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Ayrshire hotelier’s troubles mount – politicalbetting.com

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  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,059

    Jesus that Redfield is just awful for the Tories

    I see that while Epping Forest goes Labour on the Redfield poll, Brentwood and Ongar (where we now live) stays Conservative.

    So even on a worst case scenario I would still be in the 5% of the UK population who still had a Tory MP
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405
    FF43 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    Funny how in 4 years Musk has gone from being a darling of the left to an extreme right winger.
    The interesting thing to me is Musk's enthusiasm for trashing his own brand. He had carefully nurtured the idea of solving big world problems - climate change, space exploration - with skillful execution of challenging technical solutions. But he threw all that away with conspiracy theories and fascist ideology. You might say he's rich enough he doesn't need to care about a brand, but previously he did.
    Ah ok so now he's a fascist. Is he a Franco fascist, Mussolini light, touch of the Adolfs, Stalin ?

    Just how fascist is he in your view ?

  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,099
    Donkeys said:
    Musk endorsing Kennedy would pull over more Trump than Biden voters.

    Do it, Elon!
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405
    Nigelb said:

    .

    Foxy said:

    I suspect Bidens shoes are more for a foot problem than stability. Arthritis of ankle or toes, or perhaps even bone spurs.

    Or tendonitis, os similar.
    Could just be for added push when Jill fancies a knee trembler
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,770

    Donkeys said:
    Musk endorsing Kennedy would pull over more Trump than Biden voters.

    Do it, Elon!
    Musk should just go full Zaphod.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,226
    edited March 18
    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735
    "And Labour? Last weekend, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was repeatedly asked by the Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips if she would fix councils’ crises once Labour was in power. But she would only offer her usual words about the awful problems she would inherit, and vague claims that changes to the planning system and increased business investment may eventually feed through to money for local services.

    I admire the optimism of people who think she is secretly preparing some kind of national rescue package, but I cannot quite shake off that eternally insightful Maya Angelou quotation: “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/17/birmingham-britain-state-cuts-austerity-local-services
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,099
    Omnium said:

    Donkeys said:
    Musk endorsing Kennedy would pull over more Trump than Biden voters.

    Do it, Elon!
    Musk should just go full Zaphod.
    Have a second head added, presumably using a Neuralink?
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,508

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,183

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    You think they ought to be islamophobic?
    The two religions in the world that seem to be most in conflict - despite the fact that one only has about 20 million adherents, many of which are Jew-ish - are Islam and Judaism.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    moonshine said:

    nico679 said:

    FF43 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    Funny how in 4 years Musk has gone from being a darling of the left to an extreme right winger.
    The interesting thing to me is Musk's enthusiasm for thrashing his own brand. He had carefully nurtured the idea of solving big world problems - climate change, space exploration - with skillful execution of challenging technical solutions. But threw all that away with conspiracy theories and fascist ideology. You might say he's rich enough he doesn't need to care about a brand, but previously he did.
    Anyone who enables Trump is vermin . That also includes the right wingers in the UK who fawn over him.
    Hmmm… people have referred to others as vermin for their political beliefs before. It’s not exulted company to be keeping.
    Okay then point taken . I’ll just call those who enable Trump scum.
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,102
    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    Maybe. He also uses Twitter in lieu of his inner voice so out of tens of thousands of utterances, there are some weird ones. No doubt not helped by an “interesting” psychological profile that is reportedly being medicated with ketamine. Not to mention an offbeat sense of humour that sometimes strays into irony so thickly disguised he’s the only one who can perceive it.

    "The whole controversy is preposterous: these killings are obviously ironic"
  • No_Offence_AlanNo_Offence_Alan Posts: 4,521
    Truman said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    Never thought of that. Yes Musk certainly has the resources to bail Trump out with "conditions" of course. In some ways Musk is more right wing than Trump now.
    Though their diverging views on electric cars versus "pump more oil" may be a stumbling block.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,667

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    In no constituency will the choice be only Labour or Conservative.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,770

    Omnium said:

    Donkeys said:
    Musk endorsing Kennedy would pull over more Trump than Biden voters.

    Do it, Elon!
    Musk should just go full Zaphod.
    Have a second head added, presumably using a Neuralink?
    Yeah, but I mean properly.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,104
    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson is now dead but had previously given Trump around $200 million for his last two campaigns. Trump gave Adelson's widow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civil award (along with Elvis Presley). That's who I'd be looking to tap up.
    Why did Elvis co-present it?
    You’re misreading an obvious ambiguity.
    He gave her the medal and Elvis.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,839

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming and dodge it for a better result, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than anything they deserve?

    Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening? A deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up in mid 30’s just 6 points behind?
    Personally I'm sticking with the hung Parliament prediction, for various reasons though at the core of it I think if I'm going to be wrong I might as well be spectacularly wrong. But you can see why the prevailing wisdom accepts the polls. The Conservatives are obviously a tired, divided and incompetent bunch, and the assumption that the Reform vote will stick with that outfit simply in order to give the Tories a bloody good hiding is not without merit.

    Set against that, the Conservative Party has never won less than 30% of the popular vote in any general election that it has contested, and the notion of a Reform vote running into several millions rests on the assumption that supporters of what is fundamentally a hard right nativist movement are all ready to splurge their votes on candidates with no prospect of winning, and guaranteeing a handsome victory for Labour in the process. So, swings and roundabouts.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,385
    So. I just heard Sunak on the news say "I'm not interested in Westminster politics".
    It shows.
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 3,252

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    Because Islam is a fake religion invented by Jews for their own nefarious purposes, or so claimed someone in front of me in the queue for the farmers’ market one Saturday during the pandemic in Camden.

    Belief in one god?
    Ritual circumcision?
    Ritual animal slaughter?
    Reading from right to left?

    :lol:
    Is there any actual difference between halal and kosher, apart from the credentials of the quality control? I've often thought someone could clean up in the butchery business by offering a line of 'Christian meat'. The dog-whistle sales pitch writes itself.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,668

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    The forced choice poll is equally hypothetical and can't really be taken as an indication of people's willingness to vote tactically. And if Sunak and the Tories only get boosted to 31% I'm not sure it bodes well for them.

    If they'd stuck with Boris, then I wouldn't have been surprised by them picking up most of the Reform vote in the GE, but they didn't.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,099
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    You think they ought to be islamophobic?
    The two religions in the world that seem to be most in conflict - despite the fact that one only has about 20 million adherents, many of which are Jew-ish - are Islam and Judaism.
    Hinduism and Islam? India/Pakistan tensions remain high and Modi’s Hindu nationalist policies are driving division.

    Yazidism and Islam? That was perhaps the most violent conflict while IS where trying to genocide the Yazidis.

    Sunni Islam and Shi’a Islam? This underlies the Iran vs. Saudi proxy conflict in Yemen.

    Buddhists and Christians in Myanmar?
  • No the difference this time is that there is no Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories were never popular.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,104
    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf
  • I still think Sunak should go in May if he wants to save as many seats as possible.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,104

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Truman said:

    I wonder what will happen if the powers that be manage to bankrupt Trump. Will his supporters rally round and get even more fired up or will they turn away.

    Already turning away.
    There is a suggestion that he has found some other appeal but, failing that, I think he has until the 25th to come up with the bond or Trump Tower is likely to be seized by the state of New York in partial payment of his fine. At which point the rest of the dominoes could fall very fast.
    The danger for Trump is that he ends up defaulting on a loan payment, in which case... phewy... it could all come tumbling very quickly indeed. Because - in all probability - there will be cross default clauses - default on anything, and all the loans get called at once.

    Now, my gut is that there is probably plenty of equity across the Trump group. But he probably needs to sell something big (and unencumbered) fast.
    Ukraine?

    He can only do that if re-elected.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,668

    I still think Sunak should go in May if he wants to save as many seats as possible.

    But who should replace him and when would they hold the election?
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,385

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,099

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    Because Islam is a fake religion invented by Jews for their own nefarious purposes, or so claimed someone in front of me in the queue for the farmers’ market one Saturday during the pandemic in Camden.

    Belief in one god?
    Ritual circumcision?
    Ritual animal slaughter?
    Reading from right to left?

    :lol:
    Is there any actual difference between halal and kosher, apart from the credentials of the quality control? I've often thought someone could clean up in the butchery business by offering a line of 'Christian meat'. The dog-whistle sales pitch writes itself.
    The prayers said are to a different god. There are some minor differences: I think prawns are halal, but they’re not kosher. Muslims are allowed to eat kosher food if there’s no halal food available.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    I still think Sunak should go in May if he wants to save as many seats as possible.

    No he's going long and will make every day hell for you. This is like 2010, maybe even with a hung Parliament at the end.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,647

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    Because Islam is a fake religion invented by Jews for their own nefarious purposes, or so claimed someone in front of me in the queue for the farmers’ market one Saturday during the pandemic in Camden.

    Belief in one god?
    Ritual circumcision?
    Ritual animal slaughter?
    Reading from right to left?

    :lol:
    Is there any actual difference between halal and kosher, apart from the credentials of the quality control? I've often thought someone could clean up in the butchery business by offering a line of 'Christian meat'. The dog-whistle sales pitch writes itself.
    The prayers said are to a different god. There are some minor differences: I think prawns are halal, but they’re not kosher. Muslims are allowed to eat kosher food if there’s no halal food available.
    I love prawns.
  • RattersRatters Posts: 1,076

    These people are on drugs. That's the only possible explanation...

    Alex Wickham
    @alexwickham

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    Satire, surely?

    Khan is hardly shooting the lights out, but I have never heard a single person in London reference Susan Hall in my life. And the little I've seen on here suggests she is crap.

    Londoners will head out and check the Labour box, or else protest for Lib Dems / Reform / Green.

    If she gets half of Khan's vote as per the latest yougov poll I'll be impressed.

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/47662-sadiq-khan-holds-25-point-lead-over-susan-hall-for-mayor
  • I can tell you for a categorical fact living in London.

    There is not a chance Khan will lose. Not one.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,518

    With Deltapoll and now Redfield & Wilton showing large movements away from Conservatives this suggests that some event has had a polling impact.

    Delayed response to the budget?
    Not calling a May election?
    Hester's comments and donation?

    My inclination is that it is the latter.

    Could be a costly £15m.

    That would not be surprising. I don't think the budget changed anything, and outside politics wonk circles no-one was thinking of a May election that was never going to happen.

    But moments come when a tranche of people say "Absolutely no". When Jezza was made leader of the Labour party, that for me was an 'absolute no' moment for voting Labour, until they changed (which of course they have). The "Absolutely No" (until they change massively) moment for voting Tory, for me, was the Owen Paterson thing. The Hester moment simply repeats the cycle, only making it worse. And those who think the Hester thing is fine will already be voting Reform.

    The residual Tory vote in the polling is mostly voters who pay little attention.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,508

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    In no constituency will the choice be only Labour or Conservative.
    🤣. In the vast majority of constituencies the choice is only Labour or conservative for anyone actually taking part in choosing election winner and their Prime Minister. That’s how General Elections work, making all this current polling with 20% ‘others/wasted vote” potentially right off the scale misleading.
  • dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Yeah but you told us this morning how Starmer would be worse than Sunak so I’m not sure I really trust your judgment
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,770
    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    I think this is wrong. The effect illustrated at the start of the paper for example excludes a perfectly sensible set from the calculation. TTT and TTH - so you finish up with 5/10 - 50% as expected.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,362

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    148grss said:

    Scott_xP said:

    @theipaper

    Opinion | Even Rishi’s ring-binder can’t stop the Tory death spiral

    Emotional intelligence is the missing ingredient in the Sunak mix and it is coming to dominate everything, as both voters and MPs ask whether the PM really gets it, writes
    @KateEMcCann

    https://t.co/yDwgIOZrnE

    I don't even put this down to emotional intelligence. If he was willing to propose and enact policies that would actually help people, still being the feckless wet hen he is, I think people would cut him more slack. The issue is that no politician seems up for proposing things people like and know will help them - which would be more government spending on services and increased taxes on those with high levels of wealth and income, alongside sensible regulation to counter the inflation we have seen in the last 6 months. People aren't stupid - they see their electric and gas bills increase at the same time headlines cry how much profit these companies are making. People see their Council Tax go up and local services and roads crumble. They just want things to be less shit.
    Trouble is, taxes are already high

    If you increase taxes on the wealthy they will just fuck off abroad - like me. So many jobs can now be done remotely - and thanks to digital nomad visas other countries are making it highly feasible to move to sunnier climes with much lower tax rates. Ok these new places will have less fascinating cultural diversity and fewer menacing pro Palestinian rallies and you’ve got to put up with nightlife that actually goes on after 11pm but nothing is perfect
    I was in Hackney on Saturday. The pub we were in closed at 12pm, so we walked up the road (ten minutes) to another pub that was playing pounding music until 2am.

    You are out of touch.
    No I’m not. The Times - today



    And those Hackney venues are doomed. Hackney council have just passed laws closing everything at 11 or 12 at most. It only applies to new places now but it will be extended. That’s Khan’s new joyless London and it will only get worse

    “In Hackney, all new venues must close by 11PM Mon-Fri and 12PM at the weekend. No new venues can operate later than this.

    Over time the existing venues will need new licenses and therefore the venues that are open after 11/12 will slowly erode until there is literally none left.”

    https://x.com/lukerobertblack/status/1764372293357048228?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
    Again, you are projecting. The venues in Hackney were OPEN on Saturday. I was THERE.

    As for this Times clickbait nonsense, two-seconds on Google Maps shows you how many bars in Soho are open top 12am, 1am, later... (TLDR – the answer is LOTS). I had 'breakfast' at Balans with a cocktail at 3am very recently. On a Thursday. It does close early on a Thursday admittedly – at 5am rather than 6am.

    The closing of London’s nightlife is not an illusion. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Sadly

    And the Hackney changes are only coming in now: read my comment. It will take a few years for khan to close it down completely. But he will
    Going the way of your other famous predictions:

    • Self-driving cars
    • Chinese GDP
    • Truss surprising on the upside

    (P.S. Licensing in Hackney has nothing to do with Sadiq Khan)
    Chinese GDP







    Nor is this a statistical illusion, as the FT data crunchers (probably the best in the biz) have noted:



    Nope, that's PPP. You are moving the goalposts AGAIN. Just admit you got this one wrong FFS.
    I got it bang on. And the FT explains why China really does have a bigger economy and it’s not statistical illusions


    It’s there. Read it you fucking idiot
    No. You were completely wrong. You predicted China's economy would be bigger than that of the United States BY GDP by now.

    Not PPP, not GDP per capita, not any other measure of national output.

    By GDP.

    GDP.

    Yet China's GDP is not greater than the United States' GDP.

    In fact, it is nowhere near.

    You were out by an absolute mile.

    Just admit that you got this one wrong, it's not difficult.
    I was right. Absolutely right. Indeed more right than I expected. China overtook America by GDP (PPP) sooner than anticipated

    And that FT article explains why China is indeed economically bigger than the USA, and GDP by PPP is more accurate than GDP (nominal)

    I. WAS. RIGHT.

    Clearly this winds you up to the point of prolapse so do carry on, old pip
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,104
    This is bizarre.

    RBG's family condemns the selection of recipients of an award named in her honor
    https://www.npr.org/2024/03/15/1238921724/musk-murdoch-rbg-award
    An award named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg has gone to a slate of accomplished women since it was launched four years ago to honor the legacy of the late Supreme Court justice known for championing women's rights and liberal causes. This year is different.

    Next month, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation will present the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award to four men and Martha Stewart. Among the winners are two convicted felons, the founder of right-wing Fox News, and Elon Musk.

    Stewart, Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken and Sylvester Stallone are the five "iconic" and "exceptional" recipients of the 2024 RBG Leadership Award, the organizing foundation said in a news release on Wednesday.

    Ginsburg's family is blasting the foundation's selection of this year's recipients..

  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,099

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    In no constituency will the choice be only Labour or Conservative.
    🤣. In the vast majority of constituencies the choice is only Labour or conservative for anyone actually taking part in choosing election winner and their Prime Minister. That’s how General Elections work, making all this current polling with 20% ‘others/wasted vote” potentially right off the scale misleading.
    24% voted for other parties in 2019. (OK, that’s a UK figure.) Why shouldn’t 20% vote other this time?
  • @Leon

    When you said Liz Truss would surprise on the upside, that SKS would resign after Currygate, that Johnson would be PM for a decade.

    What were you smoking?

    And can I have some?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    Because Islam is a fake religion invented by Jews for their own nefarious purposes, or so claimed someone in front of me in the queue for the farmers’ market one Saturday during the pandemic in Camden.

    Belief in one god?
    Ritual circumcision?
    Ritual animal slaughter?
    Reading from right to left?

    :lol:
    Is there any actual difference between halal and kosher, apart from the credentials of the quality control? I've often thought someone could clean up in the butchery business by offering a line of 'Christian meat'. The dog-whistle sales pitch writes itself.
    The prayers said are to a different god. There are some minor differences: I think prawns are halal, but they’re not kosher. Muslims are allowed to eat kosher food if there’s no halal food available.
    I love prawns.
    "I would never have any kind of... pornographic activity with a fookin' creature!"
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Yeah but you told us this morning how Starmer would be worse than Sunak so I’m not sure I really trust your judgment
    Well that still is a high probability. You know little about Starmer as I said he's a vacuous twat.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Conservative Vote Share in Our Polling:

    Boris Johnson: 131 Polls

    Highest: 52% (17 Apr 2020)
    Lowest: 30% (17 Jan 2022)

    Liz Truss: 12 Polls

    Highest: 34% (18 Sept 2022)
    Lowest: 19% (19 Oct 2022)

    Rishi Sunak: 74 Polls

    Highest: 32% (16 Apr 2023)
    Lowest: 21% (11 Feb, 17 Mar 2024)

    https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/1769773355299725361?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,518

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    Because Islam is a fake religion invented by Jews for their own nefarious purposes, or so claimed someone in front of me in the queue for the farmers’ market one Saturday during the pandemic in Camden.

    Belief in one god?
    Ritual circumcision?
    Ritual animal slaughter?
    Reading from right to left?

    :lol:
    Is there any actual difference between halal and kosher, apart from the credentials of the quality control? I've often thought someone could clean up in the butchery business by offering a line of 'Christian meat'. The dog-whistle sales pitch writes itself.
    The prayers said are to a different god. There are some minor differences: I think prawns are halal, but they’re not kosher. Muslims are allowed to eat kosher food if there’s no halal food available.
    You can't say prayers to a different God if (as Muslims, Jews and Christians agree) there is only one God. And if they are wrong, you can't say prayers to God at all. Keep it simple. Use Occam's razor.
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,750
    algarkirk said:

    With Deltapoll and now Redfield & Wilton showing large movements away from Conservatives this suggests that some event has had a polling impact.

    Delayed response to the budget?
    Not calling a May election?
    Hester's comments and donation?

    My inclination is that it is the latter.

    Could be a costly £15m.

    That would not be surprising. I don't think the budget changed anything, and outside politics wonk circles no-one was thinking of a May election that was never going to happen.

    But moments come when a tranche of people say "Absolutely no". When Jezza was made leader of the Labour party, that for me was an 'absolute no' moment for voting Labour, until they changed (which of course they have). The "Absolutely No" (until they change massively) moment for voting Tory, for me, was the Owen Paterson thing. The Hester moment simply repeats the cycle, only making it worse. And those who think the Hester thing is fine will already be voting Reform.

    The residual Tory vote in the polling is mostly voters who pay little attention.
    I doubt it would have been very damaging if Sunak hadn't first (amazingly) tried to deny the comments were racist and wasn't still (astonishingly) refusing to return the donation.

  • @Alanbrooke so when ever you would not Tory? How bad would the Tories have to be?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857

    I still think Sunak should go in May if he wants to save as many seats as possible.

    Isn't Theresa married?
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,385
    edited March 18

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Your friend lived on the same Street then?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857
    isam said:

    Conservative Vote Share in Our Polling:

    Boris Johnson: 131 Polls

    Highest: 52% (17 Apr 2020)
    Lowest: 30% (17 Jan 2022)

    Liz Truss: 12 Polls

    Highest: 34% (18 Sept 2022)
    Lowest: 19% (19 Oct 2022)

    Rishi Sunak: 74 Polls

    Highest: 32% (16 Apr 2023)
    Lowest: 21% (11 Feb, 17 Mar 2024)

    https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/1769773355299725361?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    The Boris man-love is strong with this one!
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,508
    algarkirk said:

    With Deltapoll and now Redfield & Wilton showing large movements away from Conservatives this suggests that some event has had a polling impact.

    Delayed response to the budget?
    Not calling a May election?
    Hester's comments and donation?

    My inclination is that it is the latter.

    Could be a costly £15m.

    That would not be surprising. I don't think the budget changed anything, and outside politics wonk circles no-one was thinking of a May election that was never going to happen.

    But moments come when a tranche of people say "Absolutely no". When Jezza was made leader of the Labour party, that for me was an 'absolute no' moment for voting Labour, until they changed (which of course they have). The "Absolutely No" (until they change massively) moment for voting Tory, for me, was the Owen Paterson thing. The Hester moment simply repeats the cycle, only making it worse. And those who think the Hester thing is fine will already be voting Reform.

    The residual Tory vote in the polling is mostly voters who pay little attention.
    The bottom line is we don’t know why this is happening. But you have written off number 2 far too glibly.

    “outside politics wonk circles no-one was thinking of a May election that was never going to happen.”

    You are insulting the electorate to be honest, the people may want to vote right now and make the change they want to make, and are frustrated why there is a squatter - someone they really don’t rate or like - squatting for another 6 months. That could be behind the bleeding the Tories just can’t stem.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,362
    edited March 18
    I am in a place of quite extraordinary beauty. Palomino. On the Caribbean coast where the great green jungly peaks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta tumble into the turquoise waves in explosions of tropical colour, like the whole world is made of parakeets, hummingbirds and citrus fruit


    Cheers




    The photo doesn’t really capture the beauty TBF. I just had to stop for refreshment

    But my god. What a place. And it is all national park - tayrona
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,750

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Yeah but you told us this morning how Starmer would be worse than Sunak so I’m not sure I really trust your judgment
    Well that still is a high probability. You know little about Starmer as I said he's a vacuous twat.
    It's the erudite political analysis I keep coming back here for.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,104
    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    I think this is wrong. The effect illustrated at the start of the paper for example excludes a perfectly sensible set from the calculation. TTT and TTH - so you finish up with 5/10 - 50% as expected.
    No, it doesn’t.
    See table 1, which includes them as possible outcomes.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275

    So. I just heard Sunak on the news say "I'm not interested in Westminster politics".
    It shows.

    He really grates on me more every time I see him on tv.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,316
    Ratters said:

    These people are on drugs. That's the only possible explanation...

    Alex Wickham
    @alexwickham

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    Satire, surely?

    Khan is hardly shooting the lights out, but I have never heard a single person in London reference Susan Hall in my life. And the little I've seen on here suggests she is crap.

    Londoners will head out and check the Labour box, or else protest for Lib Dems / Reform / Green.

    If she gets half of Khan's vote as per the latest yougov poll I'll be impressed.

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/47662-sadiq-khan-holds-25-point-lead-over-susan-hall-for-mayor
    Khan is the blandest mayor possible. In the Hollywood film set in the U.K. he is perfect as “The London Major” who gets one line at the big meeting and is never mentioned again.

    His thing is being non-toxic and Labour. He hasn’t set the place on fire - in either sense. Which will see him home easily. That and a small amount of name recognition.

    The other candidates are utterly unknown.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857
    nico679 said:

    So. I just heard Sunak on the news say "I'm not interested in Westminster politics".
    It shows.

    He really grates on me more every time I see him on tv.
    "Don't forget to scan your ClubCard!"
  • TrumanTruman Posts: 279
    Farage is interviewing Trump on Gb News tomorrow for anyone who is interested.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,770
    Nigelb said:

    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    I think this is wrong. The effect illustrated at the start of the paper for example excludes a perfectly sensible set from the calculation. TTT and TTH - so you finish up with 5/10 - 50% as expected.
    No, it doesn’t.
    See table 1, which includes them as possible outcomes.
    Sorry, should exclude. They're outcomes, but the researcher never gets to make his observation.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    @Alanbrooke so when ever you would not Tory? How bad would the Tories have to be?

    The problem with you lefties is you cannot conceive of anything outside your limited experience. I didnt vote in 2019 becuse I didnt trust BOJO. Last time I voted Tory was for May as I thought she deserved chance, but she fked things up royally. In 2010 I voted against Brown not for Cameron.

    Your basic problem is you cant deal with people - and there are more of us - who dont agree with the current failed two party system. People who think Starmer and Sunak are shit are in the majority.



  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,670
    edited March 18
    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    I think this is wrong. The effect illustrated at the start of the paper for example excludes a perfectly sensible set from the calculation. TTT and TTH - so you finish up with 5/10 - 50% as expected.
    I think they are counting sequences rather than events.

    Some unlikely sequences have lots of heads in a row - eg HHH.

    The remaining possible sequences have fewer instances of HH than 50%.

    This just looks like median (expected value) vs mean to me.

    Like rainfall - most years are dryer than 'average'.

    [Though I probably ought to read the whole thing...]
  • RattersRatters Posts: 1,076
    On Trump, his downfall being his business malpractice and pyramid of debt coming tumbling down would quite a fitting end.

    Maybe Biden needs to give him the nickname 'Broke Trump'?

    We can only live in hope that the debt collectors are less forgiving towards delay and obstruction as compared to criminal courts.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,385

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Yeah but you told us this morning how Starmer would be worse than Sunak so I’m not sure I really trust your judgment
    Well that still is a high probability. You know little about Starmer as I said he's a vacuous twat.
    You should hear what Starmer says about you.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,272
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    You think they ought to be islamophobic?
    The two religions in the world that seem to be most in conflict - despite the fact that one only has about 20 million adherents, many
    of which are Jew-ish - are Islam and Judaism.
    Sibling rivalry
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405
    Chris said:

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Yeah but you told us this morning how Starmer would be worse than Sunak so I’m not sure I really trust your judgment
    Well that still is a high probability. You know little about Starmer as I said he's a vacuous twat.
    It's the erudite political analysis I keep coming back here for.
    Well youve been here for many years and have served up intellectual gems yourself.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    isam said:

    Conservative Vote Share in Our Polling:

    Boris Johnson: 131 Polls

    Highest: 52% (17 Apr 2020)
    Lowest: 30% (17 Jan 2022)

    Liz Truss: 12 Polls

    Highest: 34% (18 Sept 2022)
    Lowest: 19% (19 Oct 2022)

    Rishi Sunak: 74 Polls

    Highest: 32% (16 Apr 2023)
    Lowest: 21% (11 Feb, 17 Mar 2024)

    https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/1769773355299725361?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Bozo started the slide and the next two just continued it . I doubt Labour would lose any sleep if he miraculously came back.

    A pathological liar who left parliament in disgrace isn’t an election winning slogan .
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,508

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    The forced choice poll is equally hypothetical and can't really be taken as an indication of people's willingness to vote tactically. And if Sunak and the Tories only get boosted to 31% I'm not sure it bodes well for them.

    If they'd stuck with Boris, then I wouldn't have been surprised by them picking up most of the Reform vote in the GE, but they didn't.
    The switcheroo happens once the election is called, and the whole psyche of the electorate towards how they vote, to participate or throw their vote away and hopefully not regret that, potentially changes everything from years of little movement. The 31% for Tories is there even before all this movement is inspired to happen by the campaign and vote date.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    This has to be the Diet Coke talking, doesn't it?

    — Sunak allies aware that May 2 locals are a huge flashpoint, but they hope Susan Hall can get the PM out of jail by defeating Sadiq Khan against the odds in London

    — that’d buy him time to get a Rwanda flight off and make it to autumn, supporters say…

    https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1769794955277431027

    The only plausible explanation is that he’s drinking the original version of coke with actual cocaine in it.

    Because the question isn’t that Sadiq wont win it’s how big will his majority weigh
    What will be the best Tory result of the night? Houchen and Street both getting re-elected? Could there be a PCC election sufficiently whacky that there’s a Con gain?
    Houchen won’t win. He will lose quite badly.

    Labour appear to have gone for a far better candidate than the clown they had last time which helps.
    Yes, and Houchen losing while Street wins is very bad optics for the government. Houchen represents the Tory realignment after Brexit, the Red Wall, levelling up. Street reminds people what Tories used to be like before the realignment.
    Is there any evidence that Street wins?
    No polling yet. Last time, he won by 10 points or so. On national swing, he's surely a slice of Waitrose bread in a "pricey but good value" toaster.

    The smart move for the Conservatives would be quietly slip him in somewhere ubersafe at the General Election. If he can be persuaded that he wants it.
    Street has a strong personal vote I think. He may just weather the tory disaster.
    That may be right, though I'm not so sure. The West Midlands is a huge 'local' area. Anecdotally, two apolitical friends from Walsall told me yesterday they'd never heard of Street.
    Whereas one of my best friends used to live next door to and will vote for him even though a paid up Guardianista
    Yeah but you told us this morning how Starmer would be worse than Sunak so I’m not sure I really trust your judgment
    Well that still is a high probability. You know little about Starmer as I said he's a vacuous twat.
    You should hear what Starmer says about you.
    Im sure he does. But he's not in a position to fat shame me.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,272
    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,272
    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    Truman said:

    I wonder what will happen if the powers that be manage to bankrupt Trump. Will his supporters rally round and get even more fired up or will they turn away.

    Already turning away.
    There is a suggestion that he has found some other appeal but, failing that, I think he has until the 25th to come up with the bond or Trump Tower is likely to be seized by the state of New York in partial payment of his fine. At which point the rest of the dominoes could fall very fast.
    The danger for Trump is that he ends up defaulting on a loan payment, in which case... phewy... it could all come tumbling very quickly indeed. Because - in all probability - there will be cross default clauses - default on anything, and all the loans get called at once.

    Now, my gut is that there is probably plenty of equity across the Trump group. But he probably needs to sell something big (and unencumbered) fast.
    Ukraine?

    He can only do that if re-elected.
    I’m sure some clever banker can come up with a forward sale
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,104
    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Omnium said:

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    I think this is wrong. The effect illustrated at the start of the paper for example excludes a perfectly sensible set from the calculation. TTT and TTH - so you finish up with 5/10 - 50% as expected.
    No, it doesn’t.
    See table 1, which includes them as possible outcomes.
    Sorry, should exclude. They're outcomes, but the researcher never gets to make his observation.
    That’s the point.
    .. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him..

    The example of three coin flips is a fairly trivial one - but it’s illustrative of the more subtle effect in longer sequences.
    They go on to demonstrate that ‘hot streaks’ are therefore statistically quite likely, precisely because of this kind of observational bias - something which statisticians had previously denied.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    pigeon said:

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming and dodge it for a better result, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than anything they deserve?

    Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening? A deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up in mid 30’s just 6 points behind?
    Personally I'm sticking with the hung Parliament prediction, for various reasons though at the core of it I think if I'm going to be wrong I might as well be spectacularly wrong. But you can see why the prevailing wisdom accepts the polls. The Conservatives are obviously a tired, divided and incompetent bunch, and the assumption that the Reform vote will stick with that outfit simply in order to give the Tories a bloody good hiding is not without merit.

    Set against that, the Conservative Party has never won less than 30% of the popular vote in any general election that it has contested, and the notion of a Reform vote running into several millions rests on the assumption that supporters of what is fundamentally a hard right nativist movement are all ready to splurge their votes on candidates with no prospect of winning, and guaranteeing a handsome victory for Labour in the process. So, swings and roundabouts.
    something is different this time - The tories left have no fight or desire . Maybe its because anyone of a tory persuasion cannot be bothered to footsoldier anymore for the least conservative government ever with its highest tax take and nonsense laws( this crap about banning "extreme" organisations being an example)
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,668

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    The forced choice poll is equally hypothetical and can't really be taken as an indication of people's willingness to vote tactically. And if Sunak and the Tories only get boosted to 31% I'm not sure it bodes well for them.

    If they'd stuck with Boris, then I wouldn't have been surprised by them picking up most of the Reform vote in the GE, but they didn't.
    The switcheroo happens once the election is called, and the whole psyche of the electorate towards how they vote, to participate or throw their vote away and hopefully not regret that, potentially changes everything from years of little movement. The 31% for Tories is there even before all this movement is inspired to happen by the campaign and vote date.
    It could flip the other way if the Tories have a bad campaign launch and Farage pitches it right. It's a once in a century chance to replace the Conservatives.
  • Truman said:

    Farage is interviewing Trump on Gb News tomorrow for anyone who is interested.

    Also works for anyone who is constipated.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,384
    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Surely Table 1 is flawed? If you aggregate the results across all the possibilities you get the expected result of one half. The mistake is in averaging the averages from each sample.
  • state_go_awaystate_go_away Posts: 5,813
    edited March 18

    It's probably just a coincidence, but the two polls published today are monumentally awful for the Tories. Down 3% in a week with Redfield & Wilton, and down 4% in a week with Deltapoll, and Labour benefiting, +5 in one and +2 in the other. Not a swing involving Reform this time.

    It feels impossible that the Tories will change PM again, but how much longer can Sunak survive such terrible polling?

    He was mad to rule out May. It is only going one way.

    Appallingly advised and hopeless at politics himself.
    I think Lee Anderson's defection made a May election impossible. It was perfectly timed.
    My take is different.

    1. 2nd May versus hang on something will turn up. What’s turning up in time for an autumn election campaign is, in no particular order of vote suppressing seriousness, higher mortgages, a covid report, record splurge boat crossings, a squatting narrative gripping the electorate for someone with no emotional intelligence who can’t relate. Add to that a further vote losing swingback suppression from actually putting Rwanda flights in the air.

    May 2nd argument was, when picking a date, you actually know what’s coming, it’s not about keeping fingers crossed.

    2. Secondly, are you all utterly deluded the lot of you? Two polls today put Tories+Ref on 35%. What makes you so sure Tories are 20+ points behind and the General Election they won’t finish just 6 or 7 behind Labour, for a result so good for Tories it is actually far better than they deserve? Polls are in your face, talking to you, saying 35%, are you listening, wether it’s a deal like last time, or forced nature of GE plops the Ref onto Tory, how you so sure they don’t get to end up just 6 points behind?
    On 2, the difference between now and 2019 is that there is no Boris Johnson to consolidate the Conservative + Brexit Party/Reform vote and a lot of 2019 Conservatives actively want to give them a kicking from the right.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but you have absolutely no idea what actually happens when it comes to a forced vote.

    Except! As well as “choose from a smorgasbord of parties without a clue how unicorn their manifesto is or thinking seriously that they won’t win a single seat so you are not properly participating in the election” polling, which for some daft reason you seem to take as Gospel, delta done a “forced choice” poll last week “but if the choice in your constituency was Lab or Con” and showed the gap is just 11 points, and Sunak and the Tories on 31%.

    Your thoughts on that?
    The forced choice poll is equally hypothetical and can't really be taken as an indication of people's willingness to vote tactically. And if Sunak and the Tories only get boosted to 31% I'm not sure it bodes well for them.

    If they'd stuck with Boris, then I wouldn't have been surprised by them picking up most of the Reform vote in the GE, but they didn't.
    The switcheroo happens once the election is called, and the whole psyche of the electorate towards how they vote, to participate or throw their vote away and hopefully not regret that, potentially changes everything from years of little movement. The 31% for Tories is there even before all this movement is inspired to happen by the campaign and vote date.
    It could flip the other way if the Tories have a bad campaign launch and Farage pitches it right. It's a once in a century chance to replace the Conservatives.
    yes I sometimes voted non- tory in a local election or the old european ones but always came to vote tory in the general election - ----Not this time , I will be voting Reform
  • DonkeysDonkeys Posts: 723
    edited March 18

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    You think they ought to be islamophobic?
    Most immigrants to the USA are Christian and the % of Christians is even higher among illegal immigrants to that country.
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    You think they ought to be islamophobic?
    The two religions in the world that seem to be most in conflict - despite the fact that one only has about 20 million adherents, many
    of which are Jew-ish - are Islam and Judaism.
    Isn't everyone who follows the Jewish religion Jewish, even if they are Ivanka Trump? I just call people what they want to be called. Is Ms Trump Jewish? Sure! Are Ahmadiyya Muslims Muslims? Hell yeah, if that's what they see themselves as.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 4,670
    edited March 18

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
    No, after one head the expected outcome is 50.5/100 heads.

    There are 2 ^ 99 possible sequences for the remaining flips with a mean value of 49.5 heads.
  • @Alanbrooke so when ever you would not Tory? How bad would the Tories have to be?

    The problem with you lefties is you cannot conceive of anything outside your limited experience. I didnt vote in 2019 becuse I didnt trust BOJO. Last time I voted Tory was for May as I thought she deserved chance, but she fked things up royally. In 2010 I voted against Brown not for Cameron.

    Your basic problem is you cant deal with people - and there are more of us - who dont agree with the current failed two party system. People who think Starmer and Sunak are shit are in the majority.



    Perhaps if the Tories tried a bit harder they'd be able to win voters like me (probably not me but like me): homeowners, higher rate taxpayers.

    But they don't want our votes.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,594

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
    What if I get 50 heads out of the first 75? The coin doesn't magically know how many trials I intend to do.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,667
    carnforth said:

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
    What if I get 50 heads out of the first 75? The coin doesn't magically know how many trials I intend to do.
    Nor indeed does it know what the previous flips were.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,594

    @Alanbrooke so when ever you would not Tory? How bad would the Tories have to be?

    The problem with you lefties is you cannot conceive of anything outside your limited experience. I didnt vote in 2019 becuse I didnt trust BOJO. Last time I voted Tory was for May as I thought she deserved chance, but she fked things up royally. In 2010 I voted against Brown not for Cameron.

    Your basic problem is you cant deal with people - and there are more of us - who dont agree with the current failed two party system. People who think Starmer and Sunak are shit are in the majority.



    Perhaps if the Tories tried a bit harder they'd be able to win voters like me (probably not me but like me): homeowners, higher rate taxpayers.

    But they don't want our votes.
    Higher rate taxpayer ain't the selective group it used to be. Meanwhile, homeowner is getting more selective by the year.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,384
    edited March 18

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
    The coins do not have a memory, so they don't know you've flipped a head previously.
  • WillGWillG Posts: 2,366
    Elon Musk has called for a "red wave" this November, for the most authoritarian Republican Party in history. People need to start learning that "libertarian" in the US means "I'm extremely right wing but too embarrassed to admit associating with the crazies in polite society."
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,594
    BBC: "Gaza faces famine during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting"

    Bring back subediting.
  • WillGWillG Posts: 2,366

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Truman said:

    rcs1000 said:

    moonshine said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    It's entirely possible that Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, etc., get together to help find $500m. But these guys aren't charities: they will want their pound of flesh. That is, they will want to make sure that if they bail Trump out, then they will be rewarded when Trump becomes President, and that they are making money on the deal.

    The thing is, though, this would almost certainly have to involve the actual sale of property.
    Musk’s politics are misunderstood by most. He’s not right wing in the normal sense, he’s a Silicon Valley libertarian. And he has no love for trump. If he was using his money for politics, it would be to influence congressional elections or DAs.

    Thiel I can’t give a view on, who knows.
    I'm not sure you're quite right about Musk. Because he's starting to go down a rabbit hole regarding various conspiracy theories.

    Evidence:

    (1) Promotion of Pizzagate, like the "no smoke without fire" Tweet.
    (2) The Tweet about Jewish people hating White people.
    And the one about the jews pushing mass immigration into the west.
    Which also makes no sense... why would Jews want to import lots of Muslims?
    You think they ought to be islamophobic?
    The two religions in the world that seem to be most in conflict - despite the fact that one only has about 20 million adherents, many
    of which are Jew-ish - are Islam and Judaism.
    Sibling rivalry
    In reality it is because both religions were formed in backwards, patriarchal, tribal societies, rather than developed, urban ones.
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    @Alanbrooke so when ever you would not Tory? How bad would the Tories have to be?

    The problem with you lefties is you cannot conceive of anything outside your limited experience. I didnt vote in 2019 becuse I didnt trust BOJO. Last time I voted Tory was for May as I thought she deserved chance, but she fked things up royally. In 2010 I voted against Brown not for Cameron.

    Your basic problem is you cant deal with people - and there are more of us - who dont agree with the current failed two party system. People who think Starmer and Sunak are shit are in the majority.



    Perhaps if the Tories tried a bit harder they'd be able to win voters like me (probably not me but like me): homeowners, higher rate taxpayers.

    But they don't want our votes.
    There are lots of conservative votes out there, but the conservatives will have to go back to being conservative first.

    Small but effective government
    fiscal sense
    pro business
    let people get on with their own lives
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,885
    Evening all :)

    Another Monday night and two more awful polls for the Conservatives (and they aren't much better for the LDs who seem to be sliding back below 10%).

    The Lab/LD/Green vs Con/Ref split comes out at 60-35 and 61-35 respectively and these sit well within the current polling suggesting an overall 13% swing since December 2019 - the Con/Lab swing is 18% with Deltapoll and a colossal 19.5% with Redfield & Wilton.

    The only "hope" left for the Conservatives seems to be either a huge tax cutting Autumn Statement or the possibility of the Reform vote "coming home". According to R&W, 23% of the 2019 Conservative vote is now supporting Reform - if we reduce that to just 3%, the Conservative number goes up from 21% to 29% so defeat but not extinction if you like.

    I suspect we'll see plenty of polling of Reform voters to see what, if anything, could persuade them back to the blue team as distinct from either voting Reform or not voting at all.
  • DonkeysDonkeys Posts: 723
    edited March 18

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
    No, after one head the expected outcome is 50.5/100 heads.

    There are 2 ^ 99 possible sequences for the remaining flips with a mean value of 49.5 heads.
    Surely the expected number of heads is 0.5[0.5(99) + 0.25(98) + 0.125(97) + ... + 0.5^100(0)] which is a tiny bit more than 49.

    There are exactly 100 flips.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 8,678
    edited March 18

    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Isn’t that logic though

    Assume your first flip is heads

    If you are a fair coin your expected outcome is 50/100 heads

    Consequentially, after 1 flip, 1 head your expected outcome is 49/99 heads - with tails being 50/99
    The Gambler's fallacy in the wild!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 119,647

    FF43 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    Funny how in 4 years Musk has gone from being a darling of the left to an extreme right winger.
    The interesting thing to me is Musk's enthusiasm for trashing his own brand. He had carefully nurtured the idea of solving big world problems - climate change, space exploration - with skillful execution of challenging technical solutions. But he threw all that away with conspiracy theories and fascist ideology. You might say he's rich enough he doesn't need to care about a brand, but previously he did.
    Ah ok so now he's a fascist. Is he a Franco fascist, Mussolini light, touch of the Adolfs, Stalin ?

    Just how fascist is he in your view ?

    In the morning thread I compare Starmer to Stalin.

    Just saying.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,748
    WillG said:

    Elon Musk has called for a "red wave" this November, for the most authoritarian Republican Party in history. People need to start learning that "libertarian" in the US means "I'm extremely right wing but too embarrassed to admit associating with the crazies in polite society."

    That’s quite a blinkered view. What of the online censorship embraced by the Democrat Party for example? There’s extremism infecting both parties in the US right now. And not all Republican candidates for congress will be authoritarian or crazy. It’s a little unhinged if I might say so to presume that anyone voting for a Republican candidate this year is automatically an extremist.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    What is going on here?

    Dear #BBCVerify, is the BBC telling fibs about being in Islamabad? The same bus is on loop in the background. Is this disinformation?


    https://x.com/darrengrimes_/status/1769732333895086340?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,857
    WillG said:

    Elon Musk has called for a "red wave" this November, for the most authoritarian Republican Party in history. People need to start learning that "libertarian" in the US means "I'm extremely right wing but too embarrassed to admit associating with the crazies in polite society."

    Beware Reds under the Bed!
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    isam said:

    Conservative Vote Share in Our Polling:

    Boris Johnson: 131 Polls

    Highest: 52% (17 Apr 2020)
    Lowest: 30% (17 Jan 2022)

    Liz Truss: 12 Polls

    Highest: 34% (18 Sept 2022)
    Lowest: 19% (19 Oct 2022)

    Rishi Sunak: 74 Polls

    Highest: 32% (16 Apr 2023)
    Lowest: 21% (11 Feb, 17 Mar 2024)

    https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/1769773355299725361?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    I know I’m the latest in a string of posters to quote this one, but it merits quoting.

    What it says, to at least 50% of the population, and probably more, is:

    Tories: 217 polls
    Highest: 52% (17 April 2020)
    Lowest: 19% (19 October 2022)

    The next election is going to be about the Conservative party vs not-the-Conservative party.
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 13,508
    isam said:

    What is going on here?

    Dear #BBCVerify, is the BBC telling fibs about being in Islamabad? The same bus is on loop in the background. Is this disinformation?


    https://x.com/darrengrimes_/status/1769732333895086340?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    ❤️ Caroline Davies hair 💇‍♀️
  • AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 25,405

    FF43 said:

    Elon Musk or some other extreme right-wing multi-billionaire to bail Trump out?

    (Assuming no one's going to spend their last hlaf billion on Trump how many multi-billionaires are there who could do this?)

    Funny how in 4 years Musk has gone from being a darling of the left to an extreme right winger.
    The interesting thing to me is Musk's enthusiasm for trashing his own brand. He had carefully nurtured the idea of solving big world problems - climate change, space exploration - with skillful execution of challenging technical solutions. But he threw all that away with conspiracy theories and fascist ideology. You might say he's rich enough he doesn't need to care about a brand, but previously he did.
    Ah ok so now he's a fascist. Is he a Franco fascist, Mussolini light, touch of the Adolfs, Stalin ?

    Just how fascist is he in your view ?

    In the morning thread I compare Starmer to Stalin.

    Just saying.
    Stalin had the makings of a lawyer
  • No_Offence_AlanNo_Offence_Alan Posts: 4,521
    Nigelb said:

    Here’s one for those who think the Monty Hall problem is obvious.

    Jack the researcher takes a coin from his pocket and decides to flip it, say, one hundred times. As he is curious about what outcome typically follows a heads, whenever he flips a heads he commits to writing down the outcome of the next flip on the scrap of paper next to him. Upon completing the one hundred flips, Jack of course expects the proportion of heads written on the scrap of paper to be one-half. Shockingly, Jack is wrong. For a fair coin, the expected proportion of heads is smaller than one-half...
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.01265.pdf

    Does that mean one should adopt a Roulette strategy of betting on Black immediately after every spin that lands on Red?
This discussion has been closed.