So the election is shaping up to be a Tory party offering Thatcherism and a Labour Party offering Thatcherism. What the people need is an end to Thatcherism when you look at Thatcherism it’s the reason why the country is in the mess it is. We need an alternative to Thatcherism.
If that's so why is Thatcherism so popular both main parties offer it? What, in your view, have those opposing Thatcherism done wrong to be so unpopular?
Today is D-Day for Sunak. Either he goes to the palace, or...
1. Rwanda bill buried in the Lords. They won't back down - and by *they* I mean the ex Tory Home Secretaries leading the rebellion there. 2. Funereal / Desperate / Fed up mood in the '22. The idea they will sit there quietly and just accept their fate is for the birds 3. Crossover claxon incoming. The FUKers are gaining ground fast, and despite the Tory delusion that these are Tory voters who will come "home", they're not, they won't, and they never were going to do.
Sunak goes to the Palace today, or it is the end for him.
CON could be below REF in the weekend polls as traditional supporters turn away!
Definite GE being called today
(DYOR 😈)
You've kept the faith with 2nd May - it would probably be in everyone's interests if you were right!!!
Desperate stuff. October is the earliest we get a GE.
I guessed October in the PB New Year quiz.
Pretty sure we get a budget in October now so end of Nov GE likely the earliest now 🙃
'Predicted' surely - sounds much more skilful ;-)
I predicted/guessed 2nd May but am now thinking 12 December - 5 year anniversary of the Tories' last hurrah. (Now I've said that 2nd May is nailed on isn't it.)
I’d guess that Reform voters map to the ‘battlers’ in the seven tribes.
assisted dying, and abolishing inheritance tax should be introduced together, surely?
About 4% of estates pay inheritance tax. In most cases the threshold is £1 million (see previous discussions passim). Avoiding it is not all that difficult for the well organised rich. Reform voters should stick to well formed plans to abolish Income Tax, VAT and Council Tax and running a small state with three civil servants and a part time lady who can type while trebling the state pension and making everything free for old people.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
p.s. just because the NHS is currently being run badly doesn’t mean we need to run down the NHS. It worked pretty well until it was stuffed full of bureaucracy and managers by Tony Blair’s New Labour and then chronically underfunded by the tories, many of whom don’t believe in it.
The obsession with making nurses have degrees (again Tony Blair’s fault) is also where the rot set in for all kinds of reasons.
The biggest problem in the NHS seems to be *lack* of management. As in good, competent administrative staff. There are too many accounts of senior clinical staff doing admin tasks to believe otherwise.
The nursing degree thing is nonsense. You can either have three years of medical training with a large chunk of practical work ending in a degree or three years of medical training with a large chunk of practical work not ending in a degree.
The issue you point to with nursing degrees also applies to medical doctors, just over a longer period. Nurses need a lot of the same knowledge as general practitioners, as they manage patient treatments. Knowledge of diseases, medication, best treatments etc. The case for nurses to have degrees is a lot stronger in my opinion than for the types of ojobs I'm doing and I suspect you are doing, where you are expected to have a degree.
Today is D-Day for Sunak. Either he goes to the palace, or...
1. Rwanda bill buried in the Lords. They won't back down - and by *they* I mean the ex Tory Home Secretaries leading the rebellion there. 2. Funereal / Desperate / Fed up mood in the '22. The idea they will sit there quietly and just accept their fate is for the birds 3. Crossover claxon incoming. The FUKers are gaining ground fast, and despite the Tory delusion that these are Tory voters who will come "home", they're not, they won't, and they never were going to do.
Sunak goes to the Palace today, or it is the end for him.
CON could be below REF in the weekend polls as traditional supporters turn away!
Definite GE being called today
(DYOR 😈)
You've kept the faith with 2nd May - it would probably be in everyone's interests if you were right!!!
Desperate stuff. October is the earliest we get a GE.
I guessed October in the PB New Year quiz.
Pretty sure we get a budget in October now so end of Nov GE likely the earliest now 🙃
'Predicted' surely - sounds much more skilful ;-)
I predicted/guessed 2nd May but am now thinking 12 December - 5 year anniversary of the Tories' last hurrah. (Now I've said that 2nd May is nailed on isn't it.)
Re the header, I'm not sure it's true that Reform supporters are not going to be wooed back by a more true blue pitch from the Tories. On immigration, child care, climate change, Sindy, ECHR, benefits cap and Gender ID Tory right-wing instincts deliver for them.
However the second chart is the killer for the Tories, it's what 25% max of Reform voters who may turn to the Tories, <20% if you net off those who'll switch to Labour.
It's telling that the tories aren't going for a Brexit Bretrayal angle, intimating that Labour will undo all of their marvelous work. The B Word never gets a mention from these days and it's just about all they've achieved, to the femtoscopic extent that it actually is an achievement.
Mr. Viewcode, sleeping poorly I got up particularly early one day. it turned out to be the day the clocks changed and I got up at 4am, which was less than ideal.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
You're missing the real use of the system, which is for AI to replace the second human check in negative findings. The AI negative findings in that case have been 100% reliable in the study.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
Can anyone tell me what was so offensive about the message at Kings Cross for Ramadan. I saw it and thought it innocuous enough and nice they were respecting some of their customers faith.
Is it just triggering people, because, muslims, or is there a deeper more malign meaning to the message.
It was just the sunset prayer time, after which those who have been fasting all day for Ramadan will take something to eat. A nice reminder to those passing through the station, although most will probably have an Islamic clock on their phones anyway.
p.s. just because the NHS is currently being run badly doesn’t mean we need to run down the NHS. It worked pretty well until it was stuffed full of bureaucracy and managers by Tony Blair’s New Labour and then chronically underfunded by the tories, many of whom don’t believe in it.
The obsession with making nurses have degrees (again Tony Blair’s fault) is also where the rot set in for all kinds of reasons.
The biggest problem in the NHS seems to be *lack* of management. As in good, competent administrative staff. There are too many accounts of senior clinical staff doing admin tasks to believe otherwise.
The nursing degree thing is nonsense. You can either have three years of medical training with a large chunk of practical work ending in a degree or three years of medical training with a large chunk of practical work not ending in a degree.
The issue you point to with nursing degrees also applies to medical doctors, just over a longer period. Nurses need a lot of the same knowledge as general practitioners, as they manage patient treatments. Knowledge of diseases, medication, best treatments etc. The case for nurses to have degrees is a lot stronger in my opinion than for the types of ojobs I'm doing and I suspect you are doing, where you are expected to have a degree.
There's loads of generic jobs where you just need to be of average intellect and gain experience of the specific tasks required. Thank goodness as that means they are suitable for most of us.
For those a degree is too often listed as an essential criteria, presumably on the basis it demonstrates some core skills, when perhaps it should be desirable instead, as you should have the wiggle room to select people without. Especially in roles which may be filled by people who don't have degrees in the first place.
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
Sunak has failed in his mission to restore credibility, but it was a critical moment. Why oh why did she rush ahead so blindly? A little more prep time and she'd still be PM now.
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
Today is D-Day for Sunak. Either he goes to the palace, or...
1. Rwanda bill buried in the Lords. They won't back down - and by *they* I mean the ex Tory Home Secretaries leading the rebellion there. 2. Funereal / Desperate / Fed up mood in the '22. The idea they will sit there quietly and just accept their fate is for the birds 3. Crossover claxon incoming. The FUKers are gaining ground fast, and despite the Tory delusion that these are Tory voters who will come "home", they're not, they won't, and they never were going to do.
Sunak goes to the Palace today, or it is the end for him.
CON could be below REF in the weekend polls as traditional supporters turn away!
Definite GE being called today
(DYOR 😈)
You've kept the faith with 2nd May - it would probably be in everyone's interests if you were right!!!
Desperate stuff. October is the earliest we get a GE.
I guessed October in the PB New Year quiz.
Pretty sure we get a budget in October now so end of Nov GE likely the earliest now 🙃
'Predicted' surely - sounds much more skilful ;-)
I predicted/guessed 2nd May but am now thinking 12 December - 5 year anniversary of the Tories' last hurrah. (Now I've said that 2nd May is nailed on isn't it.)
I 'calculated' 24 October.
I guessed taking into account all the relevant information available at the time!!
Just saw and removed an antisemitic printed sticker saying 'With Jews you lose' with the sort of cartoon you'd expect from a lamppost in south west London on the way to school drop off.
It's telling that the tories aren't going for a Brexit Bretrayal angle, intimating that Labour will undo all of their marvelous work. The B Word never gets a mention from these days and it's just about all they've achieved, to the femtoscopic extent that it actually is an achievement.
More significantly are even Reform leaning that hard on a Brexit Betrayal angle?
Feels more like general discontent fueling things. Which is much more critical and destructive for the Tories.
The Grauniad is utterly insane if they think we don't need housing construction.
There simply aren't enough houses in the country. We need millions more, not hundreds of thousands more.
We need villages to become towns, towns to become cities and cities to become bigger. We need new towns. We need massive, mammoth house building.
Any NIMBYs need to go to hell. No tolerance for their BS.
1. It's not The Guardian saying we don't need more houses, it's a barrister writing in The Guardian, a paper which often publishes views outside the Overton window.
2. How do you answer the assertion in the article, supported by OECD data, that the UK has in fact about the average number of homes per capita when compared with the rest of the developed world?
Like you, my position has been that we need more housing, but now I wonder. It's not as if we have 10,000s of people on the streets or living in temporary camps. The vast majority of people are housed right now. Arguably, building more houses would just lead to more empty houses.
The issue seems to be our wealth inequality, particularly between the over-45s and the under-45s, which distorts the housing market.
So, I (living on a pension, 100% equity in a large house) could afford to buy a 3-bed house locally, without a mortgage (but I could easily get a competitive mortgage if needed which I can service with the rental income), whereas a young working family on low-pay cannot get a look-in because they can't save enough to get a deposit.
Thus, controlling rents would seem to be a way to go. At implementation fix the level at the rents being charged at the time the bill was published. Freeze rents for 10 years and allow inflation to do its work.
Of course the BLT landlords would squeal as would free-marketeers, but let them squeal - they can always sell up if they think they can more money elsewhere.
In time, lower real rents mean a lower cost to the taxpayer for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit too as an added fiscal benefit (and indeed every new home-owner is a potential future Housing Benefit claimant avoided).
It's certainly more complicated than national supply/demand.
The number of spare bedrooms in the UK has increased by 2 million over the last decade, even while the population has increased. So, at the very least, we're building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong place.
You could plaster Benbecula with homes and it isn't going to do anything for the housing crisis in Manchester.
Spare bedrooms is an irrelevant statistic.
It's the circle of life that people get a home they need, get a bit older, their kids leave home, then they continue living until they die and someone else moves into the home who may need all those rooms once more. Until their kids get older and the cycle continues.
Build more 3 plus bedroom homes and the problem is solved. Then young adults and migrants alike can have a home of their own, while existing homeowners can continue to live where they've put down roots.
Or should old people be forced to live 3 couples sharing a 3 bedroom house rather than each having their own home?
Plus of course studies where people work from home are classed as spare rooms.
The total number of bedrooms available in the UK is increasing faster than the population.
If your concern is solving the housing crisis, building lots of half empty or entirely empty homes is not very clever.
You might want to check your facts as they don't add up.
Spare bedrooms have risen by 2 million according to you in the last decade. Our population has grown by 4 million in the last decade.
How is 2 million more than 4 million? In what universe?
We aren't building lots of empty homes, we need more homes for young people, young people have kids, so we need to build three bedroom homes.
That old people remain where they already were is irrelevant.
I said total bedrooms, not spare bedrooms. Detail is important for some of us.
You were claiming spare bedrooms was the problem originally, so nice way to slip from one irrelevant statistic to another.
You're claiming that spare bedrooms are the problem, yet our spare bedrooms have grown by 2 million in the same time as our population (and our over 60s population) has grown by double that figure, which shows that actually proportionately it is falling.
That we're building more bedrooms is a good thing, we shouldn't build slums, but we aren't building enough of them still. We need millions more houses to make up for our population growth.
There always should be more bedrooms than people, as people get three bedroom homes as that's what they need, but then their kids move on and they still have their home but then their kids need a 3 bed and the circle of life goes on.
The fact my nan still lives in her home she brought her kids up in sixty years ago doesn't stop her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from needing somewhere to live too.
She's not moved in the past sixty years, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren have.
I'm just pointing out that we're actually building housing faster than the population is growing. Nowt to do with your nan.
🤦♂️
No, we're not.
You've switched data again, and this is categorically easier to disprove. Our population is rising far, far, faster than the number of houses we're building.
The number of rooms ≠ the number of houses.
Children grow up and need a home of their own. Ten, twenty years ago all my nan's grandchildren were already alive and in the population count, but many were living with their own parents. They now need a house of their own, but the population count has not changed for them.
Every Millennial now is an adult that should have their own home, its younger generations that aren't.
Again, circle of life.
We have 4 million extra over 60s alive today who live in homes they lived in for decades predominantly with many more rooms than they need. This again is not a bad thing, they've set down roots and have support networks etc and when they do 'move on' then the house is free for someone else, circle of life. We also have millions of adults today who need a home of their own. Many will move in to houses with more rooms than they "need" because they intend to have kids but don't necessarily have them yet.
Redundancy is a good not a bad thing in a system. If you're building a house anyway, almost always better a 3 or 4 bed house than a 1 bed bungalow. Especially since they pretty much take the same footprint anyway.
Good morning!
I stated earlier that the total number of bedrooms available has increased more than the population. That is incorrect - sorry.
The population in E&W increased by 6.2% from 2011 and 2021, while the number of households increased by 6.1%.
The total number of bedrooms has increased by 6.1%. The total number of spare bedrooms increased by 7.4%.
The total number of dwellings increased by 8.4%. 1.6 million dwellings are now unoccupied (on top of the 26 million spare bedrooms), a 4.5% increase.
So wildly insufficient construction, especially since the demographic changes, and we are going backwards not forwards in having slack in the system of unoccupied buildings too which are again a good thing not a bad thing.
So your claim has been comprehensively dismissed. We just need more construction.
I do not see how anyone, other than the most rabid of NIMBYs can claim otherwise. We need more and we need it now. Also the link I posted last night showed that there are some areas of the country where we are building more than is needed.
Even if Eabhal was right it still does not make the mix right. We need far more homes where they are needed. London and the South East predominantly.
I'd like to see any evidence there's anywhere in the country with more than needed. We need massively more here in the North too.
I agree that, all else held equal, building more homes will help with the housing crisis. That is obvious.
I also agree that the costs of infrastructure should not fall on developers. That's very difficult to solve, but I agree in principle.
Where we disagree is whether building homes is a silver bullet. I've demonstrated that home-building is happening faster than population growth. That the number of empty homes is growing. That the number of spare bedrooms is growing.
The evidence suggests that something else is going on other than pure national demand and supply. The most simple answer is geographical asymmetries, with economic growth massively unbalanced across the country.
At the very least, homebuilding is grossly inefficient in the UK.
We need new towns, including employers, not simply more homes.
Build it and they will come.
Employers create jobs where there are consumers and where there are workers.
Considering we are at full employment as a nation, it seems they already are doing precisely that!
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
Does it ? I'm not seeing the line on the graph which shows how she would have done.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
Sure it's work in progress, as the article makes clear. What's the problem with that?
The large number of false positives wouldn't necessarily be a detection problem if they are also the indicators that humans would be expected to follow up if only they had detected them. The article doesn't say if they use AI in assessment and the models could probably be trained anyway.
Just saw and removed an antisemitic printed sticker saying 'With Jews you lose' with the sort of cartoon you'd expect from a lamppost in south west London on the way to school drop off.
p.s. just because the NHS is currently being run badly doesn’t mean we need to run down the NHS. It worked pretty well until it was stuffed full of bureaucracy and managers by Tony Blair’s New Labour and then chronically underfunded by the tories, many of whom don’t believe in it.
The obsession with making nurses have degrees (again Tony Blair’s fault) is also where the rot set in for all kinds of reasons.
The biggest problem in the NHS seems to be *lack* of management. As in good, competent administrative staff. There are too many accounts of senior clinical staff doing admin tasks to believe otherwise.
The nursing degree thing is nonsense. You can either have three years of medical training with a large chunk of practical work ending in a degree or three years of medical training with a large chunk of practical work not ending in a degree.
The issue you point to with nursing degrees also applies to medical doctors, just over a longer period. Nurses need a lot of the same knowledge as general practitioners, as they manage patient treatments. Knowledge of diseases, medication, best treatments etc. The case for nurses to have degrees is a lot stronger in my opinion than for the types of ojobs I'm doing and I suspect you are doing, where you are expected to have a degree.
There's loads of generic jobs where you just need to be of average intellect and gain experience of the specific tasks required. Thank goodness as that means they are suitable for most of us.
For those a degree is too often listed as an essential criteria, presumably on the basis it demonstrates some core skills, when perhaps it should be desirable instead, as you should have the wiggle room to select people without. Especially in roles which may be filled by people who don't have degrees in the first place.
I wouldn't have needed a degree for my job.
I often get asked if IT is a trade or a profession.
My answer is that it can be both, IT as a trade is doing the work of administering the computers, whereas IT as a profession is the project management and documentation that we all hate doing, but it important to the successful running of the department or business.
When I used to do consultancy work, I’d always hand over an envelope at the end of the project (and often during a longer project), containing a piece of paper and a memory stick on which were all the passwords, hardware backups etc, that could be handed to the next IT guy to walk in if I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow. That envelope is the difference between the trade and the profession.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
According to austerity Reeves they will inherit the worst position since WW2
Remind me did the incoming Labour Government decide austerity was the answer, or the complete opposite
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
That only works if Truss's floor was 19%, and there's no particular reason to think it was. Besides, Truss was losing voters to Labour, and they counted double in most battleground seats.
Sunak bought the government another 18 months or so. That they haven't used that time well is another matter.
"Mr Stride... voiced fears the debate had tipped too far the other way and some people were now “convincing themselves they have some kind of serious mental health condition as opposed to the normal anxieties of life”.
“If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling rather down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes and then, on 94 per cent of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever,” he added.
Mr Stride acknowledged the topic was sensitive but said it must not become a “no go area” and was “something we need to start having an honest, grown-up debate about”.
I was very concerned to read earlier this week that 20% of adults are not looking for work. Some of these will be housewives etc but a very large number, several million, have persuaded themselves that they are not fit for work. It is effectively hidden unemployment. It is why we need to import so much labour. It is one of the reasons that the State is quite so expensive. It is indeed a major problem for the country and it has got noticeably worse since Covid.
Aren't you looking at the wrong end of the telescope? It is the employment rate of 80% that is the bit to see.
There has been a slight drop from 2019, but not a big one.
We have an excellent record in creating employment in this country but the situation for some time is that vacancies exceed the conventional unemployed (ie those looking for work). And yet we have this huge pool of potential labour sitting untapped and costing us a fortune in benefits. I do not want to get into bashing the sick, far from it, but Mr Stride has put his finger on a very real problem, however clumsily.
Something is wrong with my wife. She typically sleeps for about twelve hours, and yet a couple of hours doing anything in particular will then lead to her nodding off. A couple of thousand steps is more than she can manage on a consistent daily basis, without suffering from debilitating pain for subsequent days.
But because she still has both of her legs it would be impossible for her to qualify for any disability benefit.
The problem is that we seem to be unable to find any way to help people with chronic conditions, not that they are mollycoddled.
That sounds awful and frustrating.
Often nutrition is at the bottom of unexplained conditions. I’m sure you’ve considered it, but is there something she’s having too much / too little of?
Re the header, I'm not sure it's true that Reform supporters are not going to be wooed back by a more true blue pitch from the Tories. On immigration, child care, climate change, Sindy, ECHR, benefits cap and Gender ID Tory right-wing instincts deliver for them.
However the second chart is the killer for the Tories, it's what 25% max of Reform voters who may turn to the Tories,
Nothing positive can win those people back. Only a credible negative scare about what Labour might do could possibly succeed, which is what the Tories always retreat to when they're in a hole. So we can expect a Demon Eyes redux, with hopefully a repeat level of success.
You didn't finish the end of the main bit. There could be a ceasefire tomorrow morning if Hamas released all the hostages.
"The United States has circulated a draft of U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an "immediate ceasefire linked to the release of hostages" in the Gaza Strip"
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
According to austerity Reeves they will inherit the worst position since WW2
Remind me did the incoming Labour Government decide austerity was the answer, or the complete opposite
Well, if the US wish to repeat the Marshall plan ....
The Grauniad is utterly insane if they think we don't need housing construction.
There simply aren't enough houses in the country. We need millions more, not hundreds of thousands more.
We need villages to become towns, towns to become cities and cities to become bigger. We need new towns. We need massive, mammoth house building.
Any NIMBYs need to go to hell. No tolerance for their BS.
1. It's not The Guardian saying we don't need more houses, it's a barrister writing in The Guardian, a paper which often publishes views outside the Overton window.
2. How do you answer the assertion in the article, supported by OECD data, that the UK has in fact about the average number of homes per capita when compared with the rest of the developed world?
Like you, my position has been that we need more housing, but now I wonder. It's not as if we have 10,000s of people on the streets or living in temporary camps. The vast majority of people are housed right now. Arguably, building more houses would just lead to more empty houses.
The issue seems to be our wealth inequality, particularly between the over-45s and the under-45s, which distorts the housing market.
So, I (living on a pension, 100% equity in a large house) could afford to buy a 3-bed house locally, without a mortgage (but I could easily get a competitive mortgage if needed which I can service with the rental income), whereas a young working family on low-pay cannot get a look-in because they can't save enough to get a deposit.
Thus, controlling rents would seem to be a way to go. At implementation fix the level at the rents being charged at the time the bill was published. Freeze rents for 10 years and allow inflation to do its work.
Of course the BLT landlords would squeal as would free-marketeers, but let them squeal - they can always sell up if they think they can more money elsewhere.
In time, lower real rents mean a lower cost to the taxpayer for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit too as an added fiscal benefit (and indeed every new home-owner is a potential future Housing Benefit claimant avoided).
It's certainly more complicated than national supply/demand.
The number of spare bedrooms in the UK has increased by 2 million over the last decade, even while the population has increased. So, at the very least, we're building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong place.
You could plaster Benbecula with homes and it isn't going to do anything for the housing crisis in Manchester.
Spare bedrooms is an irrelevant statistic.
It's the circle of life that people get a home they need, get a bit older, their kids leave home, then they continue living until they die and someone else moves into the home who may need all those rooms once more. Until their kids get older and the cycle continues.
Build more 3 plus bedroom homes and the problem is solved. Then young adults and migrants alike can have a home of their own, while existing homeowners can continue to live where they've put down roots.
Or should old people be forced to live 3 couples sharing a 3 bedroom house rather than each having their own home?
Plus of course studies where people work from home are classed as spare rooms.
The total number of bedrooms available in the UK is increasing faster than the population.
If your concern is solving the housing crisis, building lots of half empty or entirely empty homes is not very clever.
You might want to check your facts as they don't add up.
Spare bedrooms have risen by 2 million according to you in the last decade. Our population has grown by 4 million in the last decade.
How is 2 million more than 4 million? In what universe?
We aren't building lots of empty homes, we need more homes for young people, young people have kids, so we need to build three bedroom homes.
That old people remain where they already were is irrelevant.
I said total bedrooms, not spare bedrooms. Detail is important for some of us.
You were claiming spare bedrooms was the problem originally, so nice way to slip from one irrelevant statistic to another.
You're claiming that spare bedrooms are the problem, yet our spare bedrooms have grown by 2 million in the same time as our population (and our over 60s population) has grown by double that figure, which shows that actually proportionately it is falling.
That we're building more bedrooms is a good thing, we shouldn't build slums, but we aren't building enough of them still. We need millions more houses to make up for our population growth.
There always should be more bedrooms than people, as people get three bedroom homes as that's what they need, but then their kids move on and they still have their home but then their kids need a 3 bed and the circle of life goes on.
The fact my nan still lives in her home she brought her kids up in sixty years ago doesn't stop her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from needing somewhere to live too.
She's not moved in the past sixty years, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren have.
I'm just pointing out that we're actually building housing faster than the population is growing. Nowt to do with your nan.
🤦♂️
No, we're not.
You've switched data again, and this is categorically easier to disprove. Our population is rising far, far, faster than the number of houses we're building.
The number of rooms ≠ the number of houses.
Children grow up and need a home of their own. Ten, twenty years ago all my nan's grandchildren were already alive and in the population count, but many were living with their own parents. They now need a house of their own, but the population count has not changed for them.
Every Millennial now is an adult that should have their own home, its younger generations that aren't.
Again, circle of life.
We have 4 million extra over 60s alive today who live in homes they lived in for decades predominantly with many more rooms than they need. This again is not a bad thing, they've set down roots and have support networks etc and when they do 'move on' then the house is free for someone else, circle of life. We also have millions of adults today who need a home of their own. Many will move in to houses with more rooms than they "need" because they intend to have kids but don't necessarily have them yet.
Redundancy is a good not a bad thing in a system. If you're building a house anyway, almost always better a 3 or 4 bed house than a 1 bed bungalow. Especially since they pretty much take the same footprint anyway.
Good morning!
I stated earlier that the total number of bedrooms available has increased more than the population. That is incorrect - sorry.
The population in E&W increased by 6.2% from 2011 and 2021, while the number of households increased by 6.1%.
The total number of bedrooms has increased by 6.1%. The total number of spare bedrooms increased by 7.4%.
The total number of dwellings increased by 8.4%. 1.6 million dwellings are now unoccupied (on top of the 26 million spare bedrooms), a 4.5% increase.
So wildly insufficient construction, especially since the demographic changes, and we are going backwards not forwards in having slack in the system of unoccupied buildings too which are again a good thing not a bad thing.
So your claim has been comprehensively dismissed. We just need more construction.
I do not see how anyone, other than the most rabid of NIMBYs can claim otherwise. We need more and we need it now. Also the link I posted last night showed that there are some areas of the country where we are building more than is needed.
Even if Eabhal was right it still does not make the mix right. We need far more homes where they are needed. London and the South East predominantly.
I'd like to see any evidence there's anywhere in the country with more than needed. We need massively more here in the North too.
I posted the link from the FT last night which also had the graphic.
You may where you are in the North. The North is a big place. County Durham we are building enough. Other places we are building enough. We need to focus our energies on where we need property building not forcing it to be built where we have adequate provision.
No intention of searching yesterday's thread for a link but it sounds like typical NIMBY bullshit to me.
Are price/earnings ratios in County Durham below 3?
Does everyone in County Durham own their own home?
Does nobody in County Durham flat share or house share?
Is nobody in County Durham struggling to find a home?
"Mr Stride... voiced fears the debate had tipped too far the other way and some people were now “convincing themselves they have some kind of serious mental health condition as opposed to the normal anxieties of life”.
“If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling rather down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes and then, on 94 per cent of occasions, they will be signed off as not fit to carry out any work whatsoever,” he added.
Mr Stride acknowledged the topic was sensitive but said it must not become a “no go area” and was “something we need to start having an honest, grown-up debate about”.
I was very concerned to read earlier this week that 20% of adults are not looking for work. Some of these will be housewives etc but a very large number, several million, have persuaded themselves that they are not fit for work. It is effectively hidden unemployment. It is why we need to import so much labour. It is one of the reasons that the State is quite so expensive. It is indeed a major problem for the country and it has got noticeably worse since Covid.
One way of looking at it is that we have implemented a shit version of UBI. With none of the simplicity. And all of the downsides.
It does, however, demonstrate the major flaw of UBI: a significant part of the population will choose not to work when given the choice. When you add this group (9m in total) to the ever increasing number of pensioners we have a pyramid that has a much higher ratio of non working to working than we used to have. Hence mass immigration to try to restore that balance.
I suspect that the vast majority of these people are very unhappy, often chronically depressed and with dependencies of one sort or another. It is not doing them any good but it is not doing the rest of us much good either.
Talking of which, time to go to work.
Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison - Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits: Lecturers, lispers, Losers, loblolly-men, louts- They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes With fires in a bucket, Eat windfalls and tinned sardines- They seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet, Their unspeakable wives Are skinny as whippets - and yet No one actually _starves_.
Ah, were I courageous enough To shout, Stuff your pension! But I know, all too well, that's the stuff That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like Squats in me, too; Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck, And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney My way of getting The fame and the girl and the money All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other One's spiritual truth; But I do say it's hard to lose either, When you have both.
Trowth, Caesar, whyles they're fasht enough: A cotter howkin in a sheugh, Wi dirty stanes biggin a dyke, Baring a quarry, an sic like; Himself, a wife, he thus sustains, A smytrie o wee duddie weans, An nought but his han' darg to keep Them right an tight in thack an rape. An when they meet wi sair disasters, Like loss o health or want o masters, Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer, An they maun starve o cauld and hunger.
Today is D-Day for Sunak. Either he goes to the palace, or...
1. Rwanda bill buried in the Lords. They won't back down - and by *they* I mean the ex Tory Home Secretaries leading the rebellion there. 2. Funereal / Desperate / Fed up mood in the '22. The idea they will sit there quietly and just accept their fate is for the birds 3. Crossover claxon incoming. The FUKers are gaining ground fast, and despite the Tory delusion that these are Tory voters who will come "home", they're not, they won't, and they never were going to do.
Sunak goes to the Palace today, or it is the end for him.
CON could be below REF in the weekend polls as traditional supporters turn away!
Definite GE being called today
(DYOR 😈)
You've kept the faith with 2nd May - it would probably be in everyone's interests if you were right!!!
Desperate stuff. October is the earliest we get a GE.
I guessed October in the PB New Year quiz.
Pretty sure we get a budget in October now so end of Nov GE likely the earliest now 🙃
'Predicted' surely - sounds much more skilful ;-)
I predicted/guessed 2nd May but am now thinking 12 December - 5 year anniversary of the Tories' last hurrah. (Now I've said that 2nd May is nailed on isn't it.)
I 'calculated' 24 October.
I guessed taking into account all the relevant information available at the time!!
I guessed the unfortunate events about to hit SKS would lead to him being replaced by Reeves.
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
Sounds like the sort of pessimistic / optimistic analysis @Mexicanpete / @Hyufd would come up with to me !
The truth is a 1997 result would frankly be an achievement for Sunak from here.
Can anyone tell me what was so offensive about the message at Kings Cross for Ramadan. I saw it and thought it innocuous enough and nice they were respecting some of their customers faith.
Is it just triggering people, because, muslims, or is there a deeper more malign meaning to the message.
It was just the sunset prayer time, after which those who have been fasting all day for Ramadan will take something to eat. A nice reminder to those passing through the station, although most will probably have an Islamic clock on their phones anyway.
I think it was the hadith about sin that was problematic, along with its length. It is the difference between saying Happy Easter and a bible quote about Jesus dying for our sins. If the Kings Cross message just said Eid Mubarak or Happy Ramadan, there'd not be much fuss.
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
That only works if Truss's floor was 19%, and there's no particular reason to think it was. Besides, Truss was losing voters to Labour, and they counted double in most battleground seats.
Sunak bought the government another 18 months or so. That they haven't used that time well is another matter.
It is worth remembering how precipitous the Truss drop was. Panic was understandable. Had she dropped 5% less or recovered 5% I don't think they'd have ousted her, but there seemed no end in sight. So wrong call in hindsight or not it's a bit harsh to call it obviously wrong in the moment.
A combination of the Truss debacle collapsing the Tory credibility and Sunak turning out to be crappier than they hoped has led to the disastrous current situations. They cannot even hail Mary Boris back because he jumped ship of his own volition. Let's not forget he would have probably beaten Sunak in a members vote.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
Sunak has failed in his mission to restore credibility, but it was a critical moment. Why oh why did she rush ahead so blindly? A little more prep time and she'd still be PM now.
She thought she could cosplay Thatcher of 1987-1988 without doing the eight years hard work which came before it.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
Sunak has failed in his mission to restore credibility, but it was a critical moment. Why oh why did she rush ahead so blindly? A little more prep time and she'd still be PM now.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. A PM must have a model of the world, identify the problems, and have a plan to cope with it. She had all of these.
But to achieve change requires political skill in cajoling/explaining/threatening other people and those skills require practice, which she didn't have.
It's not an easy job and requires an odd skillset: Steve Richards says that the best PMs are basically teachers (bear in mind Christ used parables to explain), and Truss had the bedside manner of a land mine.
Can anyone tell me what was so offensive about the message at Kings Cross for Ramadan. I saw it and thought it innocuous enough and nice they were respecting some of their customers faith.
Is it just triggering people, because, muslims, or is there a deeper more malign meaning to the message.
It was just the sunset prayer time, after which those who have been fasting all day for Ramadan will take something to eat. A nice reminder to those passing through the station, although most will probably have an Islamic clock on their phones anyway.
I think it was the hadith about sin that was problematic, along with its length. It is the difference between saying Happy Easter and a bible quote about Jesus dying for our sins. If the Kings Cross message just said Eid Mubarak or Happy Ramadan, there'd not be much fuss.
Still an overreaction, but yes that's probably the line.
Re the header, I'm not sure it's true that Reform supporters are not going to be wooed back by a more true blue pitch from the Tories. On immigration, child care, climate change, Sindy, ECHR, benefits cap and Gender ID Tory right-wing instincts deliver for them.
However the second chart is the killer for the Tories, it's what 25% max of Reform voters who may turn to the Tories,
Nothing positive can win those people back. Only a credible negative scare about what Labour might do could possibly succeed, which is what the Tories always retreat to when they're in a hole. So we can expect a Demon Eyes redux, with hopefully a repeat level of success.
Expect loads of questions to Labour about their support of what the SNP are doing in Scotland around gender.
The latest is the police “Hate Crime” training around the new Scots law, which appears to have been written by Stonewall, featuring the totally co-incidentally named “Jo”, whose online views quickly go from “there are only two genders” to “they all belong in the gas chambers”.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
Sure it's work in progress, as the article makes clear. What's the problem with that?
The large number of false positives wouldn't necessarily be a detection problem if they are also the indicators that humans would be expected to follow up if only they had detected them. The article doesn't say if they use AI in assessment and the models could probably be trained anyway.
Listening to the interview about the study, it wasn't a particularly large number of false positives. It was 11 cases of actual cancer out of fifty flagged by the AI.
The other interesting thing is that the system had its leaning function disabled. So it could likely have done better over time.
The Grauniad is utterly insane if they think we don't need housing construction.
There simply aren't enough houses in the country. We need millions more, not hundreds of thousands more.
We need villages to become towns, towns to become cities and cities to become bigger. We need new towns. We need massive, mammoth house building.
Any NIMBYs need to go to hell. No tolerance for their BS.
1. It's not The Guardian saying we don't need more houses, it's a barrister writing in The Guardian, a paper which often publishes views outside the Overton window.
2. How do you answer the assertion in the article, supported by OECD data, that the UK has in fact about the average number of homes per capita when compared with the rest of the developed world?
Like you, my position has been that we need more housing, but now I wonder. It's not as if we have 10,000s of people on the streets or living in temporary camps. The vast majority of people are housed right now. Arguably, building more houses would just lead to more empty houses.
The issue seems to be our wealth inequality, particularly between the over-45s and the under-45s, which distorts the housing market.
So, I (living on a pension, 100% equity in a large house) could afford to buy a 3-bed house locally, without a mortgage (but I could easily get a competitive mortgage if needed which I can service with the rental income), whereas a young working family on low-pay cannot get a look-in because they can't save enough to get a deposit.
Thus, controlling rents would seem to be a way to go. At implementation fix the level at the rents being charged at the time the bill was published. Freeze rents for 10 years and allow inflation to do its work.
Of course the BLT landlords would squeal as would free-marketeers, but let them squeal - they can always sell up if they think they can more money elsewhere.
In time, lower real rents mean a lower cost to the taxpayer for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit too as an added fiscal benefit (and indeed every new home-owner is a potential future Housing Benefit claimant avoided).
It's certainly more complicated than national supply/demand.
The number of spare bedrooms in the UK has increased by 2 million over the last decade, even while the population has increased. So, at the very least, we're building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong place.
You could plaster Benbecula with homes and it isn't going to do anything for the housing crisis in Manchester.
Spare bedrooms is an irrelevant statistic.
It's the circle of life that people get a home they need, get a bit older, their kids leave home, then they continue living until they die and someone else moves into the home who may need all those rooms once more. Until their kids get older and the cycle continues.
Build more 3 plus bedroom homes and the problem is solved. Then young adults and migrants alike can have a home of their own, while existing homeowners can continue to live where they've put down roots.
Or should old people be forced to live 3 couples sharing a 3 bedroom house rather than each having their own home?
Plus of course studies where people work from home are classed as spare rooms.
The total number of bedrooms available in the UK is increasing faster than the population.
If your concern is solving the housing crisis, building lots of half empty or entirely empty homes is not very clever.
You might want to check your facts as they don't add up.
Spare bedrooms have risen by 2 million according to you in the last decade. Our population has grown by 4 million in the last decade.
How is 2 million more than 4 million? In what universe?
We aren't building lots of empty homes, we need more homes for young people, young people have kids, so we need to build three bedroom homes.
That old people remain where they already were is irrelevant.
I said total bedrooms, not spare bedrooms. Detail is important for some of us.
You were claiming spare bedrooms was the problem originally, so nice way to slip from one irrelevant statistic to another.
You're claiming that spare bedrooms are the problem, yet our spare bedrooms have grown by 2 million in the same time as our population (and our over 60s population) has grown by double that figure, which shows that actually proportionately it is falling.
That we're building more bedrooms is a good thing, we shouldn't build slums, but we aren't building enough of them still. We need millions more houses to make up for our population growth.
There always should be more bedrooms than people, as people get three bedroom homes as that's what they need, but then their kids move on and they still have their home but then their kids need a 3 bed and the circle of life goes on.
The fact my nan still lives in her home she brought her kids up in sixty years ago doesn't stop her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from needing somewhere to live too.
She's not moved in the past sixty years, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren have.
I'm just pointing out that we're actually building housing faster than the population is growing. Nowt to do with your nan.
🤦♂️
No, we're not.
You've switched data again, and this is categorically easier to disprove. Our population is rising far, far, faster than the number of houses we're building.
The number of rooms ≠ the number of houses.
Children grow up and need a home of their own. Ten, twenty years ago all my nan's grandchildren were already alive and in the population count, but many were living with their own parents. They now need a house of their own, but the population count has not changed for them.
Every Millennial now is an adult that should have their own home, its younger generations that aren't.
Again, circle of life.
We have 4 million extra over 60s alive today who live in homes they lived in for decades predominantly with many more rooms than they need. This again is not a bad thing, they've set down roots and have support networks etc and when they do 'move on' then the house is free for someone else, circle of life. We also have millions of adults today who need a home of their own. Many will move in to houses with more rooms than they "need" because they intend to have kids but don't necessarily have them yet.
Redundancy is a good not a bad thing in a system. If you're building a house anyway, almost always better a 3 or 4 bed house than a 1 bed bungalow. Especially since they pretty much take the same footprint anyway.
Good morning!
I stated earlier that the total number of bedrooms available has increased more than the population. That is incorrect - sorry.
The population in E&W increased by 6.2% from 2011 and 2021, while the number of households increased by 6.1%.
The total number of bedrooms has increased by 6.1%. The total number of spare bedrooms increased by 7.4%.
The total number of dwellings increased by 8.4%. 1.6 million dwellings are now unoccupied (on top of the 26 million spare bedrooms), a 4.5% increase.
So wildly insufficient construction, especially since the demographic changes, and we are going backwards not forwards in having slack in the system of unoccupied buildings too which are again a good thing not a bad thing.
So your claim has been comprehensively dismissed. We just need more construction.
I do not see how anyone, other than the most rabid of NIMBYs can claim otherwise. We need more and we need it now. Also the link I posted last night showed that there are some areas of the country where we are building more than is needed.
Even if Eabhal was right it still does not make the mix right. We need far more homes where they are needed. London and the South East predominantly.
I'd like to see any evidence there's anywhere in the country with more than needed. We need massively more here in the North too.
I agree that, all else held equal, building more homes will help with the housing crisis. That is obvious.
I also agree that the costs of infrastructure should not fall on developers. That's very difficult to solve, but I agree in principle.
Where we disagree is whether building homes is a silver bullet. I've demonstrated that home-building is happening faster than population growth. That the number of empty homes is growing. That the number of spare bedrooms is growing.
The evidence suggests that something else is going on other than pure national demand and supply. The most simple answer is geographical asymmetries, with economic growth massively unbalanced across the country.
At the very least, homebuilding is grossly inefficient in the UK.
Eh?
Home building is absolutely and categorically less than population growth.
Use absolute numbers and that is crystal clear.
Our quantity of population has grown by millions more than our quantity of homes. That is a fact, pretending otherwise is a lie or ignorance.
In absolute terms the number of empty homes and spare rooms SHOULD be growing. They're not growing by enough. It's a failure that there is insufficient empty homes and the proportion of homes empty, by your own percentages, is down.
You can't use absolute numbers, because more than one person can live in each home. I, for example, share a flat with my partner.
This is desperate stuff. AGAIN, I agree that building more homes COULD help with the housing crisis. The great puzzle is even while the number of homes is growing faster than the population, there remains a housing problem.
Even MORE puzzling is that this has happened during mass immigration - immigrants are more likely to live in larger households. It's very weird and just spouting "more houses" ignores a much more interesting question.
You didn't finish the end of the main bit. There could be a ceasefire tomorrow morning if Hamas released all the hostages.
"The United States has circulated a draft of U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an "immediate ceasefire linked to the release of hostages" in the Gaza Strip"
And no doubt there could be a hostage release if Israel stops bombing the place. That's the opposite spin. It is also why ceasefires are hard to negotiate when each side demands the other moves first.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
Sunak has failed in his mission to restore credibility, but it was a critical moment. Why oh why did she rush ahead so blindly? A little more prep time and she'd still be PM now.
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. A PM must have a model of the world, identify the problems, and have a plan to cope with it. She had all of these.
But to achieve change requires political skill in cajoling/explaining/threatening other people and those skills require practice, which she didn't have.
It's not an easy job and requires an odd skillset: Steve Richards says that the best PMs are basically teachers (bear in mind Christ used parables to explain), and Truss had the bedside manner of a land mine.
Yes she screwed up, but she reacted to that and adapted, replacing the Chancellor with Hunt who is doing a much better job.
Hunt is doing a good job, but Sunak is not. Hunt's best action is doing the polar opposite of what Sunak did as Chancellor.
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
That only works if Truss's floor was 19%, and there's no particular reason to think it was. Besides, Truss was losing voters to Labour, and they counted double in most battleground seats.
Sunak bought the government another 18 months or so. That they haven't used that time well is another matter.
And Truss did not have to resign because of her appalling polling. She had to go because such was the loss of market confidence in her government, it was clear that the UK would no longer be able to borrow to service its debt, had she remained. That is another six months of Truss and we’d have been facing economic catastrophe.
Just saw and removed an antisemitic printed sticker saying 'With Jews you lose' with the sort of cartoon you'd expect from a lamppost in south west London on the way to school drop off.
Makes you wonder how widespread such things are.
I didnt realise London lampposts were good at drawing cartoons!
Good for him, people should go with their hearts more.
Agree. Two million Tory voters go with their hearts towards voting Labour. Labour supporters who wish to continue losing general elections after losing four in a row go with their hearts and leave the party.
Up to 8 million people risk losing right to vote at general election under 'Victorian' system MPs on the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee hit out at a creaking 'Victorian-era' registration system and new rules requiring people to show ID at the ballot box https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/up-8-million-people-risk-32398633
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
According to austerity Reeves they will inherit the worst position since WW2
Remind me did the incoming Labour Government decide austerity was the answer, or the complete opposite
I agree with you - and have been advocating - that a program of investment is needed. Regardless of our debt position we simply can't afford not to.
But there is a biiiiig difference between 1945 and 2024. In 1945 people voted whilst war in the Pacific raged on and war in Europe had only just stopped. They wanted something transformative.
In 2024 you cannot say the same. You want radical. Most voters do not. If Labour advocated the policies you fancy it would lose. Its unfair, but thats how it is. And I have to refer you back to Clause 1 of the Labour Party Constitution. The party is not there to protest. To complain. To advocate fantasy ideology. It exists to take power. So it has to win an election, and to do that you need a retail offer people will vote for.
Give us proportional voting and we will get all kinds of new parties, including a true left party which you would likely support. It wouldn't win power outright, but could have some MPs and be party of a government. Instead we have the left splintered all over the place, having to have the absurdly named "Left Unity" to try and tape it back together. The right suffers no such splintering, which is why it usually wins.
Why haven't you learned this basic lesson yet? Factionalism and absolutism = losing elections.
The Grauniad is utterly insane if they think we don't need housing construction.
There simply aren't enough houses in the country. We need millions more, not hundreds of thousands more.
We need villages to become towns, towns to become cities and cities to become bigger. We need new towns. We need massive, mammoth house building.
Any NIMBYs need to go to hell. No tolerance for their BS.
1. It's not The Guardian saying we don't need more houses, it's a barrister writing in The Guardian, a paper which often publishes views outside the Overton window.
2. How do you answer the assertion in the article, supported by OECD data, that the UK has in fact about the average number of homes per capita when compared with the rest of the developed world?
Like you, my position has been that we need more housing, but now I wonder. It's not as if we have 10,000s of people on the streets or living in temporary camps. The vast majority of people are housed right now. Arguably, building more houses would just lead to more empty houses.
The issue seems to be our wealth inequality, particularly between the over-45s and the under-45s, which distorts the housing market.
So, I (living on a pension, 100% equity in a large house) could afford to buy a 3-bed house locally, without a mortgage (but I could easily get a competitive mortgage if needed which I can service with the rental income), whereas a young working family on low-pay cannot get a look-in because they can't save enough to get a deposit.
Thus, controlling rents would seem to be a way to go. At implementation fix the level at the rents being charged at the time the bill was published. Freeze rents for 10 years and allow inflation to do its work.
Of course the BLT landlords would squeal as would free-marketeers, but let them squeal - they can always sell up if they think they can more money elsewhere.
In time, lower real rents mean a lower cost to the taxpayer for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit too as an added fiscal benefit (and indeed every new home-owner is a potential future Housing Benefit claimant avoided).
It's certainly more complicated than national supply/demand.
The number of spare bedrooms in the UK has increased by 2 million over the last decade, even while the population has increased. So, at the very least, we're building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong place.
You could plaster Benbecula with homes and it isn't going to do anything for the housing crisis in Manchester.
Spare bedrooms is an irrelevant statistic.
It's the circle of life that people get a home they need, get a bit older, their kids leave home, then they continue living until they die and someone else moves into the home who may need all those rooms once more. Until their kids get older and the cycle continues.
Build more 3 plus bedroom homes and the problem is solved. Then young adults and migrants alike can have a home of their own, while existing homeowners can continue to live where they've put down roots.
Or should old people be forced to live 3 couples sharing a 3 bedroom house rather than each having their own home?
Plus of course studies where people work from home are classed as spare rooms.
The total number of bedrooms available in the UK is increasing faster than the population.
If your concern is solving the housing crisis, building lots of half empty or entirely empty homes is not very clever.
You might want to check your facts as they don't add up.
Spare bedrooms have risen by 2 million according to you in the last decade. Our population has grown by 4 million in the last decade.
How is 2 million more than 4 million? In what universe?
We aren't building lots of empty homes, we need more homes for young people, young people have kids, so we need to build three bedroom homes.
That old people remain where they already were is irrelevant.
I said total bedrooms, not spare bedrooms. Detail is important for some of us.
You were claiming spare bedrooms was the problem originally, so nice way to slip from one irrelevant statistic to another.
You're claiming that spare bedrooms are the problem, yet our spare bedrooms have grown by 2 million in the same time as our population (and our over 60s population) has grown by double that figure, which shows that actually proportionately it is falling.
That we're building more bedrooms is a good thing, we shouldn't build slums, but we aren't building enough of them still. We need millions more houses to make up for our population growth.
There always should be more bedrooms than people, as people get three bedroom homes as that's what they need, but then their kids move on and they still have their home but then their kids need a 3 bed and the circle of life goes on.
The fact my nan still lives in her home she brought her kids up in sixty years ago doesn't stop her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from needing somewhere to live too.
She's not moved in the past sixty years, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren have.
I'm just pointing out that we're actually building housing faster than the population is growing. Nowt to do with your nan.
🤦♂️
No, we're not.
You've switched data again, and this is categorically easier to disprove. Our population is rising far, far, faster than the number of houses we're building.
The number of rooms ≠ the number of houses.
Children grow up and need a home of their own. Ten, twenty years ago all my nan's grandchildren were already alive and in the population count, but many were living with their own parents. They now need a house of their own, but the population count has not changed for them.
Every Millennial now is an adult that should have their own home, its younger generations that aren't.
Again, circle of life.
We have 4 million extra over 60s alive today who live in homes they lived in for decades predominantly with many more rooms than they need. This again is not a bad thing, they've set down roots and have support networks etc and when they do 'move on' then the house is free for someone else, circle of life. We also have millions of adults today who need a home of their own. Many will move in to houses with more rooms than they "need" because they intend to have kids but don't necessarily have them yet.
Redundancy is a good not a bad thing in a system. If you're building a house anyway, almost always better a 3 or 4 bed house than a 1 bed bungalow. Especially since they pretty much take the same footprint anyway.
Good morning!
I stated earlier that the total number of bedrooms available has increased more than the population. That is incorrect - sorry.
The population in E&W increased by 6.2% from 2011 and 2021, while the number of households increased by 6.1%.
The total number of bedrooms has increased by 6.1%. The total number of spare bedrooms increased by 7.4%.
The total number of dwellings increased by 8.4%. 1.6 million dwellings are now unoccupied (on top of the 26 million spare bedrooms), a 4.5% increase.
So wildly insufficient construction, especially since the demographic changes, and we are going backwards not forwards in having slack in the system of unoccupied buildings too which are again a good thing not a bad thing.
So your claim has been comprehensively dismissed. We just need more construction.
I do not see how anyone, other than the most rabid of NIMBYs can claim otherwise. We need more and we need it now. Also the link I posted last night showed that there are some areas of the country where we are building more than is needed.
Even if Eabhal was right it still does not make the mix right. We need far more homes where they are needed. London and the South East predominantly.
I'd like to see any evidence there's anywhere in the country with more than needed. We need massively more here in the North too.
I agree that, all else held equal, building more homes will help with the housing crisis. That is obvious.
I also agree that the costs of infrastructure should not fall on developers. That's very difficult to solve, but I agree in principle.
Where we disagree is whether building homes is a silver bullet. I've demonstrated that home-building is happening faster than population growth. That the number of empty homes is growing. That the number of spare bedrooms is growing.
The evidence suggests that something else is going on other than pure national demand and supply. The most simple answer is geographical asymmetries, with economic growth massively unbalanced across the country.
At the very least, homebuilding is grossly inefficient in the UK.
Eh?
Home building is absolutely and categorically less than population growth.
Use absolute numbers and that is crystal clear.
Our quantity of population has grown by millions more than our quantity of homes. That is a fact, pretending otherwise is a lie or ignorance.
In absolute terms the number of empty homes and spare rooms SHOULD be growing. They're not growing by enough. It's a failure that there is insufficient empty homes and the proportion of homes empty, by your own percentages, is down.
You can't use absolute numbers, because more than one person can live in each home. I, for example, share a flat with my partner.
This is desperate stuff. AGAIN, I agree that building more homes COULD help with the housing crisis. The great puzzle is even while the number of homes is growing faster than the population, there remains a housing problem.
Even MORE puzzling is that this has happened during mass immigration - immigrants are more likely to live in larger households. It's very weird and just spouting "more houses" ignores a much more interesting question.
You must use absolute numbers if you are making the fallacious claim that housing has grown faster than population, it has not. The number of houses is an absolute, the number of population is an absolute.
The number of houses is growing less than the number of population, that is a fact.
Yes more than one person CAN live in a house, but not every house has more than one person living in it. And as people live longer we have more people now living either with only their partner or after their partner has died, literally on their own.
This has happened at a time where people live longer, it's not a puzzle. We just need more houses as those living longer still occupy the ones they had when they were younger and there's nothing wrong with that.
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
Sounds like the sort of pessimistic / optimistic analysis @Mexicanpete / @Hyufd would come up with to me !
The truth is a 1997 result would frankly be an achievement for Sunak from here.
On the contrary, it brings the Tories up to low 30s, which accompanied by a bit of campaign swingback is where they may well end up. That’s almost 1997 levels.
I’m a veteran of too many Lib Dem mini surges that petered out when things got serious to have any confidence those voters are sticking with Reform.
Biden now leads Trump by 1 point in The Economist's polling tracker.
Monday is a huge day for Trump. He either lets his assets - including Trump Tower - get taken in settlement of his New York civil fraud case to settle his $500m+ award plus interest obligations. Or somebody buys him and puts up the cash. Either way, his opponents get to make hay at his wrecked schtick as a guy so rich and so successful in business he can't be bought.
It's also going to be very difficult for the legacy media to continue with their "nothing to see here" line.
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
Do you simply not believe the result of the forced choice question on Reform backers voting intention in the header?
Also, the two statements "perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching" and "RefCon numbers have been ... if anything a bit up" are somewhat contradictory.
The evidence in the header is that most of the former Tory voters who have switched to Reform in the polls are now lost to the Tories. They might once have been wooed by the Tories taking some further right policy positions, but the Tories now have a credibility problem with any promise they make, and I think these voters are some of those who simply aren't listening any more.
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
If we were being generous and ReFUK disappeared tomorrow, you would only add 30% of their vote to the Tory total. If that. It just isn't true that the FUKers are all Tory.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
According to austerity Reeves they will inherit the worst position since WW2
Remind me did the incoming Labour Government decide austerity was the answer, or the complete opposite
Reform UK overtaking the Tories has to be seriously on the cards now. The Tories have literally reverted back to where they were during the EU elections. Problem is that Labour has not.
The Grauniad is utterly insane if they think we don't need housing construction.
There simply aren't enough houses in the country. We need millions more, not hundreds of thousands more.
We need villages to become towns, towns to become cities and cities to become bigger. We need new towns. We need massive, mammoth house building.
Any NIMBYs need to go to hell. No tolerance for their BS.
1. It's not The Guardian saying we don't need more houses, it's a barrister writing in The Guardian, a paper which often publishes views outside the Overton window.
2. How do you answer the assertion in the article, supported by OECD data, that the UK has in fact about the average number of homes per capita when compared with the rest of the developed world?
Like you, my position has been that we need more housing, but now I wonder. It's not as if we have 10,000s of people on the streets or living in temporary camps. The vast majority of people are housed right now. Arguably, building more houses would just lead to more empty houses.
The issue seems to be our wealth inequality, particularly between the over-45s and the under-45s, which distorts the housing market.
So, I (living on a pension, 100% equity in a large house) could afford to buy a 3-bed house locally, without a mortgage (but I could easily get a competitive mortgage if needed which I can service with the rental income), whereas a young working family on low-pay cannot get a look-in because they can't save enough to get a deposit.
Thus, controlling rents would seem to be a way to go. At implementation fix the level at the rents being charged at the time the bill was published. Freeze rents for 10 years and allow inflation to do its work.
Of course the BLT landlords would squeal as would free-marketeers, but let them squeal - they can always sell up if they think they can more money elsewhere.
In time, lower real rents mean a lower cost to the taxpayer for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit too as an added fiscal benefit (and indeed every new home-owner is a potential future Housing Benefit claimant avoided).
It's certainly more complicated than national supply/demand.
The number of spare bedrooms in the UK has increased by 2 million over the last decade, even while the population has increased. So, at the very least, we're building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong place.
You could plaster Benbecula with homes and it isn't going to do anything for the housing crisis in Manchester.
Spare bedrooms is an irrelevant statistic.
It's the circle of life that people get a home they need, get a bit older, their kids leave home, then they continue living until they die and someone else moves into the home who may need all those rooms once more. Until their kids get older and the cycle continues.
Build more 3 plus bedroom homes and the problem is solved. Then young adults and migrants alike can have a home of their own, while existing homeowners can continue to live where they've put down roots.
Or should old people be forced to live 3 couples sharing a 3 bedroom house rather than each having their own home?
Plus of course studies where people work from home are classed as spare rooms.
The total number of bedrooms available in the UK is increasing faster than the population.
If your concern is solving the housing crisis, building lots of half empty or entirely empty homes is not very clever.
You might want to check your facts as they don't add up.
Spare bedrooms have risen by 2 million according to you in the last decade. Our population has grown by 4 million in the last decade.
How is 2 million more than 4 million? In what universe?
We aren't building lots of empty homes, we need more homes for young people, young people have kids, so we need to build three bedroom homes.
That old people remain where they already were is irrelevant.
I said total bedrooms, not spare bedrooms. Detail is important for some of us.
You were claiming spare bedrooms was the problem originally, so nice way to slip from one irrelevant statistic to another.
You're claiming that spare bedrooms are the problem, yet our spare bedrooms have grown by 2 million in the same time as our population (and our over 60s population) has grown by double that figure, which shows that actually proportionately it is falling.
That we're building more bedrooms is a good thing, we shouldn't build slums, but we aren't building enough of them still. We need millions more houses to make up for our population growth.
There always should be more bedrooms than people, as people get three bedroom homes as that's what they need, but then their kids move on and they still have their home but then their kids need a 3 bed and the circle of life goes on.
The fact my nan still lives in her home she brought her kids up in sixty years ago doesn't stop her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from needing somewhere to live too.
She's not moved in the past sixty years, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren have.
I'm just pointing out that we're actually building housing faster than the population is growing. Nowt to do with your nan.
🤦♂️
No, we're not.
You've switched data again, and this is categorically easier to disprove. Our population is rising far, far, faster than the number of houses we're building.
The number of rooms ≠ the number of houses.
Children grow up and need a home of their own. Ten, twenty years ago all my nan's grandchildren were already alive and in the population count, but many were living with their own parents. They now need a house of their own, but the population count has not changed for them.
Every Millennial now is an adult that should have their own home, its younger generations that aren't.
Again, circle of life.
We have 4 million extra over 60s alive today who live in homes they lived in for decades predominantly with many more rooms than they need. This again is not a bad thing, they've set down roots and have support networks etc and when they do 'move on' then the house is free for someone else, circle of life. We also have millions of adults today who need a home of their own. Many will move in to houses with more rooms than they "need" because they intend to have kids but don't necessarily have them yet.
Redundancy is a good not a bad thing in a system. If you're building a house anyway, almost always better a 3 or 4 bed house than a 1 bed bungalow. Especially since they pretty much take the same footprint anyway.
Good morning!
I stated earlier that the total number of bedrooms available has increased more than the population. That is incorrect - sorry.
The population in E&W increased by 6.2% from 2011 and 2021, while the number of households increased by 6.1%.
The total number of bedrooms has increased by 6.1%. The total number of spare bedrooms increased by 7.4%.
The total number of dwellings increased by 8.4%. 1.6 million dwellings are now unoccupied (on top of the 26 million spare bedrooms), a 4.5% increase.
So wildly insufficient construction, especially since the demographic changes, and we are going backwards not forwards in having slack in the system of unoccupied buildings too which are again a good thing not a bad thing.
So your claim has been comprehensively dismissed. We just need more construction.
I do not see how anyone, other than the most rabid of NIMBYs can claim otherwise. We need more and we need it now. Also the link I posted last night showed that there are some areas of the country where we are building more than is needed.
Even if Eabhal was right it still does not make the mix right. We need far more homes where they are needed. London and the South East predominantly.
I'd like to see any evidence there's anywhere in the country with more than needed. We need massively more here in the North too.
I agree that, all else held equal, building more homes will help with the housing crisis. That is obvious.
I also agree that the costs of infrastructure should not fall on developers. That's very difficult to solve, but I agree in principle.
Where we disagree is whether building homes is a silver bullet. I've demonstrated that home-building is happening faster than population growth. That the number of empty homes is growing. That the number of spare bedrooms is growing.
The evidence suggests that something else is going on other than pure national demand and supply. The most simple answer is geographical asymmetries, with economic growth massively unbalanced across the country.
At the very least, homebuilding is grossly inefficient in the UK.
Eh?
Home building is absolutely and categorically less than population growth.
Use absolute numbers and that is crystal clear.
Our quantity of population has grown by millions more than our quantity of homes. That is a fact, pretending otherwise is a lie or ignorance.
In absolute terms the number of empty homes and spare rooms SHOULD be growing. They're not growing by enough. It's a failure that there is insufficient empty homes and the proportion of homes empty, by your own percentages, is down.
You can't use absolute numbers, because more than one person can live in each home. I, for example, share a flat with my partner.
This is desperate stuff. AGAIN, I agree that building more homes COULD help with the housing crisis. The great puzzle is even while the number of homes is growing faster than the population, there remains a housing problem.
Even MORE puzzling is that this has happened during mass immigration - immigrants are more likely to live in larger households. It's very weird and just spouting "more houses" ignores a much more interesting question.
You must use absolute numbers if you are making the fallacious claim that housing has grown faster than population, it has not. The number of houses is an absolute, the number of population is an absolute.
The number of houses is growing less than the number of population, that is a fact.
Yes more than one person CAN live in a house, but not every house has more than one person living in it. And as people live longer we have more people now living either with only their partner or after their partner has died, literally on their own.
It's only fallacious in a UK where everyone lives by themselves. That's a very odd opening assumption.
But it's good to see you recognise that household composition is playing a role. I reckon it's by a far a bigger driver of this than say immigration.
Population up by 6.2%. Households up by 6.1%. Bedrooms up by 6.1%. Homes up by 8.4%. Spare bedrooms up by 7.4%. Unoccupied homes up by 4.5%.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
You're missing the real use of the system, which is for AI to replace the second human check in negative findings. The AI negative findings in that case have been 100% reliable in the study.
That alone would save a very large workload.
It doesn't say that in the BBC article. There's no peer reviewed publication to check. Earlier generation screening mammography had high false positive rates (see our review, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/5173/ ).
Assuming Reform can find anything like the number of candidates required for a national campaign, they are for the most part going to be low grade candidates, unlikely to have anything to offer by way of a reason to vote for them.
Rather than their voting Reform, the biggest challenge for the Tories is to get those former supporters now on strike to go to the polls, rather than just sit on their hands.
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
To a degree, but I think the comparison between RefCon and LLG is rather mistaken.
Lib Dem and Green voters generally don't have all that much against Labour at present (although there are some Corbynist diehards in one wing of the Greens). Lib Dem, Labour and Green will, in many or even most cases, vote tactically in the particular seat to get the outcome they want.
Whereas RefUK's emergence is principally because there are a group on the right who want to stick two fingers up to the Tories as well as anyone else. The Tories will probably get some bounceback as the prospect of a Labour Government looms (although switchover would be problematic) but a lot of RefUK supporters very much dislike the Tories. There won't be tactical as for LLG and indeed the RefUK supporters who are most aggrieved with the Tories are in the red wall seats where the Tories particularly need them to avoid wipeout.
Clearly, Tories badly need that squeeze or tactical voting. It's no good them saying after the election, "Well, Tories and RefUK together got about 40% between them, which ain't bad considering". If that's, say, 25/15 then that translates to an unprecedented landslide defeat.
Essentially most Reform voters are nationalists rather than libertarians as the polling shows. However the fact a plurality would vote Conservative if no Reform candidate shows why Sunak will still target them
Biden now leads Trump by 1 point in The Economist's polling tracker.
Monday is a huge day for Trump. He either lets his assets - including Trump Tower - get taken in settlement of his New York civil fraud case to settle his $500m+ award plus interest obligations. Or somebody buys him and puts up the cash. Either way, his opponents get to make hay at his wrecked schtick as a guy so rich and so successful in business he can't be bought.
It's also going to be very difficult for the legacy media to continue with their "nothing to see here" line.
I'm not sure whether its GOP idiocy, Dem cleverness, luck or a combination but a mentally disintegrating, financially crippled, politically discredited Trump is the easiest, perhaps only, opponent that Sleepy Joe can beat.
Hm. I might try and get up on time. I've been sleeping pretty bloody awfully, though that might be handy in this case.
It’s 8am for me, and I’m still not sure I can be arsed to get up unless the grid is a total mess. I do have the benefit of F1TV though, so I can just hit “watch from beginning” whenever I get up and grab coffee, and play at 1.5x speed until something interesting happens!
You didn't finish the end of the main bit. There could be a ceasefire tomorrow morning if Hamas released all the hostages.
"The United States has circulated a draft of U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an "immediate ceasefire linked to the release of hostages" in the Gaza Strip"
And no doubt there could be a hostage release if Israel stops bombing the place. That's the opposite spin. It is also why ceasefires are hard to negotiate when each side demands the other moves first.
Very true. But it is reasonable to be cautious about trusting Hamas to release the hostages as there were no hostages taken on October 6th and a ceasefire (aside from the continuous low level exchanges) was in place.
Reform UK overtaking the Tories has to be seriously on the cards now. The Tories have literally reverted back to where they were during the EU elections. Problem is that Labour has not.
So the question is what they do about it. Sunak is target focused on that single flight to Rwanda (and there will only be the one as Rwanda can't take any more...). Get that plane away in the spring as promised, the boats stop, and people forget all about their troubles. The foreigners will have gone!
Meanwhile, in the real world, the Nigel contemplates when he unveils himself to the world. Even if he doesn't actually run for parliament he surely will step up. Leading the ReFUK long campaign, step by step with his bezzie Trump, with endless free advertising on GBeebies.
Has nobody realised just what impact that has vs the previous attempts?
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
Sounds like the sort of pessimistic / optimistic analysis @Mexicanpete / @Hyufd would come up with to me !
The truth is a 1997 result would frankly be an achievement for Sunak from here.
On the contrary, it brings the Tories up to low 30s, which accompanied by a bit of campaign swingback is where they may well end up. That’s almost 1997 levels.
I’m a veteran of too many Lib Dem mini surges that petered out when things got serious to have any confidence those voters are sticking with Reform.
At the moment I think I'm veering to something like:
Lab 39% Con 26% LD 10% (but efficient) Ref 12% (but inefficient) Green 5% SNP & others 8%
Instinct says a new Tory leader is neither here nor there, but I guess could be worth a PP or two upwards. At whose cost, I'm not sure.
The Grauniad is utterly insane if they think we don't need housing construction.
There simply aren't enough houses in the country. We need millions more, not hundreds of thousands more.
We need villages to become towns, towns to become cities and cities to become bigger. We need new towns. We need massive, mammoth house building.
Any NIMBYs need to go to hell. No tolerance for their BS.
1. It's not The Guardian saying we don't need more houses, it's a barrister writing in The Guardian, a paper which often publishes views outside the Overton window.
2. How do you answer the assertion in the article, supported by OECD data, that the UK has in fact about the average number of homes per capita when compared with the rest of the developed world?
Like you, my position has been that we need more housing, but now I wonder. It's not as if we have 10,000s of people on the streets or living in temporary camps. The vast majority of people are housed right now. Arguably, building more houses would just lead to more empty houses.
The issue seems to be our wealth inequality, particularly between the over-45s and the under-45s, which distorts the housing market.
So, I (living on a pension, 100% equity in a large house) could afford to buy a 3-bed house locally, without a mortgage (but I could easily get a competitive mortgage if needed which I can service with the rental income), whereas a young working family on low-pay cannot get a look-in because they can't save enough to get a deposit.
Thus, controlling rents would seem to be a way to go. At implementation fix the level at the rents being charged at the time the bill was published. Freeze rents for 10 years and allow inflation to do its work.
Of course the BLT landlords would squeal as would free-marketeers, but let them squeal - they can always sell up if they think they can more money elsewhere.
In time, lower real rents mean a lower cost to the taxpayer for Housing Benefit and Universal Credit too as an added fiscal benefit (and indeed every new home-owner is a potential future Housing Benefit claimant avoided).
It's certainly more complicated than national supply/demand.
The number of spare bedrooms in the UK has increased by 2 million over the last decade, even while the population has increased. So, at the very least, we're building the wrong kind of housing in the wrong place.
You could plaster Benbecula with homes and it isn't going to do anything for the housing crisis in Manchester.
Spare bedrooms is an irrelevant statistic.
It's the circle of life that people get a home they need, get a bit older, their kids leave home, then they continue living until they die and someone else moves into the home who may need all those rooms once more. Until their kids get older and the cycle continues.
Build more 3 plus bedroom homes and the problem is solved. Then young adults and migrants alike can have a home of their own, while existing homeowners can continue to live where they've put down roots.
Or should old people be forced to live 3 couples sharing a 3 bedroom house rather than each having their own home?
Plus of course studies where people work from home are classed as spare rooms.
The total number of bedrooms available in the UK is increasing faster than the population.
If your concern is solving the housing crisis, building lots of half empty or entirely empty homes is not very clever.
You might want to check your facts as they don't add up.
Spare bedrooms have risen by 2 million according to you in the last decade. Our population has grown by 4 million in the last decade.
How is 2 million more than 4 million? In what universe?
We aren't building lots of empty homes, we need more homes for young people, young people have kids, so we need to build three bedroom homes.
That old people remain where they already were is irrelevant.
I said total bedrooms, not spare bedrooms. Detail is important for some of us.
You were claiming spare bedrooms was the problem originally, so nice way to slip from one irrelevant statistic to another.
You're claiming that spare bedrooms are the problem, yet our spare bedrooms have grown by 2 million in the same time as our population (and our over 60s population) has grown by double that figure, which shows that actually proportionately it is falling.
That we're building more bedrooms is a good thing, we shouldn't build slums, but we aren't building enough of them still. We need millions more houses to make up for our population growth.
There always should be more bedrooms than people, as people get three bedroom homes as that's what they need, but then their kids move on and they still have their home but then their kids need a 3 bed and the circle of life goes on.
The fact my nan still lives in her home she brought her kids up in sixty years ago doesn't stop her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from needing somewhere to live too.
She's not moved in the past sixty years, but grandchildren and great-grandchildren have.
I'm just pointing out that we're actually building housing faster than the population is growing. Nowt to do with your nan.
🤦♂️
No, we're not.
You've switched data again, and this is categorically easier to disprove. Our population is rising far, far, faster than the number of houses we're building.
The number of rooms ≠ the number of houses.
Children grow up and need a home of their own. Ten, twenty years ago all my nan's grandchildren were already alive and in the population count, but many were living with their own parents. They now need a house of their own, but the population count has not changed for them.
Every Millennial now is an adult that should have their own home, its younger generations that aren't.
Again, circle of life.
We have 4 million extra over 60s alive today who live in homes they lived in for decades predominantly with many more rooms than they need. This again is not a bad thing, they've set down roots and have support networks etc and when they do 'move on' then the house is free for someone else, circle of life. We also have millions of adults today who need a home of their own. Many will move in to houses with more rooms than they "need" because they intend to have kids but don't necessarily have them yet.
Redundancy is a good not a bad thing in a system. If you're building a house anyway, almost always better a 3 or 4 bed house than a 1 bed bungalow. Especially since they pretty much take the same footprint anyway.
Good morning!
I stated earlier that the total number of bedrooms available has increased more than the population. That is incorrect - sorry.
The population in E&W increased by 6.2% from 2011 and 2021, while the number of households increased by 6.1%.
The total number of bedrooms has increased by 6.1%. The total number of spare bedrooms increased by 7.4%.
The total number of dwellings increased by 8.4%. 1.6 million dwellings are now unoccupied (on top of the 26 million spare bedrooms), a 4.5% increase.
So wildly insufficient construction, especially since the demographic changes, and we are going backwards not forwards in having slack in the system of unoccupied buildings too which are again a good thing not a bad thing.
So your claim has been comprehensively dismissed. We just need more construction.
I do not see how anyone, other than the most rabid of NIMBYs can claim otherwise. We need more and we need it now. Also the link I posted last night showed that there are some areas of the country where we are building more than is needed.
Even if Eabhal was right it still does not make the mix right. We need far more homes where they are needed. London and the South East predominantly.
I'd like to see any evidence there's anywhere in the country with more than needed. We need massively more here in the North too.
I agree that, all else held equal, building more homes will help with the housing crisis. That is obvious.
I also agree that the costs of infrastructure should not fall on developers. That's very difficult to solve, but I agree in principle.
Where we disagree is whether building homes is a silver bullet. I've demonstrated that home-building is happening faster than population growth. That the number of empty homes is growing. That the number of spare bedrooms is growing.
The evidence suggests that something else is going on other than pure national demand and supply. The most simple answer is geographical asymmetries, with economic growth massively unbalanced across the country.
At the very least, homebuilding is grossly inefficient in the UK.
Eh?
Home building is absolutely and categorically less than population growth.
Use absolute numbers and that is crystal clear.
Our quantity of population has grown by millions more than our quantity of homes. That is a fact, pretending otherwise is a lie or ignorance.
In absolute terms the number of empty homes and spare rooms SHOULD be growing. They're not growing by enough. It's a failure that there is insufficient empty homes and the proportion of homes empty, by your own percentages, is down.
You can't use absolute numbers, because more than one person can live in each home. I, for example, share a flat with my partner.
This is desperate stuff. AGAIN, I agree that building more homes COULD help with the housing crisis. The great puzzle is even while the number of homes is growing faster than the population, there remains a housing problem.
Even MORE puzzling is that this has happened during mass immigration - immigrants are more likely to live in larger households. It's very weird and just spouting "more houses" ignores a much more interesting question.
You must use absolute numbers if you are making the fallacious claim that housing has grown faster than population, it has not. The number of houses is an absolute, the number of population is an absolute.
The number of houses is growing less than the number of population, that is a fact.
Yes more than one person CAN live in a house, but not every house has more than one person living in it. And as people live longer we have more people now living either with only their partner or after their partner has died, literally on their own.
It's only fallacious in a UK where everyone lives by themselves. That's a very odd opening assumption.
But it's good to see you recognise that household composition is playing a role. I reckon it's by a far a bigger driver of this than say immigration.
Population up by 6.2%. Households up by 6.1%. Bedrooms up by 6.1%. Homes up by 8.4%. Spare bedrooms up by 7.4%. Unoccupied homes up by 4.5%.
The number of houses is an absolute quantity. The population is an absolute quantity.
You could claim the ratio of homes to population is up, which is irrelevant, people are living longer is why, but the number of homes is an abaolute thats what the word number means. The number bsolutely and categorically has gone up by less than the number of population.
Your own data shows the problem, the ratio of unoccupied homes to total homes is down. 8.4% increase in homes so ceteris paribus there should be an 8.4% or higher increase in unoccupied homes, but it's not. The ratio to occupied to unoccupied has gotten even higher, which is a bad thing and shows we don't have enough homes.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
Sure it's work in progress, as the article makes clear. What's the problem with that?
The large number of false positives wouldn't necessarily be a detection problem if they are also the indicators that humans would be expected to follow up if only they had detected them. The article doesn't say if they use AI in assessment and the models could probably be trained anyway.
There's nothing wrong with reporting a work in progress. There is something wrong with reporting something before peer review. Peer review, while not perfect, can check that the claims in the research are correct and reportedly appropriately. That article does not present an unbiased picture of the technology.
Earlier generation AI in screening mammography had high false positive rates, much higher than human readers. In some cases, this led to the screening service having a higher false positive rate and women undergoing unnecessary further investigations, which is a cost for both the woman and the health service. In some cases, the high false positive rate meant that the human screen readers basically just learnt to ignore what the AI system was saying, thus no benefit derived from the system.
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
Sunaks problem is the classic one of over promising and under delivering. No wonder the voters aren't convinced by further promises.
One thing that Starmer and Reeves cannot be accused of is over-promising. On delivery we will have to wait and see.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
Just saw and removed an antisemitic printed sticker saying 'With Jews you lose' with the sort of cartoon you'd expect from a lamppost in south west London on the way to school drop off.
Makes you wonder how widespread such things are.
I didnt realise London lampposts were good at drawing cartoons!
Talking of south west London, and following my cautionary tale the other day of seeing a mobile phone (or "phone" as I suppose we should call it) swiped from a Japanese tourist outside the Royal Academy, on Tuesday I was walking up to Sloane Square and the same thing happened, to a 30-something white bloke who had been idly walking along scrolling through his phone.
The perp was again on one of those motorised (electric?) bicycles and was half way down Eaton Square before the guy had moved 10 yards.
And on the tube there are now posters saying be careful of device theft.
The polling ahead of the state Primaries has shown numbers for Trump which do not get matched on the day of polling. There is now much questioning of why polling is so broken.
One answer I've seen it reported is that many of the pollsters still use landlines to contact voters. This skews the sampling in favour of MAGA Republicans.
As AI is a much discussed topic on the forum, here is an example of using the technology to its strengths: early detection of cancers. Much more interesting than the creation of derivative content IMV.
That is a poor article. It states, “the results of the evaluation have not yet been peer reviewed”. You shouldn’t be doing press before peer review.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
Sure it's work in progress, as the article makes clear. What's the problem with that?
The large number of false positives wouldn't necessarily be a detection problem if they are also the indicators that humans would be expected to follow up if only they had detected them. The article doesn't say if they use AI in assessment and the models could probably be trained anyway.
Listening to the interview about the study, it wasn't a particularly large number of false positives. It was 11 cases of actual cancer out of fifty flagged by the AI.
The other interesting thing is that the system had its leaning function disabled. So it could likely have done better over time.
I've not heard the interview. I would want to see a peer-reviewed publication showing the false positive rate and any impact on the recall rate of the screening service. I don't understand what your denominator and numerator represent when you say, "It was 11 cases of actual cancer out of fifty flagged by the AI."
These systems are getting better generally. There are many successful uses of AI in screening, e.g. retinopathy, cervical cancer screening. I am sceptical of that report, which promotes the positives and doesn't mention the known negatives.
Biden now leads Trump by 1 point in The Economist's polling tracker.
Monday is a huge day for Trump. He either lets his assets - including Trump Tower - get taken in settlement of his New York civil fraud case to settle his $500m+ award plus interest obligations. Or somebody buys him and puts up the cash. Either way, his opponents get to make hay at his wrecked schtick as a guy so rich and so successful in business he can't be bought.
It's also going to be very difficult for the legacy media to continue with their "nothing to see here" line.
I'm not sure whether its GOP idiocy, Dem cleverness, luck or a combination but a mentally disintegrating, financially crippled, politically discredited Trump is the easiest, perhaps only, opponent that Sleepy Joe can beat.
Sleepy Joe was wide awake for the State of the Union address, which shot many of the medias "he's not up to it" foxes.
As I've said before, he's a sharp enough mind in a very frail body.
I'm not convinced by the argument that a "small state" pitch won't appeal to Reform voters. It seems to me that an authoritarian version of a small state philosophy (I know this is somewhat contradictory) would appeal to them - most of their responses, from scrapping inheritance tax to scrapping the HoL - are consistent with that kind of view. It seems to me that these voters are mostly resistant to change and new ideas (so are against university, education spending and immigration) and want the government to leave them alone (so are against tax, spending and government). I'm guessing they also skew elderly, as they're mostly resistant to spending money on children. To the extent they are against "the system" it seems to me that they want the system to have less power over their lives, rather than wanting to change or improve the system. They are not optimistic people, probably with good reason. They are, I would imagine, quite amenable to the Tories' overall message but probably think they are useless and don't trust Sunak.
I wrote an answer to this and deleted it because I thought my answer is wrong. I've mulled it over and I think I've cracked it. The Truss/Sunak regeneration has resulted in a "New Conservative" party analogous to New Labour. It concentrates on luxury values/culture war issues and encourages growth by encouraging/enabling immigration. This has left its core vote behind in the same way that New Labour left Old Labour behind. Reform are Old Conservatives. Agreed? Where am I wrong?
The bubbly nature and perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching means we should all take current Tory VI numbers with a pinch of salt. They’re being artificially suppressed.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
To a degree, but I think the comparison between RefCon and LLG is rather mistaken.
Lib Dem and Green voters generally don't have all that much against Labour at present (although there are some Corbynist diehards in one wing of the Greens). Lib Dem, Labour and Green will, in many or even most cases, vote tactically in the particular seat to get the outcome they want.
Whereas RefUK's emergence is principally because there are a group on the right who want to stick two fingers up to the Tories as well as anyone else. The Tories will probably get some bounceback as the prospect of a Labour Government looms (although switchover would be problematic) but a lot of RefUK supporters very much dislike the Tories. There won't be tactical as for LLG and indeed the RefUK supporters who are most aggrieved with the Tories are in the red wall seats where the Tories particularly need them to avoid wipeout.
Clearly, Tories badly need that squeeze or tactical voting. It's no good them saying after the election, "Well, Tories and RefUK together got about 40% between them, which ain't bad considering". If that's, say, 25/15 then that translates to an unprecedented landslide defeat.
This is right. And the header is good too. RefUK/BXP/UKIP/etc. scratch a political itch that no other party quite manages - Labour have, at times, and so have the Tories, but it's its own thing - a kind of nationalist, small-c conservative communitarianism.
LLG is more fluid and I think - headbangers aside - more apt to tactical voting. I'm a former Green member but will be voting LD in my constituency, given it's an orange/blue marginal.
It is interesting (from the graphic linked in the header) that the measures attracting the most concentrated cross-party support (except perhaps in Westminster) are more apprenticeships and legalising assisted dying. https://twitter.com/LukeTryl/status/1770537807838072903
The one policy that supporters of ALL parties are AGAINST is gender self-identification.
Biden now leads Trump by 1 point in The Economist's polling tracker.
Monday is a huge day for Trump. He either lets his assets - including Trump Tower - get taken in settlement of his New York civil fraud case to settle his $500m+ award plus interest obligations. Or somebody buys him and puts up the cash. Either way, his opponents get to make hay at his wrecked schtick as a guy so rich and so successful in business he can't be bought.
It's also going to be very difficult for the legacy media to continue with their "nothing to see here" line.
I'm not sure whether its GOP idiocy, Dem cleverness, luck or a combination but a mentally disintegrating, financially crippled, politically discredited Trump is the easiest, perhaps only, opponent that Sleepy Joe can beat.
Sleepy Joe was wide awake for the State of the Union address, which shot many of the medias "he's not up to it" foxes.
As I've said before, he's a sharp enough mind in a very frail body.
I definitely want some of whatever is in his doctor’s bag. They can wake him right up for set-piece events and speeches, it’s really quite impressive.
Both parties really need to agree a maximum age of 70 to run, which would be 75 by the end of the term.
So the election is shaping up to be a Tory party offering Thatcherism and a Labour Party offering Thatcherism. What the people need is an end to Thatcherism when you look at Thatcherism it’s the reason why the country is in the mess it is. We need an alternative to Thatcherism.
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
Sunaks problem is the classic one of over promising and under delivering. No wonder the voters aren't convinced by further promises.
One thing that Starmer and Reeves cannot be accused of is over-promising. On delivery we will have to wait and see.
Politicians don't have to make promises any more.
People just imagine that they have made them and then complain when these imaginary promises are not achieved.
While anything that they do achieve will be immediately forgotten or taken as granted.
It was bad already, but in the last few months people suddenly seem willing to give Reform a shot.
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
Looks increasingly like it will take a generation to recover from making Truss the PM.
According to austerity Reeves they will inherit the worst position since WW2
Remind me did the incoming Labour Government decide austerity was the answer, or the complete opposite
The polling ahead of the state Primaries has shown numbers for Trump which do not get matched on the day of polling. There is now much questioning of why polling is so broken.
One answer I've seen it reported is that many of the pollsters still use landlines to contact voters. This skews the sampling in favour of MAGA Republicans.
They are basically radicalised momentum voters who lost confidence in socialism and sought protection from globalised capital in the ethno-nation state. Some say the political spectrum bends back on itself at the extremes. I think it is more precise to say that the traditional left-right on economic policy is intersected by a globalist/nationalist dimension. It is analytically cleaner. Those voters stayed in place economically but shifted on the other dimension..
Our politicians failed in the 1990s and 2010s and on, by exposing citizens to the cold winds of extreme competition from distant countries all the while cutting securities and social services because of neoliberalism etc .... many felt given up on by their politicians and fell back on reactionary politics because of it. The Washington consensus was too radical and fostered resentment. In the wake of 2008 (and we are still living in the aftermath of that) that process accelerated and led to brexit and trump in 2016.
I am still a believer in international collaboration and a kinder more empathetic and gradual approach to international cooperation (which I see in the eu with its social and workers rights and ecological/sustainable standards for instance). Further, the reactionary, toxic nostalgia politics of the far right are going to repeat all the horrific errors of the 20th century. In this sense, I can see where ukippers and reformers and trumpists are coming from - what brought them into existence. But their answer and political stance is just plain wrong. It proposes simple, bigoted answers that will cause self harm, to complicated issues.
The results shown in the header do not appear entirely consistent with that. Reform voters don’t like tax or govt handouts, which is the opposite of Momentum.
I guess you have never noticed the anti big business and global capitalis, anti wef, and Davos sentiment in that crowd then... sure they don't want to pay taxes themselves but they are certainly not pro capitalism
Reform UK overtaking the Tories has to be seriously on the cards now. The Tories have literally reverted back to where they were during the EU elections. Problem is that Labour has not.
So the question is what they do about it. Sunak is target focused on that single flight to Rwanda (and there will only be the one as Rwanda can't take any more...). Get that plane away in the spring as promised, the boats stop, and people forget all about their troubles. The foreigners will have gone!
Meanwhile, in the real world, the Nigel contemplates when he unveils himself to the world. Even if he doesn't actually run for parliament he surely will step up. Leading the ReFUK long campaign, step by step with his bezzie Trump, with endless free advertising on GBeebies.
Has nobody realised just what impact that has vs the previous attempts?
Nigel has already unveiled himself to the world - didn't you see those shorts?
Yep, which just shows again why the self-indulgent Tory MPs shouldn’t have got rid of Truss. At least she had ideas, Sunak is a size-too-small empty suit, who doesn’t appear to be able to actually do anything.
Sunaks problem is the classic one of over promising and under delivering. No wonder the voters aren't convinced by further promises.
One thing that Starmer and Reeves cannot be accused of is over-promising. On delivery we will have to wait and see.
Politicians don't have to make promises any more.
People just imagine that they have made them and then complain when these imaginary promises are not achieved.
While anything that they do achieve will be immediately forgotten or taken as granted.
The Tories promised to cut immigration, but put it up to an all time high. They promised to cut taxes and put them to an all time high. They promised to Level up and abandoned it. They promised growth and got a recession.
Comments
US circulates draft UN resolution calling for 'immediate ceasefire' in Gaza
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=371117
That may be an illusion, and Reform do nowhere near as well in a GE, but it surely shows discontent and, critically, that scaring people about a Labour government probably won't work very well. Too many Tories themselves expect and are OK with losing right now.
At this point the Tories would take a 1997 result if it was offered. They genuinely could do much worse.
The article focuses on cancer detection. However, the downsides of these systems are (a) high false positive rates, and (b) detecting cancers that are not clinically significant. The article also fails to mention that double reading, as is standard in the UK, avoids most of the problems of fatigue they talk about.
AI systems in screening mammography have been around for many years. They are getting better. They will probably be better than humans at some point. But that article is hype.
However the second chart is the killer for the Tories, it's what 25% max of Reform voters who may turn to the Tories, <20% if you net off those who'll switch to Labour.
The AI negative findings in that case have been 100% reliable in the study.
That alone would save a very large workload.
I just quit Labour after 24 years.
We deserve better than the race to the bottom between Labour and the Tories.
Labour want you to think there's no alternative. But there is.
Join it: https://wedeservebetter.uk
NHS AI test spots tiny cancers missed by doctors
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68607059
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/21/labour-party-cancelling-membership-policies
For those a degree is too often listed as an essential criteria, presumably on the basis it demonstrates some core skills, when perhaps it should be desirable instead, as you should have the wiggle room to select people without. Especially in roles which may be filled by people who don't have degrees in the first place.
I wouldn't have needed a degree for my job.
RefCon numbers have been remarkably stable and if anything a bit up on LLG in the last 12 months.
Makes you wonder how widespread such things are.
Feels more like general discontent fueling things. Which is much more critical and destructive for the Tories.
Employers create jobs where there are consumers and where there are workers.
Considering we are at full employment as a nation, it seems they already are doing precisely that!
I'm not seeing the line on the graph which shows how she would have done.
The large number of false positives wouldn't necessarily be a detection problem if they are also the indicators that humans would be expected to follow up if only they had detected them. The article doesn't say if they use AI in assessment and the models could probably be trained anyway.
My answer is that it can be both, IT as a trade is doing the work of administering the computers, whereas IT as a profession is the project management and documentation that we all hate doing, but it important to the successful running of the department or business.
When I used to do consultancy work, I’d always hand over an envelope at the end of the project (and often during a longer project), containing a piece of paper and a memory stick on which were all the passwords, hardware backups etc, that could be handed to the next IT guy to walk in if I were to be hit by a bus tomorrow. That envelope is the difference between the trade and the profession.
Remind me did the incoming Labour Government decide austerity was the answer, or the complete opposite
Sunak bought the government another 18 months or so. That they haven't used that time well is another matter.
Often nutrition is at the bottom of unexplained conditions. I’m sure you’ve considered it, but is there something she’s having too much / too little of?
"The United States has circulated a draft of U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an "immediate ceasefire linked to the release of hostages" in the Gaza Strip"
Are price/earnings ratios in County Durham below 3?
Does everyone in County Durham own their own home?
Does nobody in County Durham flat share or house share?
Is nobody in County Durham struggling to find a home?
I doubt any of those are true.
Trowth, Caesar, whyles they're fasht enough:
A cotter howkin in a sheugh,
Wi dirty stanes biggin a dyke,
Baring a quarry, an sic like;
Himself, a wife, he thus sustains,
A smytrie o wee duddie weans,
An nought but his han' darg to keep
Them right an tight in thack an rape.
An when they meet wi sair disasters,
Like loss o health or want o masters,
Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer,
An they maun starve o cauld and hunger.
The truth is a 1997 result would frankly be an achievement for Sunak from here.
A combination of the Truss debacle collapsing the Tory credibility and Sunak turning out to be crappier than they hoped has led to the disastrous current situations. They cannot even hail Mary Boris back because he jumped ship of his own volition. Let's not forget he would have probably beaten Sunak in a members vote.
But to achieve change requires political skill in cajoling/explaining/threatening other people and those skills require practice, which she didn't have.
It's not an easy job and requires an odd skillset: Steve Richards says that the best PMs are basically teachers (bear in mind Christ used parables to explain), and Truss had the bedside manner of a land mine.
The latest is the police “Hate Crime” training around the new Scots law, which appears to have been written by Stonewall, featuring the totally co-incidentally named “Jo”, whose online views quickly go from “there are only two genders” to “they all belong in the gas chambers”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/20/police-accused-of-attacking-jk-rowling-at-lgbt-event/
The other interesting thing is that the system had its leaning function disabled. So it could likely have done better over time.
This is desperate stuff. AGAIN, I agree that building more homes COULD help with the housing crisis. The great puzzle is even while the number of homes is growing faster than the population, there remains a housing problem.
Even MORE puzzling is that this has happened during mass immigration - immigrants are more likely to live in larger households. It's very weird and just spouting "more houses" ignores a much more interesting question.
Not checked to see when the highlights are on Channel 4. I might get up early, or I might wait for the highlights. Undecided as yet.
Hunt is doing a good job, but Sunak is not. Hunt's best action is doing the polar opposite of what Sunak did as Chancellor.
C4 highlights 12:30
Sky Highlights 07:30, race replay 09:25.
MPs on the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee hit out at a creaking 'Victorian-era' registration system and new rules requiring people to show ID at the ballot box
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/up-8-million-people-risk-32398633
But there is a biiiiig difference between 1945 and 2024. In 1945 people voted whilst war in the Pacific raged on and war in Europe had only just stopped. They wanted something transformative.
In 2024 you cannot say the same. You want radical. Most voters do not. If Labour advocated the policies you fancy it would lose. Its unfair, but thats how it is. And I have to refer you back to Clause 1 of the Labour Party Constitution. The party is not there to protest. To complain. To advocate fantasy ideology. It exists to take power. So it has to win an election, and to do that you need a retail offer people will vote for.
Give us proportional voting and we will get all kinds of new parties, including a true left party which you would likely support. It wouldn't win power outright, but could have some MPs and be party of a government. Instead we have the left splintered all over the place, having to have the absurdly named "Left Unity" to try and tape it back together. The right suffers no such splintering, which is why it usually wins.
Why haven't you learned this basic lesson yet? Factionalism and absolutism = losing elections.
The number of houses is growing less than the number of population, that is a fact.
Yes more than one person CAN live in a house, but not every house has more than one person living in it. And as people live longer we have more people now living either with only their partner or after their partner has died, literally on their own.
This has happened at a time where people live longer, it's not a puzzle. We just need more houses as those living longer still occupy the ones they had when they were younger and there's nothing wrong with that.
I’m a veteran of too many Lib Dem mini surges that petered out when things got serious to have any confidence those voters are sticking with Reform.
Monday is a huge day for Trump. He either lets his assets - including Trump Tower - get taken in settlement of his New York civil fraud case to settle his $500m+ award plus interest obligations. Or somebody buys him and puts up the cash. Either way, his opponents get to make hay at his wrecked schtick as a guy so rich and so successful in business he can't be bought.
It's also going to be very difficult for the legacy media to continue with their "nothing to see here" line.
Also, the two statements "perfect inverse correlation of Tory-Reform switching" and "RefCon numbers have been ... if anything a bit up" are somewhat contradictory.
The evidence in the header is that most of the former Tory voters who have switched to Reform in the polls are now lost to the Tories. They might once have been wooed by the Tories taking some further right policy positions, but the Tories now have a credibility problem with any promise they make, and I think these voters are some of those who simply aren't listening any more.
1947 Potato rationing introduced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Post-Second_World_War_1945–1954
Hm. I might try and get up on time. I've been sleeping pretty bloody awfully, though that might be handy in this case.
But it's good to see you recognise that household composition is playing a role. I reckon it's by a far a bigger driver of this than say immigration.
Population up by 6.2%. Households up by 6.1%. Bedrooms up by 6.1%. Homes up by 8.4%. Spare bedrooms up by 7.4%. Unoccupied homes up by 4.5%.
Rather than their voting Reform, the biggest challenge for the Tories is to get those former supporters now on strike to go to the polls, rather than just sit on their hands.
Lib Dem and Green voters generally don't have all that much against Labour at present (although there are some Corbynist diehards in one wing of the Greens). Lib Dem, Labour and Green will, in many or even most cases, vote tactically in the particular seat to get the outcome they want.
Whereas RefUK's emergence is principally because there are a group on the right who want to stick two fingers up to the Tories as well as anyone else. The Tories will probably get some bounceback as the prospect of a Labour Government looms (although switchover would be problematic) but a lot of RefUK supporters very much dislike the Tories. There won't be tactical as for LLG and indeed the RefUK supporters who are most aggrieved with the Tories are in the red wall seats where the Tories particularly need them to avoid wipeout.
Clearly, Tories badly need that squeeze or tactical voting. It's no good them saying after the election, "Well, Tories and RefUK together got about 40% between them, which ain't bad considering". If that's, say, 25/15 then that translates to an unprecedented landslide defeat.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the Nigel contemplates when he unveils himself to the world. Even if he doesn't actually run for parliament he surely will step up. Leading the ReFUK long campaign, step by step with his bezzie Trump, with endless free advertising on GBeebies.
Has nobody realised just what impact that has vs the previous attempts?
Lab 39%
Con 26%
LD 10% (but efficient)
Ref 12% (but inefficient)
Green 5%
SNP & others 8%
Instinct says a new Tory leader is neither here nor there, but I guess could be worth a PP or two upwards. At whose cost, I'm not sure.
The population is an absolute quantity.
You could claim the ratio of homes to population is up, which is irrelevant, people are living longer is why, but the number of homes is an abaolute thats what the word number means. The number bsolutely and categorically has gone up by less than the number of population.
Your own data shows the problem, the ratio of unoccupied homes to total homes is down. 8.4% increase in homes so ceteris paribus there should be an 8.4% or higher increase in unoccupied homes, but it's not. The ratio to occupied to unoccupied has gotten even higher, which is a bad thing and shows we don't have enough homes.
Earlier generation AI in screening mammography had high false positive rates, much higher than human readers. In some cases, this led to the screening service having a higher false positive rate and women undergoing unnecessary further investigations, which is a cost for both the woman and the health service. In some cases, the high false positive rate meant that the human screen readers basically just learnt to ignore what the AI system was saying, thus no benefit derived from the system.
One thing that Starmer and Reeves cannot be accused of is over-promising. On delivery we will have to wait and see.
The perp was again on one of those motorised (electric?) bicycles and was half way down Eaton Square before the guy had moved 10 yards.
And on the tube there are now posters saying be careful of device theft.
Let's be careful out there, folks.
One answer I've seen it reported is that many of the pollsters still use landlines to contact voters. This skews the sampling in favour of MAGA Republicans.
These systems are getting better generally. There are many successful uses of AI in screening, e.g. retinopathy, cervical cancer screening. I am sceptical of that report, which promotes the positives and doesn't mention the known negatives.
As I've said before, he's a sharp enough mind in a very frail body.
LLG is more fluid and I think - headbangers aside - more apt to tactical voting. I'm a former Green member but will be voting LD in my constituency, given it's an orange/blue marginal.
Both parties really need to agree a maximum age of 70 to run, which would be 75 by the end of the term.
"Rachel Reeves buries New Labour economics - New Statesman" https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/labour/2024/03/rachel-reeves-buries-new-labour-economics
People just imagine that they have made them and then complain when these imaginary promises are not achieved.
While anything that they do achieve will be immediately forgotten or taken as granted.
Considering the economic conditions the Attlee government was remarkeable.
Voters aren't daft.