory; not leftist, less incompetent possibly even a bit competent; social democrat; not corrupt; fiscally boring; reliable team. This is not the stuff of tickertape parades.
It is indeed unfortunate that we are so obsessed by the NHS and its poor performance. What we should be focused on this week is the capacity of our economy to produce yet more resources for it. That means trying to address the very poor growth rate that we have had over the last couple of years (along with most of Europe it has to be said), our tendency to over consume and under invest (hint, tax cuts are not the answer to this) and our poor productivity driven by an education system that is also not producing results and our predilection to hire more unskilled labour rather than investing in training and technology.
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.
Its not just about how big the economy is or how much of that is spent on the NHS.
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
On the first, the Government moved public health into local council responsibilities and local councils have no money because of central government cuts. Primary care also has an important role to play in encouraging people to take better care of their own health, and primary care needs better funding,
The second won’t have any significant impact on health spending.
We're continually told that health spending is increasingly on sick oldies.
And public health is not just about spending money but getting people to take some responsibility for their own lifestyle choices.
What is the magic method for making people take some responsibility for their lifestyle choices without spending any money to do it? I know how to do it with a budget. I don’t know how to do it with zero staff.
Health spending is increasingly on “sick oldies”. I’m unclear what point you’re making.
Unhealthy lifestyle = back of the queue.
A stick to go with the carrot.
A healthy lifestyle doesn't need much explaining - eat and drink moderately, exercise regularly, no smoking.
And if the sick oldies have access to assisted suicide then they might not linger in suffering for months or years consuming health resources.
Just because you are old and sick doesn’t mean you want to commit suicide. That’s a preposterous suggestion! Quite a few regular posters here are old and sick: do you think they should all kill themselves? You are being ridiculous.
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
Run that through Electoral Calculus with no adjustments, you end up with a Labour majority of 424.
Just a bit of fun.
What odds the Conservatives have more seats in Scotland than England after the GE?
It's strange to think John Lamont MP for Berwickshire etc could be the last MP left standing in a Tory wipeout.
Well I wish I hadn't done that Death Clock. I don't have long left.
It's an actuarial calculation which doesn't make much sense for a given individual. Being negative about it will worsen your predicted outcome, anyway !
We're ok now. I changed my drink answer from 'daily' to 'twice a week' and got myself an additional 21 years!
Thing is, the 'daily' is just my couple of tiny sherry glasses of red wine. It doesn't know that. Therefore in a sense me saying 'twice a week' is more accurate.
Phew.
Being positive rather than neutral gives me an additional 25 years!
Damn this government, making us all so negative Still, it will help address rising care and pension costs, I guess.
Comments
98 for me, which is a bit alarming. I'm less than half way!
Anecdotally, I *despised* the flim-flam of Tony Blair's New Labour (albeit I was apparently in a minority) and genuinely feared they would make a mess of the work Major had done - not just economically. That kept me in the Tory fold through to 2015 (despite assorted misgivings).
(As it happens, that first Blair government capitalized on the outgoing administrations strengths; it was only later that the weaknesses (largely hubris - excessive borrowing in good times, terrible PFI dealmaking, tax complication, foreign wars etc.) dominated. So there is potential for those you cannot stand to surprise on the upside, at least for a while.)
General gist has been once he gets hold of something it’s a bad idea to try to Streisand it away, as Mone attempted to.
With a following wind, we'll get a few unexpectedly bright people elected who didn't really expect it, on the LD benches. Or maybe a few of those Tory candidates who are replacing the incumbents who don't want to go down in flames will actually hang on and not be terrible. But this feels a bit like straw-clutching. Where do the next generation of quality politicians come from? Or does the whole thing have to fester away until something collapses?
SFAICS, unless Labour make Jezza and Galloway joint leader and plan to declare war on Sweden and close down the NHS, Labour have left it late for failing to win at least a NOM government in the GE.
If Trussites were is charge the suicide plan might be: Budget this week with a plan to abolish VAT, Income Tax and NI, cut interest rates to 1% and build 10,000,000 homes this year everywhere but your village or town, abolish judicial review and cure all diseases; with all plans to be legislated and implemented only in June 2024 following a 2nd May election announced at the same time as the budget.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/london-mayor-says-brexit-has-cost-uk-over-178-bln-so-far-2024-01-11/
Angela Rayner's council house transaction? Lock her up! Greensill? Move along, nothing to see.
Why not a gazillion bazillion trillion ?
Given that we have full employment and more immigration than the country can cope with where does this extra money come from ?
Its also how effectively that money is spent.
The NHS is a long way down the law of diminishing returns path,
Encouraging people to take better care of their own health and allowing assisted suicide are the ways forward.
Are there, I've just missed them ?
Well done Sadiq.
"...if you want to improve the economy really seriously you have to stop wealth inequality from increasing or at least make it decrease. You know from the way I see it this wealth inequality is growing really rapidly and it's a cancer in the economy. You can do whatever you like but if you don't fix that cancer we're for a bad time. When I look at Labor's policies I don't see anything that is seriously going to bring wealth inequality down or even in fact stop it growing.
What I see as a party that will most likely decrease the rate at which wealth and equality is increasing so these guys are going to decrease the rate at which the cancer is growing. I mean it's better your cancer grow slowly than it grows quickly but if you don't stop it from growing then your future is going to be bad, right, so it was very difficult for me to be optimistic at this conference, because whilst I'm aware they will probably win I don't believe they're going to do anything serious about wealth inequality.
So I'm trying to talk to the people, because ultimately it is ordinary families that will be hurt by this and I want people to hold parties like Labour's feet to the fire and say "listen it's not enough that you make a few, like, tinkering around the edges, you need to do something serious. Measure what is happening with wealth inequality [and] create systems such that wealth flows out of super wealthy families and into ordinary families. And there's lots of different ways you could do that..."
Gaza is.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/22/weight-loss-drugs-economy-ozempic
I hope I am wrong. I would like to see a Tory wipe out, not because I am anti Tory (I would have been just as happy to see it happen to Labour under similar circumstances), but because I would like to see a realignment of our politics rather than the same old same old.
Then I changed my outlook from neutral to optimistic and it catapulted me to 93. Still below the average for my BMI. How to get to that average of 100? Choosing Denmark as my home country added another 2 years. Undergoing a sex change got me to 97. But apparently drinking only 2-4 times per month was the key. Bummer.
The stop oil brigade have no interest in the bad environmental record of totalitarian countries; the Gaza brigade have no interest in Sudan or eastern Congo or the Russian invasion of a peaceful neighbour.
It doesn't encourage productivity growth if too high a proportion of the resulting gains goes to those at the top rather than those whose productivity is actually increasing.
Exclusive: Plans either shelved or stalled despite forming part of flagship policy promise at last election
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/03/fewer-than-20-levelling-up-projects-completed-england-figures
Lab 47%
Con 20%
LD 9%
Green 8%
Reform 8%
https://x.com/nicholascecil/status/1764575984970297778?s=20
Note Ipsos usually have lower scores for Ref so that's a big increase. The Green score looks a bit of a high outlier. Lab vs LD looks a bit generous to Lab too.
Seems the Tories are incapable of sinking below 20% though. Several recent nadir polls have had them on 20.
LLG:RefCon 64:28
The second won’t have any significant impact on health spending.
The figures unearthed by Shaw show that out of 973 towns fund projects, only 154 are due to have been completed by the end of February. By the end of November, that figure rises to 385, just 40% of the total.
Given the economic disruptions of recent years and the history of government infrastructure spending its probably a better than expected result.
And public health is not just about spending money but getting people to take some responsibility for their own lifestyle choices.
Health spending is increasingly on “sick oldies”. I’m unclear what point you’re making.
https://twitter.com/PhysInHistory/status/1764493153011163327
Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
"Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be."
New Ipsos Mori poll has dropped…
🌹 Lab 47%
🌳 Con 20%
🔶LD 9%
🟦Reform 8%
🌍Green 7%
❗️Worst Tory score in any Ipsos Mori poll since records began in 1978
❗️Tories on single figures among under 35s
(Feb 21-28)
https://x.com/mod_soc_dem/status/1764586322298106077
Satisfaction with government, -73.
This Government is rapidly approaching that famous election winner, Jeremy Corbyn.
SKS’s rating as Labour leader has dropped, with 55 per cent dissatisfied, his worst score since becoming leader, and 29 per cent satisfied, a net score of -26, slighty above his lowest finding of -29 in May 2021.
Just a bit of fun.
And the result for Labour 50%, Con 26%, reform 2% looks little different to 47,20,8
A stick to go with the carrot.
A healthy lifestyle doesn't need much explaining - eat and drink moderately, exercise regularly, no smoking.
And if the sick oldies have access to assisted suicide then they might not linger in suffering for months or years consuming health resources.
That may not be fair - tax take has risen a lot in the last couple of years as a result of fiscal drag - but it's out there. And clearly public opinion at the moment is in favour of more investment for public services, however much Tory politicians may fret about bottomless pits and money-spaffing.
If I were Hunt I would cut my losses and aim for a sensible budget that does a few things to the tax system that consensus says are a "good idea". That means he can potentially do some fiscal loosening and cut the personal tax burden without the same political risk. For example unfreeze income tax thresholds. That potentially costs as much as dropping the headline rate. Do something about the child benefit taper at 50k. Unfreeze the VAT registration threshold (I think that one will happen, though our real problem there is the threshold is way too high). Yes reform the Non Dom regime but do so in a way that encourages international investment by replacing with a temporary incentive. Announce a consultation on reforming business rates. Reshuffle the stamp duty thresholds to get rid of those big cliff edges. And so on.
Hunt's brand, and that of Sunak such as it is, was all about quiet competence. A lot of that has been eroded but it's really all he's got left so why blow it with something that looks nakedly electioneering and won't go down well with the voters?
How many of these did famous election winner Jeremy Corbyn produce?
(Starmer is attractive to Lib Dem sensibilities?)
Being negative about it will worsen your predicted outcome, anyway !
BJO fans please explain.
Etc.
Etc.
People have decided that Sunak isn't sufficiently better or worse than his party to influence their vote. They are voting on the Tory record overall. They also seem to have decided Starmer is inoffensive enough but uninspiring, therefore not really a basis to vote for or against Labour. Likewise Davey. And certainly likewise Reform and Green where nobody knows who leads the Greens and few people have any strong opinion of Tice.
No timewasters or dreamers please......
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-4681384/Michelle-Mone-puts-seven-bed-luxury-villa-sale.html
Not that it would make any material difference.
The Conservatives crippled themselves with the 'do as I say not as I do' covid hypocrisy and then crippled themselves again with Truss acting like a toddler pressing a row of buttons to see which lights turn on.
Then add in all the financial and sexual sleaze.
Finally the political ineptitude (being loud about things which have gone wrong and quiet about things which have gone right).
Not to say the party doesn't have some bad policies: in particular its opportunistic local nimbyism which is sort of understandable but very annoying, and its fear of reopening the Brexit question but then Starmer is equally guilty of that one.
SKS fans please explain
No matter how bad SKS is people are looking at the current Government and going - Labour really can’t be any worse
We're always being told that FPTP is great because it lets the people get rid of governments they don't like.
And the people really really don't like this Conservative government. As long as the alternative is a bit less unpopular, nothing else matters.
Will that continue to polling day? I'm not sure - my prediction is there will be a bit of a charm offensive by Labour in the campaign proper, and he'll probably be only slightly in deficit by polling day. But we'll see.
Of course under PR the reality would look different. Con would be even lower, Reform would be touching 20%, Greens probably at least 12-15% and Labour much lower.
Lab 43.9, Con 23.9
Lead edges up to exactly 20 points, but the Con level is now comfortably below 25.
Con would do rather worse at 44/24 than they would at 50/30, so the slide will be scaring Con even without much change in the gap.
Sam Freedman
@Samfr
·
51m
Worse than Major. Worse than Truss. I'm sure doing exactly the same tax cut they did in November will fix it, though.
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1764585376511906148
Thing is, the 'daily' is just my couple of tiny sherry glasses of red wine. It doesn't know that. Therefore in a sense me saying 'twice a week' is more accurate.
Phew.
Starmer knows all this, and will form the next government on the simple campaign of : Not Tory; not leftist, less incompetent possibly even a bit competent; social democrat; not corrupt; fiscally boring; reliable team. This is not the stuff of tickertape parades.
They dont see that Wes Streeting is worse for the NHS than whoever is the SoS for health now
They dont see austerity Reeves offers no change except for deeper austerity
They will see very shortly after 2024 GE
Ex-London minister Paul Scully to quit as Tory MP before general election
Damn this government, making us all so negative