Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation, rate cut, recession over, growth good -- these would all be beneficial to the Tories' standing. However, polls move slowly. A huge amount of distrust has built up around the Tories. A month of good news isn't going to reverse that. They need an extended period of good stuff happening.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I am sure you are right and as such have mortgaged my house for a 33/1 bet on a Conservative majority.
You evidence is scant, but I am relying on your instincts to make me very wealthy.
Would you be interested in investing in a startup? Novel electric vehicle batteries utilising block chain, associated with New Physics, Fusion and Space launch?
Just this morning I invested the remainder of my pile on Rolls Royce mini nuclear power generation and European delicatessen importation.
Those RR mini nukes are still a bit big though for domestic use. There's a gap in the market for a full service household nuclear generation option, on the model of solar panels.
Subscribe for home nuclear. Up-front payment then a small monthly service contract.
Briefcase-sized reactor arrives and the installers will install it on the back wall or in the basement and wire it up to your mains supply. Excess power goes back into the grid with a generous feed-in tariff. Cooling water can be reused for your bath and showers. Every couple of months an engineer will come with a van to collect your radioactive waste and replenish the uranium.
And if you want to be even more green then consider home hydro. Engineers will come and install a micro-generator on your mains water supply. Worth considering if you're on fixed water rates rather than a meter.
The portable nuclear generators in the Voyager Space probes have clocked up nearly 47 years of service with zero maintenance. You wouldn't even need an engineer visit.
Four and a half kilos of plutonium, to generate 150 watts of electricity, seems a tad inefficient. Even if you could perhaps get a bit of hot water out of the setup.
Hmm, okay, the global stockpile of plutonium is about 560 tonnes, so we can generate nearly 19MW of electricity.
Conclusion: we're going to need some more plutonium.
For watchers of whether the green vote will determine next FM both Alex Cole Hamilton and Douglas Ross have said they will stand as FM (as per @HolyroodSources interviews) which means that in a contested election plurality (with more than all opponents) wins as per SO 11.10.6ff…..
Contested election means green support is probably not necessary for the election of the FM in Holyrood
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I am sure you are right and as such have mortgaged my house for a 33/1 bet on a Conservative majority.
You evidence is scant, but I am relying on your instincts to make me very wealthy.
Would you be interested in investing in a startup? Novel electric vehicle batteries utilising block chain, associated with New Physics, Fusion and Space launch?
Just this morning I invested the remainder of my pile on Rolls Royce mini nuclear power generation and European delicatessen importation.
Those RR mini nukes are still a bit big though for domestic use. There's a gap in the market for a full service household nuclear generation option, on the model of solar panels.
Subscribe for home nuclear. Up-front payment then a small monthly service contract.
Briefcase-sized reactor arrives and the installers will install it on the back wall or in the basement and wire it up to your mains supply. Excess power goes back into the grid with a generous feed-in tariff. Cooling water can be reused for your bath and showers. Every couple of months an engineer will come with a van to collect your radioactive waste and replenish the uranium.
And if you want to be even more green then consider home hydro. Engineers will come and install a micro-generator on your mains water supply. Worth considering if you're on fixed water rates rather than a meter.
The portable nuclear generators in the Voyager Space probes have clocked up nearly 47 years of service with zero maintenance. You wouldn't even need an engineer visit.
Four and a half kilos of plutonium, to generate 150 watts of electricity, seems a tad inefficient. Even if you could perhaps get a bit of hot water out of the setup.
Hmm, okay, the global stockpile of plutonium is about 560 tonnes, so we can generate nearly 19MW of electricity.
Conclusion: we're going to need some more plutonium.
Back in May 2017 Theresa May and the Tories were 20% ahead in the polls and appeared likely to win a big majority at the GE held a month later.At the Mayoral elections for West Midlands and Teeside Andy Street and Ben Houchen both managed to just squeak over the line. Yesterday's Yougov poll implies a swing to the Tories in both areas compared with 2017 - despite a very different national polling backdrop.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
I haven't said the polls won't move, in fact I propose that possibility and suggest that righties *might* turn back to Rishi in spite of his voter repellant ways. You should stop seeing everything as an attack on your hypothesis.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Moonrabbit is one person
Why do you insist on misnumbering her?
I know you’re trying to make an amusing point but I personally find this a bit tricky.
How should I refer to a poster whose gender I am not sure of? How for example should I e refer to you in the 3rd person?
(Really enjoying your Spanish trek blog btw - keep those posts coming!)
You can use the gender-neutral third-party singular pronoun: "they"
I am bemused how many people struggle with the concept of "they" as singular, it has always been used and dates back to the 14th Century. I was taught in primary school that "they" was a third party singular in the 1980s, long before modern gender debates were happening.
It is perfectly professional language to be using and is my preferred pronoun to use when being professional and has nothing to do with gender debates.
There is a candidate coming for an interview later today, they should arrive at 11am.
It’s more gender unknown than gender neutral and isn’t an attribute of the person you’re referring to.
(A pedant writes: if a person is unknown then you don't know their attributes and so cannot attribute)
My point was that in Rumsfeldian terms, the gender of an unknown person is a known unknown, but once they become known to you, you stop using the neutral term.
Nigel's example wouldn't be answered with 'they':
- Who is the prime minister of Moldova, and do you know their gender ? - They are called Dorin Recean and they are male.
So known unknowns cannot be attributed, but known knowns can.
This is beginning to sound like algebraic structure, where rings, groups, fields, commutativity etc are defined and discussed. Also identity. Which is ironic when you think about it.
Here's one of my more bizarre local anti-wheelchair barriers.
The backstory here is that that was installed sometime around 1972 (characteristic ironwork) when the area was developed (my dad was a town architect laying out the area), and in UK style becomes a part of the assumed, unnoticed and unchallenged local mental furniture. It's got a route round it for anyone agile or with a bike / scooter, so the only thing it *can* do is make life difficult for wheelchair and mobility scooter users. Try being a wheelchair user, and perhaps a pensioner, taking a manual wheelchair across grass.
But even the Local Highways authority will not be aware that it exists as none of them keep records, and is their responsibility, and if challenged there is likely to be a squealing from local councillors in unthinking defence of the status quo. So rather than simply removing the unlawful obstruction, there could be a correspondence taking months or years.
This one has excellent sight lines, so either needs just taking away, or to be replaced with something on the kerb line.
(Thank-you to everyone indulging this particular bee in my bonnet. I'll stop here whilst I'm ahead and the sun is out.)
Really admire your work on this. That facebook post is a gentle reminder of just how inconsiderate some people can be to people who wheel about, and why "red tape" is such a useful guard against such arseholes.
Thank-you.
I haven't achieved much yet - though I was one of the first talking about using "Unlawful Obstruction of PROW" laws against obstructions installed by Councils themselves, and that is now being pursued in various places.
At present I've nerded out down the rabbit hole, but I have yet to get a lot of barriers removed .
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I am sure you are right and as such have mortgaged my house for a 33/1 bet on a Conservative majority.
You evidence is scant, but I am relying on your instincts to make me very wealthy.
Would you be interested in investing in a startup? Novel electric vehicle batteries utilising block chain, associated with New Physics, Fusion and Space launch?
Just this morning I invested the remainder of my pile on Rolls Royce mini nuclear power generation and European delicatessen importation.
Those RR mini nukes are still a bit big though for domestic use. There's a gap in the market for a full service household nuclear generation option, on the model of solar panels.
Subscribe for home nuclear. Up-front payment then a small monthly service contract.
Briefcase-sized reactor arrives and the installers will install it on the back wall or in the basement and wire it up to your mains supply. Excess power goes back into the grid with a generous feed-in tariff. Cooling water can be reused for your bath and showers. Every couple of months an engineer will come with a van to collect your radioactive waste and replenish the uranium.
And if you want to be even more green then consider home hydro. Engineers will come and install a micro-generator on your mains water supply. Worth considering if you're on fixed water rates rather than a meter.
The portable nuclear generators in the Voyager Space probes have clocked up nearly 47 years of service with zero maintenance. You wouldn't even need an engineer visit.
Four and a half kilos of plutonium, to generate 150 watts of electricity, seems a tad inefficient. Even if you could perhaps get a bit of hot water out of the setup.
Hmm, okay, the global stockpile of plutonium is about 560 tonnes, so we can generate nearly 19MW of electricity.
Conclusion: we're going to need some more plutonium.
That's trivial.
You get a lot of natural uranium. Make it into sheet metal. Attach it to the ground.
Detonate a thermonuclear bomb above it - high enough that the fireball doesn't touch down, close enough for the neutron pulse.
Hundreds of tons of plutonium in an instant.
You need to be a bit careful with the configuration of the uranium sheets - otherwise it would go critical and melt.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation might be a symptom of weak demand combined with rising unemployment.Inflation has already fallen from 11% to just over 3% but has had little obvious effect on the polls. Why should any further decline to 2% make much difference?
Lawyers for Hunter Biden are telling Fox News to correct the record on bribery allegations made by a discredited FBI informant or face a defamation lawsuit.. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1784983358545834172
Given he probably still faces a criminal trial, the damage from widely reported, known false allegations is arguably quite considerable. If they fail to retract, then malice ought not be too hard to demonstrate.
Sean Hannity’s show alone aired at least 85 segments in 2023 that pushed the informant's claim that Joe and Hunter Biden each took a $5 million bribe. The informant has now been indicted by the feds, who say he fabricated the story... https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1784986051523522929
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation might be a symptom of weak demand combined with rising unemployment.Inflation has already fallen from 11% to just over 3% but has had little obvious effect on the polls. Why should any further decline to 2% make much difference?
It won't. People want prices to go back to what they remember them being.
Failing that, they'd like their income to increase by enough to make up the difference, and then some.
People have a problem with religious politicians when the politician gives the impression of taking their orders from their religion, and not from the voters.
Which is why the average UK politician aiming at swing voters if they state a religion at all say C of E or Church of Scotland.
Some Muslims and Roman Catholics can also get away with it if not too hardline in their adherance to Imam or Vatican doctrine eg Yousaf and Biden. For evangelicals however often their faith defines their life see Forbes or Farron or Kruger and so it leads their political life too (Pentecostal Morrison in Australia did manage it for one win but largely by focusing on the economy, same with hardline Catholic Abbott by focusing on immigration)
That's a good observation - evangelical belief can be quite fragile and crystalline, and a gradual process of liberalisation-with-growing-older as there is a greater exposure to the wider society can be difficult; sometimes it can shatter instead. Alternatively it can harden into intolerance.
It is often less so amongst those with a broader innate awareness - Church of England doctrinal comprehensiveness or the gradual liberalisation of the mainstream Methodist tradition may help here (though Methodism is in heavy decline in the UK).
Roman Catholicism is perhaps easier to sit lightly to without losing all contact. And Islam is a more-encompassing system in its nature.
One corollary is that if you talk to ex-evangelicals - especially in my experience men in their 30s who have maintained the lifestyle discipline but have never managed to get into the 'happy settled down with a wife and family' situation, there can be quite deep bitterness. That may itself be tempered later with a broader experience.
Just catching up with the Rwanda/Ireland question. Is the fear that there will be many more drownings in the channel as migrants attempt to get to English-speaking ROI via UK? And do we expect Ireland to set up its own Rwanda scheme, to somewhere equally "safe" but slightly more grim?
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation, rate cut, recession over, growth good -- these would all be beneficial to the Tories' standing. However, polls move slowly. A huge amount of distrust has built up around the Tories. A month of good news isn't going to reverse that. They need an extended period of good stuff happening.
“However, polls move slowly.”
No. No no nonono no nooooooo your post is utterly wrong. Polls and the opinion behind them move in the space of a balloon pop. Corbyn in commons saying send the substance to Moscow for testing. The days following Truss’s budget. FBI announcing investigation into Presidential Candidate. Etc etc
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Moonrabbit is one person
Why do you insist on misnumbering her?
I know you’re trying to make an amusing point but I personally find this a bit tricky.
How should I refer to a poster whose gender I am not sure of? How for example should I e refer to you in the 3rd person?
(Really enjoying your Spanish trek blog btw - keep those posts coming!)
You can use the gender-neutral third-party singular pronoun: "they"
I am bemused how many people struggle with the concept of "they" as singular, it has always been used and dates back to the 14th Century. I was taught in primary school that "they" was a third party singular in the 1980s, long before modern gender debates were happening.
It is perfectly professional language to be using and is my preferred pronoun to use when being professional and has nothing to do with gender debates.
There is a candidate coming for an interview later today, they should arrive at 11am.
Yep. Just an alternative to the longer "he or she".
I find 'they' very useful here, particularly if I am referring to someone I don't wish to identify. I did this recently when talking about a minister and didn't want to identify them out of courtesy. There was enough info present for the gender to then be a give away as to who they were and it wasn't relevant. 'They' worked perfectly. Also useful when you don't know the gender although I also use s/he.
I don't give two hoots what I am called (within reason) and don't know why anyone does, but if they do I am happy to comply out of courtesy. My only restriction is I won't kowtow. I don't call anyone Sir/Madam and always address people by their first name. If they are offended by my informality I consider that their problem for being a bit stuck up.
What do you do if you don't know their name?
I can certainly see the use of pronouns for third person gender unknown. I have a problem with 'they' as singular. It sounds clunky and awful to my ears. Not just 'they', but then using 'are' to just refer to one person. No matter how earnestly its proponents cite the antecedents it just sounds wrong. 'He' was, I'm sure, once used to mean both 'third person male' and 'third person unknown'. But clearly I can see why that's not ideal either. 'It' clearly carries entirely the wrong implication. And new-fangled inventions like 'xe' just sound like the user is being a dick.
Clearly, from the opening sentence of that post, I'm not THAT uncomfortable with using 'they' with a singular verb form!
Nothing wrong with saying "they" when you don't know a person's sex. Usually far better stylistically than "he or she" or the even ghastlier "s/he". It's when "they" is used when the sex is known that it gets my goat, e.g. when someone refers to me as "they" when they know damned well I'm male because I am right there standing in front of them. Or when a generic mother is referred to as "they". Utterly performative craziness, up there with 2+2=5. Don't do it, kids.
They have a big announcement at 2 today apparently, regarding the upcoming GE. Tice reckons they are claiming they'll stand everywhere, but given they only have 33 on Thursday this seems unlikely. Maybe it's Webbe going to them or a few councillors. I think Glorious George might end up a bit of am irritant for Labour, he has a very limited but very specific appeal
Just catching up with the Rwanda/Ireland question. Is the fear that there will be many more drownings in the channel as migrants attempt to get to English-speaking ROI via UK? And do we expect Ireland to set up its own Rwanda scheme, to somewhere equally "safe" but slightly more grim?
How many of those Irish border crossers were individuals who had been formally notified by the Home Office that they were liable to be flown to Rwanda ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68924392 Most of the asylum seekers initially earmarked for deportation to Rwanda cannot be immediately located, the Home Office has admitted. Home Office documents show that of 5,700 asylum seekers identified in the initial cohort, the government had lost contact with 3,557. Only "2,143 continue to report to the Home Office and can be located for detention", the documents say. A government source denied the group were missing...
..The policy document sets out details of the 5,700 people that Rwanda has "in principle" already agreed to accept. Those identified in the initial cohort all arrived in the UK illegally between January 2022 and June 2023. They had already received a "notice of intent" that their asylum claims were inadmissible and they were being considered for deportation to Rwanda before the Court of Appeal ruled the policy was unlawful on 29 June 2023. It means no-one who arrived on a small boat since last summer will be removed in the first flights to Rwanda...
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation, rate cut, recession over, growth good -- these would all be beneficial to the Tories' standing. However, polls move slowly. A huge amount of distrust has built up around the Tories. A month of good news isn't going to reverse that. They need an extended period of good stuff happening.
“However, polls move slowly.”
No. No no nonono no nooooooo your post is utterly wrong. Polls and the opinion behind them move in the space of a balloon pop. Corbyn in commons saying send the substance to Moscow for testing. The days following Truss’s budget. FBI announcing investigation into Presidential Candidate. Etc etc
They have a big announcement at 2 today apparently, regarding the upcoming GE. Tice reckons they are claiming they'll stand everywhere, but given they only have 33 on Thursday this seems unlikely. Maybe it's Webbe going to them or a few councillors. I think Glorious George might end up a bit of am irritant for Labour, he has a very limited but very specific appeal
Might end up being? Glorious George has been a minor irritant for years
They have a big announcement at 2 today apparently, regarding the upcoming GE. Tice reckons they are claiming they'll stand everywhere, but given they only have 33 on Thursday this seems unlikely. Maybe it's Webbe going to them or a few councillors. I think Glorious George might end up a bit of am irritant for Labour, he has a very limited but very specific appeal
Might end up being? Glorious George has been a minor irritant for years
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Moonrabbit is one person
Why do you insist on misnumbering her?
I know you’re trying to make an amusing point but I personally find this a bit tricky.
How should I refer to a poster whose gender I am not sure of? How for example should I e refer to you in the 3rd person?
(Really enjoying your Spanish trek blog btw - keep those posts coming!)
You can use the gender-neutral third-party singular pronoun: "they"
I am bemused how many people struggle with the concept of "they" as singular, it has always been used and dates back to the 14th Century. I was taught in primary school that "they" was a third party singular in the 1980s, long before modern gender debates were happening.
It is perfectly professional language to be using and is my preferred pronoun to use when being professional and has nothing to do with gender debates.
There is a candidate coming for an interview later today, they should arrive at 11am.
Yep. Just an alternative to the longer "he or she".
I find 'they' very useful here, particularly if I am referring to someone I don't wish to identify. I did this recently when talking about a minister and didn't want to identify them out of courtesy. There was enough info present for the gender to then be a give away as to who they were and it wasn't relevant. 'They' worked perfectly. Also useful when you don't know the gender although I also use s/he.
I don't give two hoots what I am called (within reason) and don't know why anyone does, but if they do I am happy to comply out of courtesy. My only restriction is I won't kowtow. I don't call anyone Sir/Madam and always address people by their first name. If they are offended by my informality I consider that their problem for being a bit stuck up.
What do you do if you don't know their name?
I can certainly see the use of pronouns for third person gender unknown. I have a problem with 'they' as singular. It sounds clunky and awful to my ears. Not just 'they', but then using 'are' to just refer to one person. No matter how earnestly its proponents cite the antecedents it just sounds wrong. 'He' was, I'm sure, once used to mean both 'third person male' and 'third person unknown'. But clearly I can see why that's not ideal either. 'It' clearly carries entirely the wrong implication. And new-fangled inventions like 'xe' just sound like the user is being a dick.
Clearly, from the opening sentence of that post, I'm not THAT uncomfortable with using 'they' with a singular verb form!
Nothing wrong with saying "they" when you don't know a person's sex. Usually far better stylistically than "he or she" or the even ghastlier "s/he". It's when "they" is used when the sex is known that it gets my goat, e.g. when someone refers to me as "they" when they know damned well I'm male because I am right there standing in front of them. Or when a generic mother is referred to as "they". Utterly performative craziness, up there with 2+2=5. Don't do it, kids.
Well I'm largely with you there. But I'd be happier if there was a word meaning 'third person singular gender unknown' to distinguish it from 'third person plural'. It would be useful.
Still, other languages have these inadequacies too. My understanding (though my 12 year old daughter, whose understanding of these things is not necessarily perfect) is that Spanish has either 'third person plural female' or 'third person plural male/mixed' - so a group of 99 women and one man would be given the masculine third person.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Moonrabbit is one person
Why do you insist on misnumbering her?
I know you’re trying to make an amusing point but I personally find this a bit tricky.
How should I refer to a poster whose gender I am not sure of? How for example should I e refer to you in the 3rd person?
(Really enjoying your Spanish trek blog btw - keep those posts coming!)
You can use the gender-neutral third-party singular pronoun: "they"
I am bemused how many people struggle with the concept of "they" as singular, it has always been used and dates back to the 14th Century. I was taught in primary school that "they" was a third party singular in the 1980s, long before modern gender debates were happening.
It is perfectly professional language to be using and is my preferred pronoun to use when being professional and has nothing to do with gender debates.
There is a candidate coming for an interview later today, they should arrive at 11am.
Yep. Just an alternative to the longer "he or she".
I find 'they' very useful here, particularly if I am referring to someone I don't wish to identify. I did this recently when talking about a minister and didn't want to identify them out of courtesy. There was enough info present for the gender to then be a give away as to who they were and it wasn't relevant. 'They' worked perfectly. Also useful when you don't know the gender although I also use s/he.
I don't give two hoots what I am called (within reason) and don't know why anyone does, but if they do I am happy to comply out of courtesy. My only restriction is I won't kowtow. I don't call anyone Sir/Madam and always address people by their first name. If they are offended by my informality I consider that their problem for being a bit stuck up.
What do you do if you don't know their name?
I can certainly see the use of pronouns for third person gender unknown. I have a problem with 'they' as singular. It sounds clunky and awful to my ears. Not just 'they', but then using 'are' to just refer to one person. No matter how earnestly its proponents cite the antecedents it just sounds wrong. 'He' was, I'm sure, once used to mean both 'third person male' and 'third person unknown'. But clearly I can see why that's not ideal either. 'It' clearly carries entirely the wrong implication. And new-fangled inventions like 'xe' just sound like the user is being a dick.
Clearly, from the opening sentence of that post, I'm not THAT uncomfortable with using 'they' with a singular verb form!
Nothing wrong with saying "they" when you don't know a person's sex. Usually far better stylistically than "he or she" or the even ghastlier "s/he". It's when "they" is used when the sex is known that it gets my goat, e.g. when someone refers to me as "they" when they know damned well I'm male because I am right there standing in front of them. Or when a generic mother is referred to as "they". Utterly performative craziness, up there with 2+2=5. Don't do it, kids.
Well I'm largely with you there. But I'd be happier if there was a word meaning 'third person singular gender unknown' to distinguish it from 'third person plural'. It would be useful.
Still, other languages have these inadequacies too. My understanding (though my 12 year old daughter, whose understanding of these things is not necessarily perfect) is that Spanish has either 'third person plural female' or 'third person plural male/mixed' - so a group of 99 women and one man would be given the masculine third person.
That kind of happens in English. A group of male and female former students are alumni. A group of male only former students are alumni. But a group of female only former students are alumnae.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Moonrabbit is one person
Why do you insist on misnumbering her?
I know you’re trying to make an amusing point but I personally find this a bit tricky.
How should I refer to a poster whose gender I am not sure of? How for example should I e refer to you in the 3rd person?
(Really enjoying your Spanish trek blog btw - keep those posts coming!)
You can use the gender-neutral third-party singular pronoun: "they"
I am bemused how many people struggle with the concept of "they" as singular, it has always been used and dates back to the 14th Century. I was taught in primary school that "they" was a third party singular in the 1980s, long before modern gender debates were happening.
It is perfectly professional language to be using and is my preferred pronoun to use when being professional and has nothing to do with gender debates.
There is a candidate coming for an interview later today, they should arrive at 11am.
Yep. Just an alternative to the longer "he or she".
I find 'they' very useful here, particularly if I am referring to someone I don't wish to identify. I did this recently when talking about a minister and didn't want to identify them out of courtesy. There was enough info present for the gender to then be a give away as to who they were and it wasn't relevant. 'They' worked perfectly. Also useful when you don't know the gender although I also use s/he.
I don't give two hoots what I am called (within reason) and don't know why anyone does, but if they do I am happy to comply out of courtesy. My only restriction is I won't kowtow. I don't call anyone Sir/Madam and always address people by their first name. If they are offended by my informality I consider that their problem for being a bit stuck up.
What do you do if you don't know their name?
I can certainly see the use of pronouns for third person gender unknown. I have a problem with 'they' as singular. It sounds clunky and awful to my ears. Not just 'they', but then using 'are' to just refer to one person. No matter how earnestly its proponents cite the antecedents it just sounds wrong. 'He' was, I'm sure, once used to mean both 'third person male' and 'third person unknown'. But clearly I can see why that's not ideal either. 'It' clearly carries entirely the wrong implication. And new-fangled inventions like 'xe' just sound like the user is being a dick.
Clearly, from the opening sentence of that post, I'm not THAT uncomfortable with using 'they' with a singular verb form!
Nothing wrong with saying "they" when you don't know a person's sex. Usually far better stylistically than "he or she" or the even ghastlier "s/he". It's when "they" is used when the sex is known that it gets my goat, e.g. when someone refers to me as "they" when they know damned well I'm male because I am right there standing in front of them. Or when a generic mother is referred to as "they". Utterly performative craziness, up there with 2+2=5. Don't do it, kids.
Well I'm largely with you there. But I'd be happier if there was a word meaning 'third person singular gender unknown' to distinguish it from 'third person plural'. It would be useful.
Still, other languages have these inadequacies too. My understanding (though my 12 year old daughter, whose understanding of these things is not necessarily perfect) is that Spanish has either 'third person plural female' or 'third person plural male/mixed' - so a group of 99 women and one man would be given the masculine third person.
Is it Hungarian that has no gender in its pronouns? So then you don't need to worry about any of this! Go Hungarian!
On topic. Thanks Stodge. Having measurement, par scores and yardsticks up front is so important to avoiding the daftness everyone claiming victory. You have effectively put padlock on door to the spin room, killing all post match spin. Provided your pre match analysis is balanced.
“I'm expecting 500 Conservative losses at least” - Stodge. There are reasons it might not get near 500 losses. Cons are only defending “900 and something” seats this time. In many places the Conservatives are now the opposition, challengers to unpopular councils and recent council decisions. So we need to factor in Conservative gains, likely at expense of the Yellows and Greens as well as reds.
Also, with Palestine bombed and starved to death and Muslims in UK unhappy with Starmer’s and Labours response, it will be interesting how terribly this impacts Labours turn out in some places, traditional Labour places. George might be the only one legitimately crowing after these elections, enhancing his profile and danger to Labour still more.
Also, is your “I'm expecting 500 Conservative losses at least” based too much on national polling? where all those GE polls offer voters a Reform option, and these local ballot papers don’t, just to what extent does this surely boost the Tories?
We have to factor in Conservative gains limiting overall losses.
Nick Ferrari on LBC claims two Labour MPs are about to defect to Gorgeous's latest vehicle.
The MP for Coventry South might be a possibility.
The North East mayoral election will be a test of how well an ex-Labour candidate can do up against an official Labour candidate.
Not really that is a unique case of decent candidate against a second rate Labour candidate.
And where the decent candidate is managing to pick up a lot of screw the establishment votes
If Driscoll loses in that context, and also the context of the more personal mayoral position, then I think that should dash the hopes of anyone else planning this route. If Driscoll wins, then, sure, those caveats apply.
I've seen pics of one of the largest ones which I think featured in Andrew Graham-Dixons quite good BBC series Art of Scandinavia*, in fact I thought (wrongly) that there was only one. They are other wordly, almost from a fantasy.
*Ironically not currently available on iplayer but is on Apple and Prime.
Just catching up with the Rwanda/Ireland question. Is the fear that there will be many more drownings in the channel as migrants attempt to get to English-speaking ROI via UK? And do we expect Ireland to set up its own Rwanda scheme, to somewhere equally "safe" but slightly more grim?
How many of those Irish border crossers were individuals who had been formally notified by the Home Office that they were liable to be flown to Rwanda ?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68924392 Most of the asylum seekers initially earmarked for deportation to Rwanda cannot be immediately located, the Home Office has admitted. Home Office documents show that of 5,700 asylum seekers identified in the initial cohort, the government had lost contact with 3,557. Only "2,143 continue to report to the Home Office and can be located for detention", the documents say. A government source denied the group were missing...
..The policy document sets out details of the 5,700 people that Rwanda has "in principle" already agreed to accept. Those identified in the initial cohort all arrived in the UK illegally between January 2022 and June 2023. They had already received a "notice of intent" that their asylum claims were inadmissible and they were being considered for deportation to Rwanda before the Court of Appeal ruled the policy was unlawful on 29 June 2023. It means no-one who arrived on a small boat since last summer will be removed in the first flights to Rwanda...
Avoid deportation to Rwanda with this one simple trick. I presume that the remaining 2,143 have suddenly gone missing too.
"Simon Harris: ‘Legitimate expectation’ asylum seekers will be returned to UK The Taoiseach called for a sense of calm and said everyone needed ‘to take a deep breath and just be very factual’."
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I am sure you are right and as such have mortgaged my house for a 33/1 bet on a Conservative majority.
You evidence is scant, but I am relying on your instincts to make me very wealthy.
Would you be interested in investing in a startup? Novel electric vehicle batteries utilising block chain, associated with New Physics, Fusion and Space launch?
Just this morning I invested the remainder of my pile on Rolls Royce mini nuclear power generation and European delicatessen importation.
Those RR mini nukes are still a bit big though for domestic use. There's a gap in the market for a full service household nuclear generation option, on the model of solar panels.
Subscribe for home nuclear. Up-front payment then a small monthly service contract.
Briefcase-sized reactor arrives and the installers will install it on the back wall or in the basement and wire it up to your mains supply. Excess power goes back into the grid with a generous feed-in tariff. Cooling water can be reused for your bath and showers. Every couple of months an engineer will come with a van to collect your radioactive waste and replenish the uranium.
And if you want to be even more green then consider home hydro. Engineers will come and install a micro-generator on your mains water supply. Worth considering if you're on fixed water rates rather than a meter.
The portable nuclear generators in the Voyager Space probes have clocked up nearly 47 years of service with zero maintenance. You wouldn't even need an engineer visit.
Four and a half kilos of plutonium, to generate 150 watts of electricity, seems a tad inefficient. Even if you could perhaps get a bit of hot water out of the setup.
Hmm, okay, the global stockpile of plutonium is about 560 tonnes, so we can generate nearly 19MW of electricity.
Conclusion: we're going to need some more plutonium.
That's trivial.
You get a lot of natural uranium. Make it into sheet metal. Attach it to the ground.
Detonate a thermonuclear bomb above it - high enough that the fireball doesn't touch down, close enough for the neutron pulse.
Hundreds of tons of plutonium in an instant.
You need to be a bit careful with the configuration of the uranium sheets - otherwise it would go critical and melt.
Do it in Camden, then HS2 and HS1 could be joined up afterwards.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Moonrabbit is one person
Why do you insist on misnumbering her?
I know you’re trying to make an amusing point but I personally find this a bit tricky.
How should I refer to a poster whose gender I am not sure of? How for example should I e refer to you in the 3rd person?
(Really enjoying your Spanish trek blog btw - keep those posts coming!)
You can use the gender-neutral third-party singular pronoun: "they"
I am bemused how many people struggle with the concept of "they" as singular, it has always been used and dates back to the 14th Century. I was taught in primary school that "they" was a third party singular in the 1980s, long before modern gender debates were happening.
It is perfectly professional language to be using and is my preferred pronoun to use when being professional and has nothing to do with gender debates.
There is a candidate coming for an interview later today, they should arrive at 11am.
It’s more gender unknown than gender neutral and isn’t an attribute of the person you’re referring to.
(A pedant writes: if a person is unknown then you don't know their attributes and so cannot attribute)
My point was that in Rumsfeldian terms, the gender of an unknown person is a known unknown, but once they become known to you, you stop using the neutral term.
Nigel's example wouldn't be answered with 'they':
- Who is the prime minister of Moldova, and do you know their gender ? - They are called Dorin Recean and they are male.
So known unknowns cannot be attributed, but known knowns can.
This is beginning to sound like algebraic structure, where rings, groups, fields, commutativity etc are defined and discussed. Also identity. Which is ironic when you think about it.
It's just a slightly novel usage of a very common existing form. I really don't see the problem.
I've seen pics of one of the largest ones which I think featured in Andrew Graham-Dixons quite good BBC series Art of Scandinavia*, in fact I thought (wrongly) that there was only one. They are other wordly, almost from a fantasy.
*Ironically not currently available on iplayer but is on Apple and Prime.
North Russia has similarly amazing wooden churches. I was planning to go see til war intervened. Churches in Russia - especially in the north - are rammed with Noom
Your conclusion seems quite reasonable: a good but not spectacular night for Labour and a bad but not catastrophic night for the Conservatives.
Can you say any more about these various Independents? Who are they?
Around here (and I mean "Independents", not "Ashfield Independents" who are a full blown political party) they tend to believe they are supporting their local community, but have an overdone sense of their personal beliefs being what everybody else wants, and pay little attention to some of their (more inconvenient) legal responsibilities.
For an example of the above, here is an illegal (under Equality Act 2010) anti-wheelchair / anti-mobility aid barrier blocking a designated footpath / cycleway at the Outwood Viaduct in Greater Manchester, installed this spring, and blocking access to a Woodland Trust reserve. The Radcliffe First group (Salford Area) Councillors are celebrating £2500 of Council money being spent on it, with the intention to install more.
It will be coming out in due course, because they are subject to legal action and up to £10k compensation each time someone is discriminated against, but that does not sink in.
Why did they want to install this?
It will be an attempt to stop antisocial motorbikes / quad bikes.
Without resorting to keys, it is a hard problem to solve. How do you maintain disabled access but stop idiots razzing about where they shouldn't?
I have the same problem with my Dad round here - I have to deconstruct his scooter, get him to walk the 5 yards through the barrier, carry it over in parts, then reconstruct it on the other side. Not an option for most and a total pain.
Some sort of temporary camera trap and sufficient enforcement action instead?
All too often innocent people are being made to suffer due to poorly thought through attempts to deal with a troublesome minority.
Thanks both for your comments. Keys or spring loaded gates don't fix it unfortunately, since the people who are blocked are often eg using a powechair or scooter, or do not have sufficient strength to use a stiff RADAR key.
The answer is culture change and appropriate policing - which has been done in some places for decades under the name Operation Endurance. National Guidlines ("Inclusive Mobility"/LTN 1/20) are that the requirement is bollards with a 1.5m air gap between, and a straight, flat approach each side.
Some places are backward, and can be quite abusive. I have a friend who uses a wheelchair and/or E-tricycle tandem, who was told by her Local Authority's legal team that she would be required to come to the barrier and demonstrate that she was physically incapable of lifting her tricycle through it.
One of my little actiivisms is to keep talking about the issue in public, and challenging barriers where I am able - but I have 300-400 already known to me around my town of 50k people. Including around some of our Green Flag parks.
If it's an issue of interest to you, @Flatlander , I'd encourage you to join a network such as the Wheels for Wellbeing Activists network *, where there is good material, template letters etc. There's quite a lot being done to challenge barriers - and Sustrans are heroes who are removing 300-400 a year from their walking/cycling network. But it's a long haul.
I normally work from the perspective of a disabled pedestrian, as that allows me to apply the laws used by the Ramblers against blocked Public Footpaths, as well as Equality Act 2010.
One big trend is to walkers, wheelers and cyclists recognising that we have the same issues, and joint local organisations appearing - such as Walk-Ride Greater Manchester.
I have a lot of sympathy, as a “now” wheelchair user who, long ago in his “able” days extended a shop premises in such a way as to render the extension area inaccessible to wheelchair users. Karma is indeed a bitch! I also now cannot get into my once-favourite pub!
They are required to make reasonable adjustments under EA2010. But it often needs a fuss to wake things up. The standard process for a local council is to obfuscate or ignore until such time as a Letter Before Action appears, when they will act or sometimes try and buy off the complainant whilst doing nothing, and may make a move when the case reaches the door of the Court.
I've had a general awareness of such barriers for years, but I did not internalise the impact on disabled or elderly people using mobility aids until I could not wheel my mum to the GP for that reason in 2017-18.
In your case a pragmatic (though not perfect) answer could be to ask them to install a request-assistance bell by the door and buy an inexpensive deployable ramp, if it is anything like the one in the James May video above, or something similar. There is often a greater response to a specific, known individual, than a generic principle.
(WIth barriers on footpaths, a specific local voter lobbying the Local Councillor could do better than an activist from elsewhere lobbying the Chief Exec. In my area I know that there is a bias to do nothing, so I am focus on things that are enforcible legal processes.)
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
Telegraph up for sale after takeover collapses The Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers are back up for sale after an Abu Dhabi-backed bid to take them over collapsed.
The ownership of the papers was set to be transferred to the Gulf-backed RedBird IMI consortium before the government intervened in January.
Legislation has since been put forward to ban foreign states from owning UK newspapers and news magazines.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I am sure you are right and as such have mortgaged my house for a 33/1 bet on a Conservative majority.
You evidence is scant, but I am relying on your instincts to make me very wealthy.
Would you be interested in investing in a startup? Novel electric vehicle batteries utilising block chain, associated with New Physics, Fusion and Space launch?
Just this morning I invested the remainder of my pile on Rolls Royce mini nuclear power generation and European delicatessen importation.
Those RR mini nukes are still a bit big though for domestic use. There's a gap in the market for a full service household nuclear generation option, on the model of solar panels.
Subscribe for home nuclear. Up-front payment then a small monthly service contract.
Briefcase-sized reactor arrives and the installers will install it on the back wall or in the basement and wire it up to your mains supply. Excess power goes back into the grid with a generous feed-in tariff. Cooling water can be reused for your bath and showers. Every couple of months an engineer will come with a van to collect your radioactive waste and replenish the uranium.
And if you want to be even more green then consider home hydro. Engineers will come and install a micro-generator on your mains water supply. Worth considering if you're on fixed water rates rather than a meter.
Given recent weather, what about mini turbines installed in drainpipes?
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
I hesitate to ask this, but the banter heuristic demands it. Do artificially constructed vaginas have cervixes (cervices?) technically? A cervix is the boundary between the vagina and the womb. Trans women with a vagina have a vagina but no womb and so technically cannot have a cervix. However such a vagina is not open ended but is closed. Is this closure analogous to a closed cervix, in the same way that a closed door and an open door are both doors?
Would a diagram help? I mean I have Paint on my laptop and it'll only take me fi[That's enough - Ed]
Why the fuck is this UNESCO World Heritage Listed already, when the Jobbie building in Edinburgh, or the Holyrood Parliament masterpiece, have yet to even make the “tentative list”?!
And what about “the ensemble of Camden High Street retail centre and its homeless tents”. Been waiting for status for yonks. Yet this crap, a couple of houses and a chapel on a muddy island? - the French bribe a couple of UNESCO dudes in Paris and bingo. Listed
Everton about to be more fucked than a stepmom on Pornhub.
Everton call in insolvency advisers amid fresh doubt over 777 takeover
Club believed to be waiting for further £15m of loans from 777
Advisory firm Teneo deals with restructuring and insolvency
Everton are calling in a leading firm of restructuring and insolvency advisers, the Guardian understands, raising further questions about the proposed takeover of the Premier League club by 777 Partners.
The move comes as the club are believed to still be waiting for a further £15m of loans that 777 had pledged to provide Everton with during April, according to one 777 source.
The latest loan would have taken the amount the club had borrowed from the American firm to more than £200m during the seven months since it was announced it would acquire Everton.
However, 777 appears to be experiencing further financial difficulties, with its low-cost airline Bonza entering voluntary administration in Australia on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, 777 Partners is understood to have parted company with its UK PR advisers after falling behind on paying its fees.
Nick Ferrari on LBC claims two Labour MPs are about to defect to Gorgeous's latest vehicle.
The MP for Coventry South might be a possibility.
The North East mayoral election will be a test of how well an ex-Labour candidate can do up against an official Labour candidate.
I got the impression, rightly or wrongly, from fairly casual reading, that a sensible Labour Party would have nominated the Independent anyway. My recollection, from long, long ago, is that there’s a much stronger regional identity in the NE, than in the Home Counties. So I would expect a reasonably well known local candidate to do well.
Hainault latest: 'Stabbings' reported as man with sword attacks people near Tube station The Metropolitan Police says a 36-year-old man wielding a sword has been arrested after an attack on members of the public and two police officers near an east London Tube station. Officers said they are not looking for more suspects and the attack "does not appear to be terror related". https://news.sky.com/story/hainault-latest-stabbings-reported-as-man-with-sword-attacks-people-near-tube-station-13126112
Hainault is in the Havering & Redbridge constituency for the London Assembly and Mayoral elections in two days' time, and in Wes Streeting's Ilford North parliamentary constituency.
North-east London seems to have an unusually high number of this type of incident.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation might be a symptom of weak demand combined with rising unemployment.Inflation has already fallen from 11% to just over 3% but has had little obvious effect on the polls. Why should any further decline to 2% make much difference?
It’s a huge symbolic moment in a febrile political atmosphere, meaning lots of voters will notice it and think the government have done a good job to stand cost of living crisis on its head so quickly.
Just to correct you, it’s energy behind the big drop. And the sequence of announcements is: 9th May interest rate cut announced, 10th May UK comes out of recession with very good first quarter growth, 22nd May Inflation will fall below 2%!
To exploit this, Rishi Sunak is announcing the General Election date 1037hrs 13th May, for 2024 General Election is being held on 4th July. Parliament will end on 23rd May.
The final vote shares will be CON33 LAB39 LDM16 REF3 GRN4 SNP2
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
I hesitate to ask this, but the banter heuristic demands it. Do artificially constructed vaginas have cervixes (cervices?) technically? A cervix is the boundary between the vagina and the womb. Trans women with a vagina have a vagina but no womb and so technically cannot have a cervix. However such a vagina is not open ended but is closed. Is this closure analogous to a closed cervix, in the same way that a closed door and an open door are both doors?
Would a diagram help? I mean I have Paint on my laptop and it'll only take me fi[That's enough - Ed]
God knows. It is not something I have extensively researched as I am quite squeamish anyway.
I do wonder if we will get to the stage where transplants will be available ?
Why the fuck is this UNESCO World Heritage Listed already, when the Jobbie building in Edinburgh, or the Holyrood Parliament masterpiece, have yet to even make the “tentative list”?!
And what about “the ensemble of Camden High Street retail centre and its homeless tents”. Been waiting for status for yonks. Yet this crap, a couple of houses and a chapel on a muddy island? - the French bribe a couple of UNESCO dudes in Paris and bingo. Listed
Pff!
I remember going there as a young whipper-snapper and being given one of those big Franc notes that were like wrapping paper to occupy myself in the shops whilst my parents and their friends enjoyed post lunch drinks. I bought a comb that was made like a flick knife with a crocodile design handle. Obviously when I got home I took apart a real knife and replaced the comb and thought I was the nuts with my flick knife until my sister grassed me up and my parents confiscated it.
I’m not sure what connects flick-combs with Mont St Michel to warrant selling them there but maybe they were a thing with the monks for keeping their tonsures neat.
I genuinely don't know who is going to win, but Trump is undeniably in a stronger position than he was back in 2016. Biden's approval is around the 40% mark too. I've green levelled on the pair of them for POTUS in my Betfair book, having been long Biden. Trump at 2.26 is a big price considering the polling.
Hainault latest: 'Stabbings' reported as man with sword attacks people near Tube station The Metropolitan Police says a 36-year-old man wielding a sword has been arrested after an attack on members of the public and two police officers near an east London Tube station. Officers said they are not looking for more suspects and the attack "does not appear to be terror related". https://news.sky.com/story/hainault-latest-stabbings-reported-as-man-with-sword-attacks-people-near-tube-station-13126112
Hainault is in the Havering & Redbridge constituency for the London Assembly and Mayoral elections in two days' time, and in Wes Streeting's Ilford North parliamentary constituency.
North-east London seems to have an unusually high number of this type of incident.
We always used to worry that the BNP would get its foothold there, yet in the event their first (and only) councillor there got elected for Woodford Bridge.
Why the fuck is this UNESCO World Heritage Listed already, when the Jobbie building in Edinburgh, or the Holyrood Parliament masterpiece, have yet to even make the “tentative list”?!
And what about “the ensemble of Camden High Street retail centre and its homeless tents”. Been waiting for status for yonks. Yet this crap, a couple of houses and a chapel on a muddy island? - the French bribe a couple of UNESCO dudes in Paris and bingo. Listed
Pff!
I remember going there as a young whipper-snapper and being given one of those big Franc notes that were like wrapping paper to occupy myself in the shops whilst my parents and their friends enjoyed post lunch drinks. I bought a comb that was made like a flick knife with a crocodile design handle. Obviously when I got home I took apart a real knife and replaced the comb and thought I was the nuts with my flick knife until my sister grassed me up and my parents confiscated it.
I’m not sure what connects flick-combs with Mont St Michel to warrant selling them there but maybe they were a thing with the monks for keeping their tonsures neat.
My only visit was ill-timed, on a peak day in summer when the place was heaving with tourists. Still beautiful especially from a distance but the magic is dimmed when you're struggling up the streets being elbowed by fellow visitors. I was told then that the best thing is to stay overnight, as in so many tourist honeypots, and I can well imagine on a quiet sunny evening once all the day trippers have gone it would be wonderful.
"Simon Harris: ‘Legitimate expectation’ asylum seekers will be returned to UK The Taoiseach called for a sense of calm and said everyone needed ‘to take a deep breath and just be very factual’."
Worth noting that the government in Ireland is pulling a bit of a fast one here. They admitted yesterday that they had no statistics or data on asylum seeker arrivals, and had just assumed they all asylum seekers who weren't claiming asylum at a port of entry (like Dublin Airport) must have come from the UK via Northern Ireland.
Of course, it suited the Tories to accept responsibility so they could claim it as evidence that Rwanda was working.
Stands Scotland where it did? Alas, poor country almost afraid to know itself.
The second line adds much needed context to the first.
If you want context, there are those who believe every single Reform vote will head to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder. A more realistic aim might be the 23% of 2019 Conservative voters who now back Reform - with the 2019 Conservative at 45%, 23% of that would be just over 10% of the entire electorate so you could see the Conservative vote share at 33% with Reform down to 3%.
The actual polling of Reform voters has suggested only a third would support the Conservatives absent a Reform candidate so that would push the Conservatives to the mid to upper 20s on tonight's polling.
In the 2021 PCC elections, the Conservatives led 44.5%-30% and won 30 with Labour winning 8.
On a straight 16% swing from Conservative to Labour, the Conservatives would hold just four. Turnout in 2021 was 34% - will be it any better on Thursday?
If you are referring to me, please use my name as the antagonist. I’m more than happy to debate this.
The polling breakdown of REF support you quoted is meaningless. Pollsters don’t predict, they just give you a snapshot. Not even MRP are prediction, just research that’s dating badly the moment it’s published.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when faced with a real choice. Pollsters have been feeding voters a smorgasbord of options that’s not avaivailble at the general election, unless you wish to waste your time and effort voting. First past the post ensures only Conservative or Labour wins the General Election, voters pick either Starmer or Sunak as Prime Minister - outside of that it’s Libdem to battle in 25 to 45 constituencies, Greens fighting in 2, every vote elsewhere voters will know its waste of time filling in the form, as it doesn’t count in the real election. First past the post creates this different forced choice election.
Whatever polls have been telling you, please remember they are not predictive, the minds of voters can move very quickly when the narrative changes - shift in just the 4 weeks of an election in defiance of real local elections votes mere weeks before. A July 4th election will be set against inflation under 2%, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth, and BOE announced interest rate cut and mortgage lenders responding - the credit crunch and Truss budget will be from a different time and place, years ago. Also thousands of Asylum Seekers have been rounded up into detention and planes taking off deporting them to Africa, with Ireland and the EU bleeting deterrents like this are just not playing fair, as they are now getting the immigrants once set on Britain.
Those are just the known knowns, relentlessly across media that will reshape the narrative in the six weeks till polling day. What’s unknown knowns is what dirt will be thrown at Labour front bench. Fact is, just footage of Starmer at a window holding a beer, reduced a 10 point labour lead down to just 4 points when relentlessly thrown at him daily in a campaign month two years ago. The unknown unknowns I ask you to consider, is impact on polls of Nigel Farage invited to join the Conservative Party, and stand for them as a Conservative candidate.
Secondly, I thank you Stodge for your fine headers on the Local Elections, where you have given us what to watch to calibrate what is good middling and bad night for each party. But what PNS and NEV will show us Labour underperforming the polling, what share figure shows them underperforming against the westminster polling, but still on cusp of a parliamentary majority? I found a NEV of 12% is the least Labour need to get this week to form a majority government - and even that figure is way beneath the swings in the polling. How do you understand it?
Local elections are not national elections. There is considerable polling evidence that the Cons nationally are remarkably more unpopular than local conservatives. There is a reason so many candidates choose to identify themselves as just that, 'Local Conservatives'. There is a reason Mayoral candidates have been distancing themselves from the dreaded C-word, even with the local branding.
Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one. Remember when the story broke and when the 'campaign' ended. Any impact was minimal at best. It was also something of a one-shot pistol. An aspect of the failure of the Rayner allegations to move the polls is that Currygate turned out to be, how should we say this, a load of bollocks.
Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE. Well, probably. However, not inevitably. I think Lab will have to make a major mistake and that is not impossible. However, to assume it will happen is to seriously under-estimate Starmer. He does not have to be brilliant he just has to be better than his opponent and at the moment that opponent seems very likely to be Mr Rishi Sunak.
Think on that - have you seen any evidence that Mr Sunak can maintain a credible election campaign? Can you imagine him facing a 'job interview' style grilling from a serious journalist? Can you imagine him in a debate with Starmer? To have a chance of closing the gap to any meaningful degree he willl have to do all of those and do them well.
In my many GEs I have only ever voted Lab once. I am no fan-boy for Starmer. However, their (not so) secret weapons are going to be front and centre throughout the GE campaign whenever it comes. Their names - Mr Rishi Sunak and the truly pathetic record of the current Govt.
We can all hope for miracles but they hardly ever come.
“Currygate closed the polls? You might like to check the figures on that one.” The evidence absolutely supports me on that one. Go look, just 4% gap when it came to polling day. It actually worked. By the end of the campaign Labour couldn’t get its message across for being asked by every media outfit about beergate.
“Meanwhile we can assume the polls will narrow in the run in to the GE.” I am arguing they will close to just a 5 point gap without any swingback from Lab to Con, just reuniting of the centre right bloc.
Sunak is a drag on Tory polling, though maybe not ultimately huge drag on votes as you assume. Sunak and Hunt will be thought of differently than last year, last month, last week and next week after a 6 week campaign built upon inflation under 2%, BOE interest rate cut, economy out of recession with strong 2024 growth. The fact Labour have called the Rwanda policy so badly only accelerates that Ref to Con campaign period swingback.
You don’t understand do you? Just watch. watch it happen just like this.
You've come back madder than ever MarchMoonHare!
Up the Tories!
I thought they were spoofing the other day and I’m still not sure. No one can be reading the mood of the nation this badly can they?
Tories closing the gap to 5 points is not misreading the mood of a Nation, all they need to do is attract back out for them on election day a block of rightwing brexiteer voters they have had voting for them at the last General Elections. Simples.
Why do you keep misreading the polls into thinking Labour have attracted so many votes away from Conservatives, it’s given them a 20 point lead? That’s not what the polling situation is, thats not the 20 point lead, that’s not the mood of the Nation.
I salute your indefatigiblity over the chances of Tory recovery if not agreeing with them. However it strikes me that a lot of negativity from the right on here and elsewhere about the Tories is down to the stink of likely defeat rather than any great point of principle. A few 30 pointers for the Tories and I suspect there'd be a load of Rishi-sceptic righties quietly changing their position.
Polls don’t predict. They just give a snapshot. Have a think about what might move the polls.
When inflation is Under 2%, and BoE announce rat cut, the economy is out of recession because growth in 2024 is strong. And Rwanda flights are in the air, you reckon the polls won’t move at all?
And I know why you get it wrong. Psychologically if you are left or centre left, this magic dust sprinkled on you won’t work at all, so you can’t “imagine” a world how it would work on anyone. But if you were right or centre right getting this magic dust…
And remember Beergate month worked. It tightened the polls to just a 4% lead polling day.
Low inflation might be a symptom of weak demand combined with rising unemployment.Inflation has already fallen from 11% to just over 3% but has had little obvious effect on the polls. Why should any further decline to 2% make much difference?
It’s a huge symbolic moment in a febrile political atmosphere, meaning lots of voters will notice it and think the government have done a good job to stand cost of living crisis on its head so quickly.
Just to correct you, it’s energy behind the big drop. And the sequence of announcements is: 9th May interest rate cut announced, 10th May UK comes out of recession with very good first quarter growth, 22nd May Inflation will fall below 2%!
To exploit this, Rishi Sunak is announcing the General Election date 1037hrs 13th May, for 2024 General Election is being held on 4th July. Parliament will end on 23rd May.
The final vote shares will be CON33 LAB39 LDM16 REF3 GRN4 SNP2
We have also seen a rise in unemployment levels to 4.2%. Back in the 1960s even 2% unemployment was viewed as high, and were we to remove the many adjustments made to such data - particularly in the 1980s - we would be looking at at least 5% unemployment in 1960s terms on a like for like basis. Todays level is only seen as acceptable because of the memories of it being much higher in the 1980s and 1990s - and again following the GFC. Energy prices have recently risen and the cost effect is likely to contribute to inflation moving higher again by late Summer or early Autumn. Inflation is now less than a third of where it stood a year or so ago yet the polls have not shifted at all. The idea that a further slight drop will change that seems more than a little optimistic from a Tory perspective.
I genuinely don't know who is going to win, but Trump is undeniably in a stronger position than he was back in 2016. Biden's approval is around the 40% mark too. I've green levelled on the pair of them for POTUS in my Betfair book, having been long Biden. Trump at 2.26 is a big price considering the polling.
Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor will explore his queerness, says RTD: ‘We’re not delivering a neutered Doctor’
I have nothing but admiration for the ability of RTD to garner publicity for his show ahead of it dropping on the 11th May. He truly is a master at his craft. I have nothing but admiration for him. Also makes some decent Telly.
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
Some left wing men have fallen into the same trap as Billy Bragg - if sex realists / gender critics include women like Kemi Badenoch they must be “wrong”, when a little thinking could go a long way.
Why the fuck is this UNESCO World Heritage Listed already, when the Jobbie building in Edinburgh, or the Holyrood Parliament masterpiece, have yet to even make the “tentative list”?!
And what about “the ensemble of Camden High Street retail centre and its homeless tents”. Been waiting for status for yonks. Yet this crap, a couple of houses and a chapel on a muddy island? - the French bribe a couple of UNESCO dudes in Paris and bingo. Listed
Pff!
I remember going there as a young whipper-snapper and being given one of those big Franc notes that were like wrapping paper to occupy myself in the shops whilst my parents and their friends enjoyed post lunch drinks. I bought a comb that was made like a flick knife with a crocodile design handle. Obviously when I got home I took apart a real knife and replaced the comb and thought I was the nuts with my flick knife until my sister grassed me up and my parents confiscated it.
I’m not sure what connects flick-combs with Mont St Michel to warrant selling them there but maybe they were a thing with the monks for keeping their tonsures neat.
My only visit was ill-timed, on a peak day in summer when the place was heaving with tourists. Still beautiful especially from a distance but the magic is dimmed when you're struggling up the streets being elbowed by fellow visitors. I was told then that the best thing is to stay overnight, as in so many tourist honeypots, and I can well imagine on a quiet sunny evening once all the day trippers have gone it would be wonderful.
Why the fuck is this UNESCO World Heritage Listed already, when the Jobbie building in Edinburgh, or the Holyrood Parliament masterpiece, have yet to even make the “tentative list”?!
And what about “the ensemble of Camden High Street retail centre and its homeless tents”. Been waiting for status for yonks. Yet this crap, a couple of houses and a chapel on a muddy island? - the French bribe a couple of UNESCO dudes in Paris and bingo. Listed
Pff!
I remember going there as a young whipper-snapper and being given one of those big Franc notes that were like wrapping paper to occupy myself in the shops whilst my parents and their friends enjoyed post lunch drinks. I bought a comb that was made like a flick knife with a crocodile design handle. Obviously when I got home I took apart a real knife and replaced the comb and thought I was the nuts with my flick knife until my sister grassed me up and my parents confiscated it.
I’m not sure what connects flick-combs with Mont St Michel to warrant selling them there but maybe they were a thing with the monks for keeping their tonsures neat.
My only visit was ill-timed, on a peak day in summer when the place was heaving with tourists. Still beautiful especially from a distance but the magic is dimmed when you're struggling up the streets being elbowed by fellow visitors. I was told then that the best thing is to stay overnight, as in so many tourist honeypots, and I can well imagine on a quiet sunny evening once all the day trippers have gone it would be wonderful.
It’s fucking hideous. They should UNESCO list the tourist crowds. This is the queue just to get in the abbey
This is quite a good article on AI regulation - more about how it should be used than limitations on development. The issues discussed don't really require Leon style excitement (so he'll probably argue it's all going to be rendered irrelevant).
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
I hesitate to ask this, but the banter heuristic demands it. Do artificially constructed vaginas have cervixes (cervices?) technically? A cervix is the boundary between the vagina and the womb. Trans women with a vagina have a vagina but no womb and so technically cannot have a cervix. However such a vagina is not open ended but is closed. Is this closure analogous to a closed cervix, in the same way that a closed door and an open door are both doors?
Would a diagram help? I mean I have Paint on my laptop and it'll only take me fi[That's enough - Ed]
God knows. It is not something I have extensively researched as I am quite squeamish anyway.
I do wonder if we will get to the stage where transplants will be available ?
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
Some left wing men have fallen into the same trap as Billy Bragg - if sex realists / gender critics include women like Kemi Badenoch they must be “wrong”, when a little thinking could go a long way.
We are seeing a flood of people changing their tune on this matter. Problem is people have kept the receipts. Whatever people think of Rosie Duffields views she was treated appallingly by Labour over it. Ostracised and abused by online TRA's for daring to challenge their orthodoxy.
People now changing their views because of the Cass report are just moral cowards. Weathervanes. It is not a case of changing views as the information had changed. It was all there in the first place.
Billy Bragg is just a prick. Mansplaining feminism to real feminists. Women be quiet. A man is speaking.
Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor will explore his queerness, says RTD: ‘We’re not delivering a neutered Doctor’
I have nothing but admiration for the ability of RTD to garner publicity for his show ahead of it dropping on the 11th May. He truly is a master at his craft. I have nothing but admiration for him. Also makes some decent Telly.
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
I hesitate to ask this, but the banter heuristic demands it. Do artificially constructed vaginas have cervixes (cervices?) technically? A cervix is the boundary between the vagina and the womb. Trans women with a vagina have a vagina but no womb and so technically cannot have a cervix. However such a vagina is not open ended but is closed. Is this closure analogous to a closed cervix, in the same way that a closed door and an open door are both doors?
Would a diagram help? I mean I have Paint on my laptop and it'll only take me fi[That's enough - Ed]
God knows. It is not something I have extensively researched as I am quite squeamish anyway.
I do wonder if we will get to the stage where transplants will be available ?
I genuinely don't know, sorry
My question was more out of interest than personal need !!!!
“By the end of my autumnal travels, it occurred to me that there is one solution: the Bhutanese example. You ration travel, by time and money: you start to make people pay simply to get into cities, regions, nations”
I bow to no-one in my futurology and extrapolations, but that is notably prescient: as Venice starts to charge simply for Venice
Comments
Just found out ex England cricketer Monty Panesar is standing for Parliament.
https://twitter.com/greg_herriett/status/1785220066423824675
Conclusion: we're going to need some more plutonium.
Contested election means green support is probably not necessary for the election of the FM in Holyrood
https://x.com/scott_wortley/status/1785242444881100871?
This is beginning to sound like algebraic structure, where rings, groups, fields, commutativity etc are defined and discussed. Also identity. Which is ironic when you think about it.
I haven't achieved much yet - though I was one of the first talking about using "Unlawful Obstruction of PROW" laws against obstructions installed by Councils themselves, and that is now being pursued in various places.
At present I've nerded out down the rabbit hole, but I have yet to get a lot of barriers removed
In Carrión I decided my next stop would be in Villalcázar de Sirga, another 6km, for my first beer of the day
The targets tend to get closer as the day progresses, with more beer involved
I'm enjoying that first beer now, outside a 13th century church built by the Knights Templar
You get a lot of natural uranium. Make it into sheet metal. Attach it to the ground.
Detonate a thermonuclear bomb above it - high enough that the fireball doesn't touch down, close enough for the neutron pulse.
Hundreds of tons of plutonium in an instant.
You need to be a bit careful with the configuration of the uranium sheets - otherwise it would go critical and melt.
Much better than Alastair Campbell’s bad version of spin.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1784983358545834172
Given he probably still faces a criminal trial, the damage from widely reported, known false allegations is arguably quite considerable.
If they fail to retract, then malice ought not be too hard to demonstrate.
Sean Hannity’s show alone aired at least 85 segments in 2023 that pushed the informant's claim that Joe and Hunter Biden each took a $5 million bribe. The informant has now been indicted by the feds, who say he fabricated the story...
https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1784986051523522929
Failing that, they'd like their income to increase by enough to make up the difference, and then some.
It is often less so amongst those with a broader innate awareness - Church of England doctrinal comprehensiveness or the gradual liberalisation of the mainstream Methodist tradition may help here (though Methodism is in heavy decline in the UK).
Roman Catholicism is perhaps easier to sit lightly to without losing all contact. And Islam is a more-encompassing system in its nature.
One corollary is that if you talk to ex-evangelicals - especially in my experience men in their 30s who have maintained the lifestyle discipline but have never managed to get into the 'happy settled down with a wife and family' situation, there can be quite deep bitterness. That may itself be tempered later with a broader experience.
And a PB prediction - Scotland, in particular Glasgow, could become a haven for those coming over on small boats, on their way to ROI it not. There are already protests whenever the Home Office try to lift people, with stand offs with Police Scotland etc. https://news.sky.com/story/amp/glasgow-immigration-raid-police-and-protesters-face-off-as-home-office-tries-to-remove-people-from-property-on-eid-12305355
No. No no nonono no nooooooo your post is utterly wrong. Polls and the opinion behind them move in the space of a balloon pop. Corbyn in commons saying send the substance to Moscow for testing. The days following Truss’s budget. FBI announcing investigation into Presidential Candidate. Etc etc
I think Glorious George might end up a bit of am irritant for Labour, he has a very limited but very specific appeal
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68924392
Most of the asylum seekers initially earmarked for deportation to Rwanda cannot be immediately located, the Home Office has admitted.
Home Office documents show that of 5,700 asylum seekers identified in the initial cohort, the government had lost contact with 3,557.
Only "2,143 continue to report to the Home Office and can be located for detention", the documents say.
A government source denied the group were missing...
..The policy document sets out details of the 5,700 people that Rwanda has "in principle" already agreed to accept. Those identified in the initial cohort all arrived in the UK illegally between January 2022 and June 2023.
They had already received a "notice of intent" that their asylum claims were inadmissible and they were being considered for deportation to Rwanda before the Court of Appeal ruled the policy was unlawful on 29 June 2023.
It means no-one who arrived on a small boat since last summer will be removed in the first flights to Rwanda...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvYbKgs5ezY
This is Borgund Church in Norway, made entirely out of wood and built over 800 years ago.
It is a "stave church", an incredibly unusual type of Medieval building.
What makes them so special? Well, there are only 30 original stave churches in the world...
https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1784997063240859994
Rumours were Webbe and Tahir Ali but the latter has vehemently denied
Still, other languages have these inadequacies too. My understanding (though my 12 year old daughter, whose understanding of these things is not necessarily perfect) is that Spanish has either 'third person plural female' or 'third person plural male/mixed' - so a group of 99 women and one man would be given the masculine third person.
And where the decent candidate is managing to pick up a lot of screw the establishment votes
Thanks Stodge.
Having measurement, par scores and yardsticks up front is so important to avoiding the daftness everyone claiming victory. You have effectively put padlock on door to the spin room, killing all post match spin.
Provided your pre match analysis is balanced.
“I'm expecting 500 Conservative losses at least” - Stodge.
There are reasons it might not get near 500 losses. Cons are only defending “900 and something” seats this time. In many places the Conservatives are now the opposition, challengers to unpopular councils and recent council decisions. So we need to factor in Conservative gains, likely at expense of the Yellows and Greens as well as reds.
Also, with Palestine bombed and starved to death and Muslims in UK unhappy with Starmer’s and Labours response, it will be interesting how terribly this impacts Labours turn out in some places, traditional Labour places. George might be the only one legitimately crowing after these elections, enhancing his profile and danger to Labour still more.
Also, is your “I'm expecting 500 Conservative losses at least” based too much on national polling? where all those GE polls offer voters a Reform option, and these local ballot papers don’t, just to what extent does this surely boost the Tories?
We have to factor in Conservative gains limiting overall losses.
We have only very-much-modified ones in England:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensted_Church
*Ironically not currently available on iplayer but is on Apple and Prime.
I've been to the one in Sweden, which is far from the most impressive (looking at that thread), but still a fascinating building.
The Taoiseach called for a sense of calm and said everyone needed ‘to take a deep breath and just be very factual’."
https://www.irishnews.com/news/ireland/simon-harris-legitimate-expectation-asylum-seekers-will-be-returned-to-uk-B7FA3VUMZRGY5MPLWXF7MMZACI/
churches. I was planning to go see til war intervened. Churches in Russia - especially in the north - are rammed with Noom
This is apparently the most famous
Or you could try the James May option
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtmZHLSqiL8
I've had a general awareness of such barriers for years, but I did not internalise the impact on disabled or elderly people using mobility aids until I could not wheel my mum to the GP for that reason in 2017-18.
In your case a pragmatic (though not perfect) answer could be to ask them to install a request-assistance bell by the door and buy an inexpensive deployable ramp, if it is anything like the one in the James May video above, or something similar. There is often a greater response to a specific, known individual, than a generic principle.
(WIth barriers on footpaths, a specific local voter lobbying the Local Councillor could do better than an activist from elsewhere lobbying the Chief Exec. In my area I know that there is a bias to do nothing, so I am focus on things that are enforcible legal processes.)
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/04/15/what-are-the-key-races-in-this-round-of-local-elections/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/04/21/a-closer-look-at-the-local-elections/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/04/30/stodges-third-and-final-look-at-the-locals/
Starmer supports Rosie Duffield now however...
In 2021, the Labour leader had criticised Ms Duffield for saying that only women have a cervix, saying that her comment “is something that shouldn’t be said. It’s not right”.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/rosie-duffield-right-to-say-only-women-have-a-cervix-says-starmer/ar-AA1nV79p?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=e355acd57feb461fc92fab194b68f5c4&ei=30
https://www.economist.com/interactive/us-2024-election/trump-biden-polls
The Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers are back up for sale after an Abu Dhabi-backed bid to take them over collapsed.
The ownership of the papers was set to be transferred to the Gulf-backed RedBird IMI consortium before the government intervened in January.
Legislation has since been put forward to ban foreign states from owning UK newspapers and news magazines.
RedBird said it would halt the takeover and put the media firm up for sale.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68926764
One to add to the must visit list.
Would a diagram help? I mean I have Paint on my laptop and it'll only take me fi[That's enough - Ed]
Mr. B, stave churches are pretty cool, and I imagine they were some of the inspiration behind Whiterun's architecture in Skyrim.
And what about “the ensemble of Camden High
Street retail centre and its homeless tents”. Been waiting for status for yonks. Yet this crap, a couple of houses and a chapel on a muddy island? - the French bribe a couple of UNESCO dudes in Paris and bingo. Listed
Pff!
Everton call in insolvency advisers amid fresh doubt over 777 takeover
Club believed to be waiting for further £15m of loans from 777
Advisory firm Teneo deals with restructuring and insolvency
Everton are calling in a leading firm of restructuring and insolvency advisers, the Guardian understands, raising further questions about the proposed takeover of the Premier League club by 777 Partners.
The move comes as the club are believed to still be waiting for a further £15m of loans that 777 had pledged to provide Everton with during April, according to one 777 source.
The latest loan would have taken the amount the club had borrowed from the American firm to more than £200m during the seven months since it was announced it would acquire Everton.
However, 777 appears to be experiencing further financial difficulties, with its low-cost airline Bonza entering voluntary administration in Australia on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, 777 Partners is understood to have parted company with its UK PR advisers after falling behind on paying its fees.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/30/everton-call-in-insolvency-restructuring-advisers-777-takeover-doubt
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/how-the-snp-broke-scotland/ar-AA1nUzga?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=8e4caeb7eded4e7094361cd25036be45&ei=10
Will it have noom??
Dunno. But it has tremendous beauty and sublimity
My recollection, from long, long ago, is that there’s a much stronger regional identity in the NE, than in the Home Counties.
So I would expect a reasonably well known local candidate to do well.
Just to correct you, it’s energy behind the big drop. And the sequence of announcements is: 9th May interest rate cut announced, 10th May UK comes out of recession with very good first quarter growth, 22nd May Inflation will fall below 2%!
To exploit this, Rishi Sunak is announcing the General Election date 1037hrs 13th May, for 2024 General Election is being held on 4th July. Parliament will end on 23rd May.
The final vote shares will be CON33 LAB39 LDM16 REF3 GRN4 SNP2
I do wonder if we will get to the stage where transplants will be available ?
I’m not sure what connects flick-combs with Mont St Michel to warrant selling them there but maybe they were a thing with the monks for keeping their tonsures neat.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2020/trump-vs-biden
At this point in 2020 Biden +6.2, final RCP average Biden +7.2. Final result, Biden +4.5
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden
At this point, Trump +1.4.
I genuinely don't know who is going to win, but Trump is undeniably in a stronger position than he was back in 2016. Biden's approval is around the 40% mark too. I've green levelled on the pair of them for POTUS in my Betfair book, having been long Biden. Trump at 2.26 is a big price considering the polling.
They'd be a sad loss for Labour, I am sure SKS would be appalled to see them go.
I like the grass roofed buildings in Norway too, although you need a lot of rain to make that work.
I tried it here on a garden structure and it refused to grow grass for 20 years until the past 12 months of deluge...
Of course, it suited the Tories to accept responsibility so they could claim it as evidence that Rwanda was working.
Energy prices have recently risen and the cost effect is likely to contribute to inflation moving higher again by late Summer or early Autumn.
Inflation is now less than a third of where it stood a year or so ago yet the polls have not shifted at all. The idea that a further slight drop will change that seems more than a little optimistic from a Tory perspective.
I have nothing but admiration for the ability of RTD to garner publicity for his show ahead of it dropping on the 11th May. He truly is a master at his craft. I have nothing but admiration for him. Also makes some decent Telly.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/tv/ncuti-gatwa-s-doctor-will-explore-his-queerness-says-rtd-we-re-not-delivering-a-neutered-doctor/ar-AA1nIFcc?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=90bd8d12f3df4143e059dd00337cd53d&ei=16
Are These States About to Make a Big Mistake on AI?
AI is potentially transformative. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on whether we set the right rules.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/30/ai-legislation-states-mistake-00155006
People now changing their views because of the Cass report are just moral cowards. Weathervanes. It is not a case of changing views as the information had changed. It was all there in the first place.
Billy Bragg is just a prick. Mansplaining feminism to real feminists. Women be quiet. A man is speaking.
My question was more out of interest than personal need !!!!
I believe ex-PBer @SeanT predicted this: fees simply to enter famous destinations, towns, islands - in a piece for the Spec in 2016
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/caught-in-the-tourist-trap/
“By the end of my autumnal travels, it occurred to me that there is one solution: the Bhutanese example. You ration travel, by time and money: you start to make people pay simply to get into cities, regions, nations”
I bow to no-one in my futurology and extrapolations, but that is notably prescient: as Venice starts to charge simply for Venice