To be fair, last night's so called "poll" from YouGov was extrapolated voting intention from the MRP.
It wasn't a new poll in and of itself.
Good spot. Do we need to remind pollsters, media (and PBers) to avoid presenting MRP extrapolations as new polls, and also to avoid subsampling under any circumstances without the use of the Subsample Klaxon? I'm not sure OGH would have ever tolerated such wayward behaviour as we see these days on here @TheScreamingEagles@rcs1000
It was a bona fide poll, conducted on the 12th and 13th of June.
According to @Stodge it was not. It was an MRP extrapolation.
To be fair, last night's so called "poll" from YouGov was extrapolated voting intention from the MRP.
It wasn't a new poll in and of itself.
Good spot. Do we need to remind pollsters, media (and PBers) to avoid presenting MRP extrapolations as new polls, and also to avoid subsampling under any circumstances without the use of the Subsample Klaxon? I'm not sure OGH would have ever tolerated such wayward behaviour as we see these days on here @TheScreamingEagles@rcs1000
It was a bona fide poll, conducted on the 12th and 13th of June.
According to @Stodge it was not. It was an MRP extrapolation.
They've tweaked their methodology last week to bring it in line with the MRP.
"Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of industrial products."
"See? If you hadn't been going on, we'd have heard that, Big Nose."
No: it tends to mean the people* who make the masters (speaking loosely: could be jigs or moulds or so on). Rather different.
*Whether the bosses or the actual folk on the shop floor, though. The term is ambiguous, like much occupational terminology in English, in the sense that (say) Michelle Mone made underwear, but she didn't use a sewing machine much of her working time as a company director, or so I assume. And in any case, people change their work with time. I can well believe that someone who was a shop floor worker when his son was at school could own his own business a decade or two later.
To be fair, last night's so called "poll" from YouGov was extrapolated voting intention from the MRP.
It wasn't a new poll in and of itself.
Good spot. Do we need to remind pollsters, media (and PBers) to avoid presenting MRP extrapolations as new polls, and also to avoid subsampling under any circumstances without the use of the Subsample Klaxon? I'm not sure OGH would have ever tolerated such wayward behaviour as we see these days on here @TheScreamingEagles@rcs1000
It was a bona fide poll, conducted on the 12th and 13th of June.
According to @Stodge it was not. It was an MRP extrapolation.
Isn't it both? It's a real poll with the Don't Knows/Won't Say reallocated based on MRP.
To be fair, last night's so called "poll" from YouGov was extrapolated voting intention from the MRP.
It wasn't a new poll in and of itself.
Good spot. Do we need to remind pollsters, media (and PBers) to avoid presenting MRP extrapolations as new polls, and also to avoid subsampling under any circumstances without the use of the Subsample Klaxon? I'm not sure OGH would have ever tolerated such wayward behaviour as we see these days on here @TheScreamingEagles@rcs1000
It was a bona fide poll, conducted on the 12th and 13th of June.
According to @Stodge it was not. It was an MRP extrapolation.
It's both, isn't it? YouGov are now adjusting their polling using MRP techniques but still presenting them in vote share format - that's the new methodology everyone's referring to.
Starmer’s going to end up on “Who do you think you are” and someone in a stuffy records office is going to produce some old docs and a letter where Starmer’s mum writes to her best friend that they had decided to tell the young Keir that his dad was a Toolmaker rather than him having the shame of knowing that his dad was an estate agent.
Then the chap will hand over the docs to Starmer showing that Starmer Senior was a co founder of Foxtons and designed the branding on their minis.
To be fair, last night's so called "poll" from YouGov was extrapolated voting intention from the MRP.
It wasn't a new poll in and of itself.
Good spot. Do we need to remind pollsters, media (and PBers) to avoid presenting MRP extrapolations as new polls, and also to avoid subsampling under any circumstances without the use of the Subsample Klaxon? I'm not sure OGH would have ever tolerated such wayward behaviour as we see these days on here @TheScreamingEagles@rcs1000
It was a bona fide poll, conducted on the 12th and 13th of June.
According to @Stodge it was not. It was an MRP extrapolation.
It's both, isn't it? YouGov are now adjusting their polling using MRP techniques but still presenting them in vote share format - that's the new methodology everyone's referring to.
The simple answer is "dunno". I have kinda lost track with YouGov. @stodge is a notable poll watcher and he says it is not a poll.
On the subject of repetition, summarised from the book on media planning by Kelley, Jugenheimer and Sheehan:
Research indicates that consumers do not retain an advertising message until they have seen it at least three times... and of course, if you run an ad three times, then only a tiny fraction of your desired audience will be in the right place at the right time to see the message 3 times. So you run it ten times. A day. That's how advertising works.
People who spend their entire day obsessing over politics will hear Starmer use his "toolmaker" line a half a dozen times a day. Ditto Sunak and the 2k line he was pushing at the start of the campaign. Political obsessives will see these messages hundreds of times. The general public might only see them three or four.
A good advertising campaign will attempt to reach 80% of the target audience with its message, so 11% to 27% is actually pretty piss poor. Over to Roger to explain the importance of good creative rather than just shouting the same thing at your audience over and over...
I just think the majority of the people have had enough of the Tories, and Starmer is in the lucky position of being in the right place at the right time. He doesnt need to be flashy or cocky, just being leader of the Labour party at this time is enough. As long as he doesn't murder a puppy live on the hustings, he'll be PM once the vote is in. Once people find out he's a lawyer his stock should go down, though!
I just think the majority of the people have had enough of the Tories, and Starmer is in the lucky position of being in the right place at the right time. He doesnt need to be flashy or cocky, just being leader of the Labour party at this time is enough. As long as he doesn't murder a puppy live on the hustings, he'll be PM once the vote is in. Once people find out he's a lawyer his stock should go down, though!
Indeed. Winning this election is going to be easy, winning the next one might be a considerably greater challenge.
Greens opposing solar farms in AONBs, nature reserves etc doesn't mean they oppose them everywhere. A handful of cherry-picked local examples doesn't mean it's their national policy.
Are we in a climate emergency or not? If we are then building out easily reversible solar farms in AONBs is just fine: It’s literally just lines of solar panels on steel frames in the grass & you can graze sheep underneath them. Opposing them is the height of hypocrisy frankly.
Sir Keir's father was basically a small businessman who ran a tool making business based on his biography, with the personality of Gordon Brown. His mother seemed quite nice though.
I suspect Starmer will run a Gordon Brown 2 type government though as his diehard Labour father would have wished, it will not be Blairism revived once the Tory swing voters are safely in the ballot box for Labour
No one will be surprised that I want to see the Tories ejected from office and crushed into oblivion as a political force.
I confess to having a bit of a wobble last night when the third poll in two days came out with Labour in the 30s. But by the end of the evening common sense had returned: Cons now averaging 19% in recent polls, Starmer's personal rating on the rise, tactical voting giving the LDs a boost...
Beautiful company, beautiful, guy’s been doing it for 50 years, sells hundreds of boats, they use Mercury engines, they want to take that out, they want to make it all-electric, I asked, “How is it?” He said, ‘It’s a problem, sir, they want us to make all electric boats, the problem is, the boat is so heavy, it can’t float.’ I said, ‘that sounds like a problem.’ He said, ‘also it can’t go fast because of the weight, and they want to now have a 50 mile or 70 mile radius, you have to go out 70 miles before you can really start the boat up, and you go out at two knots, that’s essentially almost like two miles an hour.’ I said, ‘How long does it take you to get out there?’ He said, ‘many hours, and then you’re allowed to go around for ten minutes, and then you have to come back, because the battery only lasts a very short period of time.’ So I said, ‘let me ask you a question,’ and he said, 'nobody has ever asked this question,’ and it must because of MIT, my relationship to MIT. ‘Very smart,’ he goes. I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now under water, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there — by the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lotta shark attacks — I watched some guys justifying it today, ‘well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were, they were … not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy.’ He said, ‘there’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming,’ No, really got decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks, so I said, ‘there’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer, he said, ‘you know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.
The Tories sneer at a genuine working class chap who rose up the ranks to become - probably - the next PM. This current iteration of the Tory Party do not like aspiration and hard work.
I hope Starmer does make 'my dad was a toolmaker' into a comic theme. He should mention it every time, along with variants like: "my dad was a... big influence on me / nice bloke / Arsenal fan/ etc."
I just think the majority of the people have had enough of the Tories, and Starmer is in the lucky position of being in the right place at the right time. He doesnt need to be flashy or cocky, just being leader of the Labour party at this time is enough. As long as he doesn't murder a puppy live on the hustings, he'll be PM once the vote is in. Once people find out he's a lawyer his stock should go down, though!
That is the history of all great leaders through history. At the end of War and Peace Tolstoy has a whole chapter on the philosophy of history...his analysis of Napoleon is exactly that.... the social structures and mass based revolutionary zeal in france created a social focal point that had to be inhabited by somebody.... that somebody just happened to be Napoleon. Heidegger has this famous thought experiment of a hammer. He says a hammer is just a stick with a lump of metal on the end. That is it. It doesn't become a hammer till it is put in a context with nails, and wood and the project of building a piece of furniture.... if you encounter the hammer in a dark path off the grand union canal in the hand of a guy wearing a balaklava... it is something altogether different... namely a weapon. Similarly in science... the all the bits and bobs are typically in place for the great breakthrough to happen... one person just puts it together in the right way... take einstein and relativity... I don't think it is an insult to starmer that he is in the right place at the right time,... in fact you could make the argument that sunak is the reverse of that medal. Under different circumstances he could have had success.
The Tories sneer at a genuine working class chap who rose up the ranks to become - probably - the next PM. This current iteration of the Tory Party do not like aspiration and hard work.
The Tory Party doesn’t even operate as a cohesive entity any more. It is just a gaggle of desperate, flailing souls, political failures lashing out, and a small minority of relatively decent folk who got caught without a chair when the music stopped.
It’s pretty much dead now. The question is whether it has the space and time to renew in opposition or whether it continues to dwindle and decline (or the GE kills it off completely).
Would it be wise to look much beyond Sabalenka (3/1), Swiatek (7/2), or Rybakina (9/2)? Possibly not. All three of those odds have reasons to be attractive bets and a case could be made for any of the three.
I’m beginning to think @Sandpit that you were correct about Emma Raducanu when you suggested that her US Open win would prove her to be a one-hit wonder. However, she has shown a bit of form in 2024 especially in the Billie Jean Cup and she will be playing back on grass.
At 33/1, widely available right now, I think she’s worth a flutter.
This is not a proposition that she is going to win Wimbledon. It’s a proposition that 33/1 is worth a casual bet.
She's a serious contender for Wimbledon and 33/1 is a fantastic price.
Radacanu must be the most overhyped tennis player in history. The sponsorships she’s got are just crazy, I can’t believe there has been any ROI.
For sponsorships, she has the twin advantages of being recognisable (now the Williamses have gone, I don't think there's another female tennis player I'd recognise) and easy on the eye.
Sponsorship income equates to more than just overall ability.
Yes but she only got the sponsorships after winning. She’s been on the downhill ever since. My point is that they backed her way too early.
A shame about Raducanu. She gets a lot of flak which I think is really undeserved. I don’t blame her for making hay when the opportunities came through to her. I do think she has also been unlucky with injury but it’s also clear she was far from the finished article when she won the US Open and I think there is real resilience training needed. But hey, she doesn’t owe anything to anyone and she’s done something very few people will ever do in winning a tennis grand slam.
If any of us could make millions out of sponsorships from outfits with money to burn making useless overpriced products we would take the chance while we could.
I hope ER will be more than a one hit wonder, but if she is....that's life. Who remembers anything or anyone else from 'Bob Massie's Test Match' in 1972.
I hadn't heard of Bob Massie so looked that up, thanks for the interesting story and you don't get sideburns like that these days, very impressive.
These mostly look more like errors caused by the autocue going too fast, or the print being too small to read.
The clips of Biden just staring off into space, zoning out, trying to sit down when there isn't a chair, etc, are far more devastating IMHO.
The guy is clearly past it, but then again, as you point out, so is Trump.
It is Biden who has kept the Democrats ahead in the battleground states though, 50%-49% for Trump with CBS. A younger coastal liberal Democratic nominee would certainly lose the Electoral College to Trump this year https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-biden-neck-and-neck-06-09-2024/
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
The Tories sneer at a genuine working class chap who rose up the ranks to become - probably - the next PM. This current iteration of the Tory Party do not like aspiration and hard work.
Witness the ordure their client media threw over Angela Rayner – a self-made woman who grafted her way to the top.
I see BBC misinformation expert has been doing the old misinformation again. After trying to honeytrap bots ramping Reform, she forgets to say the only dodgy account they did find had.....164....followers...that isn't 164,000, no, 164. total...
The Tories sneer at a genuine working class chap who rose up the ranks to become - probably - the next PM. This current iteration of the Tory Party do not like aspiration and hard work.
Would that be the same Tories who are led by the son of immigrants who worked hard, devoted their lives to getting their son well educated, that son of immigrants went on to have a stunning academic story which he undoubtedly had to work hard for, a successful career and then rose up the ranks to become - definitely - the latest PM?
I think that’s a story of aspiration and hard work and compared to Keir Starmer, who had the advantage of being a white male, a triumph over bigotry.
Starmer is following Mandy / Bad Al advice and tactics. Remember if you watched the whole of interviews back in the day of New Labour politicians giving interviews they sounded like a broken record repeating the same slogan. But they know nobody watches the actual interview, they watch the soundbite. Its the same here.
At worst the public probably heard him say it a handful of times.
Interesting. Ofcourse there's two ways of looking at this ; he's trying to get the RFK vote and help build distrust in institutions by fusing it with the UFO issue. There's plenty of far-right loons as well as reasonable people interested in this issue, and unfortunately that helps to stigmatise for people in the centre.
But there's also another, maybe more unconventional explanation, that I would try and go with. He might well be trying to rope in these kind of topics to encourage distrust in government and attract far-right loons, but he might also simultaneously be talking about genuinely convincing conversations he's had, with military people who might more often be his supporters.
» show previous quotes A shame about Raducanu. She gets a lot of flak which I think is really undeserved. I don’t blame her for making hay when the opportunities came through to her. I do think she has also been unlucky with injury but it’s also clear she was far from the finished article when she won the US Open and I think there is real resilience training needed. But hey, she doesn’t owe anything to anyone and she’s done something very few people will ever do in winning a tennis grand slam.
She is photogenic ( many of them look like the back end of a horse ) and the sponsors will be doing all right out of her. Good luck to her.
Greens opposing solar farms in AONBs, nature reserves etc doesn't mean they oppose them everywhere. A handful of cherry-picked local examples doesn't mean it's their national policy.
Are we in a climate emergency or not? If we are then building out easily reversible solar farms in AONBs is just fine: It’s literally just lines of solar panels on steel frames in the grass & you can graze sheep underneath them. Opposing them is the height of hypocrisy frankly.
I don't have an opinion on that particular example as I don't know the local situation (have been to Kent only once or twice in my life). It may well be that I'd support the solar farm if I lived there - although I note that they were following the planning officer's advice. One thing greens do generally believe in is localism and so it is unsurprising that local parties sometimes do things that are not in line with national policy, which is to increase renewable energy not to decrease it as your highly creative take on it implied.
The Tories sneer at a genuine working class chap who rose up the ranks to become - probably - the next PM. This current iteration of the Tory Party do not like aspiration and hard work.
Witness the ordure their client media threw over Angela Rayner – a self-made woman who grafted her way to the top.
Not just their client media. Remember Mr Daly asst convener of the C&UP. Flung more shite than the manure spreader in the field round the back of my house, and then claimed complete ignorance of what it was all about.
These mostly look more like errors caused by the autocue going too fast, or the print being too small to read.
The clips of Biden just staring off into space, zoning out, trying to sit down when there isn't a chair, etc, are far more devastating IMHO.
The guy is clearly past it, but then again, as you point out, so is Trump.
It is Biden who has kept the Democrats ahead in the battleground states though, 50%-49% for Trump with CBS. A younger coastal liberal Democratic nominee would certainly lose the Electoral College to Trump this year https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-biden-neck-and-neck-06-09-2024/
It's extraordinary, isn't it? People vote for what the person represents, rather than who they are. Sort of like voting for a flag that happens to be a human being.
Buttigieg is the best President the US will never have, because most of America simply won't vote for a gay man. Although in many respects, I think his 'wine cave' gaffe - painting him as a coastal elite - was more damaging.
“We can negotiate a ceasefire tomorrow” (If Ukranian soldiers withdraw on current boundaries, and Ukraine says they’ll never join NATO).
“The G7 security agreements are ‘just pieces of paper’.” (They’re commitments to billions in military aid).
“Western ‘theft’ of Russian assets shows that ‘anyone’ could be next” (Anyone who invades another European country, maybe).
“I never planned to storm Kiev” (but the vehicles blown up in the original assault south from Chernobyl contained a load of military #1 uniforms and large Russian flags).
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
Don't forget that we really only hear the news from Ukraine's side. I think a broader view might suggest that Russia is making territorial advances, albeit at great cost to their own forces.
It is good in a way that Putin has made some sort of ceasfire offer - it indicates that he might be concerned about the USA's latest weapons package to Ukraine. That's really what the West needs to do now - find something in Mother Hubbard's cupboard that scares Putin enough to threaten him with it, and make him come to the table with a half decent offer. We're not there yet but perhaps we're getting there.
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
I am reminded of the Japanese "Peace Proposals" post Hiroshima.
These were made to the Russians - on the lines of "We will give up *some* of the territory we have conquered. We will not disarm or allow any foreigners to touch Japanese soil. You will help up rearm. Then we will jointly attack the US in a decades time."
The Americans were reading all this, through their ciphers breaks...
Interesting. Ofcourse there's two ways of looking at this ; he's trying to get the RFK vote and help build distrust in institutions by fusing it with the UFO issue. There's plenty of far-right loons as well as reasonable people interested in this issue, and unfortunately that helps to stigmatise for people in the centre.
But there's also another, maybe more unconventional explanation, that I would try and go with. He might well be trying to rope in these kind of topics to encourage distrust in government and attract far-right loons, but he might also simultaneously be talking about genuinely convincing conversations he's had, with military people who might more often be his supporters.
I can't remember who said it on a previous thread, but Trump is like a comedian. He tries out his new material on a test crowd, then sticks with and amplifies the stuff that gets the biggest positive response.
In that way Trump reflects America's id, the impuslive part of the brain driven by base instincts and desires. There is no real Trump, no real belief in anything - just a collection of what an American audience will howl at.
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
I guess we need starting points. Albeit red lines here that will be light years apart form each other.
I do believe there will need to be some concessions from the Ukraine side, but how this can happen I don't know - certainly I can't imagine any scenario that isn't also somehow up problems for the future (the whole Azov Brigade thing is real).
This war cannot go on forever. It's not about appeasement, it's about stopping people getting killed. Even the vaguest talk of ceasefire, I have to hope is a positive step.
Over 4k likes for this comment on the Daily Mail in response to Penny Mordaunt calling Farage a 'Labour enabler':
But Reform have overtaken the Tories in the latest poll. Surely that makes the Tories ‘Labour enablers’, and if they’re that terrified of the consequences of a Labour government, then it’s surely their solemn duty to step down and encourage all their voters to switch to Reform?
Even people who hate Trump are often weirdly desensitised to some of the just plain barmy stuff he frequently says. His speeches and social media posts read like parodies.
» show previous quotes A shame about Raducanu. She gets a lot of flak which I think is really undeserved. I don’t blame her for making hay when the opportunities came through to her. I do think she has also been unlucky with injury but it’s also clear she was far from the finished article when she won the US Open and I think there is real resilience training needed. But hey, she doesn’t owe anything to anyone and she’s done something very few people will ever do in winning a tennis grand slam.
She is photogenic ( many of them look like the back end of a horse ) and the sponsors will be doing all right out of her. Good luck to her.
Can’t blame her for taking the sponsorship cash, hope she’s invested it wisely.
Over 4k likes for this comment on the Daily Mail in response to Penny Mordaunt calling Farage a 'Labour enabler':
But Reform have overtaken the Tories in the latest poll. Surely that makes the Tories ‘Labour enablers’, and if they’re that terrified of the consequences of a Labour government, then it’s surely their solemn duty to step down and encourage all their voters to switch to Reform?
Normal people don't pay attention to polls like we do, but the 'Reform overtaking Tories' narrative has broken through to the mainstream media - and I suspect social media for the right demographic.
So I suspect the next move for Reform is up rather than down. I still predict a low ceiling - not above 20% - but in any case the direction of travel is just terrible for the Tories.
Even people who hate Trump are often weirdly desensitised to some of the just plain barmy stuff he frequently says. His speeches and social media posts read like parodies.
His social media output says more about the team around him. Unlike Trump, I don't think he writes his own material.
Greens opposing solar farms in AONBs, nature reserves etc doesn't mean they oppose them everywhere. A handful of cherry-picked local examples doesn't mean it's their national policy.
Are we in a climate emergency or not? If we are then building out easily reversible solar farms in AONBs is just fine: It’s literally just lines of solar panels on steel frames in the grass & you can graze sheep underneath them. Opposing them is the height of hypocrisy frankly.
I was interested to discover that the panels don't even need concrete footings - according to the chap I was talking to, his were installed on metal stakes hammered into the ground, with a small ground level plate to stop them sinking in further. There was a smallish concrete platform for the electronics to sit on.
So you could remove them all in a few hours, leaving nothing behind except the cabling. Which was trenched, but not deeply. So a day or 2 work, and *nothing* would be left behind.
Greens opposing solar farms in AONBs, nature reserves etc doesn't mean they oppose them everywhere. A handful of cherry-picked local examples doesn't mean it's their national policy.
Are we in a climate emergency or not? If we are then building out easily reversible solar farms in AONBs is just fine: It’s literally just lines of solar panels on steel frames in the grass & you can graze sheep underneath them. Opposing them is the height of hypocrisy frankly.
I don't have an opinion on that particular example as I don't know the local situation (have been to Kent only once or twice in my life). It may well be that I'd support the solar farm if I lived there - although I note that they were following the planning officer's advice. One thing greens do generally believe in is localism and so it is unsurprising that local parties sometimes do things that are not in line with national policy, which is to increase renewable energy not to decrease it as your highly creative take on it implied.
The fact that you’re not calling out these people for the fakers that they are, since the climate emergency is apparently less important than their views of nice green fields, tells me everything that I need to know.
Riddle me this: How can localism be more important than the climate emergency to a Green politician? When they aren’t really all that green in the first place obviously.
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
Don't forget that we really only hear the news from Ukraine's side. I think a broader view might suggest that Russia is making territorial advances, albeit at great cost to their own forces.
It is good in a way that Putin has made some sort of ceasfire offer - it indicates that he might be concerned about the USA's latest weapons package to Ukraine. That's really what the West needs to do now - find something in Mother Hubbard's cupboard that scares Putin enough to threaten him with it, and make him come to the table with a half decent offer. We're not there yet but perhaps we're getting there.
The pace of their territorial advances make the Western Allies 1914-17 look like the Road Runner. As you say the cost is heavy. They are in essence burning through men and materials for almost nothing, no wonder he wants Ukraine to fall for a plan that involves them withdrawing from significant parts of their own country that Putin has never even been close to capturing.
The Tories sneer at a genuine working class chap who rose up the ranks to become - probably - the next PM. This current iteration of the Tory Party do not like aspiration and hard work.
Witness the ordure their client media threw over Angela Rayner – a self-made woman who grafted her way to the top.
Grifted Shirley? She had 8 years as a care worker, admirable job of course, got into Unison and was good at machine politics. Let's not get overly dewy eyed
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
I am reminded of the Japanese "Peace Proposals" post Hiroshima.
These were made to the Russians - on the lines of "We will give up *some* of the territory we have conquered. We will not disarm or allow any foreigners to touch Japanese soil. You will help up rearm. Then we will jointly attack the US in a decades time."
The Americans were reading all this, through their ciphers breaks...
Sad thing is I reckon Putin's play will broadly work. Ukraine is never getting back those Eastern cities, it's just a question of whether it ends up a permanent frozen conflict when fighting becomes stalemate or if Russia can get official recognition for some gains. Probably the former I'd day.
Interesting. Ofcourse there's two ways of looking at this ; he's trying to get the RFK vote and help build distrust in institutions by fusing it with the UFO issue. There's plenty of far-right loons as well as reasonable people interested in this issue, and unfortunately that helps to stigmatise for people in the centre.
But there's also another, maybe more unconventional explanation, that I would try and go with. He might well be trying to rope in these kind of topics to encourage distrust in government and attract far-right loons, but he might also simultaneously be talking about genuinely convincing conversations he's had, with military people who might more often be his supporters.
I can't remember who said it on a previous thread, but Trump is like a comedian. He tries out his new material on a test crowd, then sticks with and amplifies the stuff that gets the biggest positive response.
In that way Trump reflects America's id, the impuslive part of the brain driven by base instincts and desires. There is no real Trump, no real belief in anything - just a collection of what an American audience will howl at.
A number of American comedians have made that point. He works in the same way they do, coming up with an idea, then changing the words around each time he says it, until he has something that always hits.
Would it be wise to look much beyond Sabalenka (3/1), Swiatek (7/2), or Rybakina (9/2)? Possibly not. All three of those odds have reasons to be attractive bets and a case could be made for any of the three.
I’m beginning to think @Sandpit that you were correct about Emma Raducanu when you suggested that her US Open win would prove her to be a one-hit wonder. However, she has shown a bit of form in 2024 especially in the Billie Jean Cup and she will be playing back on grass.
At 33/1, widely available right now, I think she’s worth a flutter.
This is not a proposition that she is going to win Wimbledon. It’s a proposition that 33/1 is worth a casual bet.
She's a serious contender for Wimbledon and 33/1 is a fantastic price.
Radacanu must be the most overhyped tennis player in history. The sponsorships she’s got are just crazy, I can’t believe there has been any ROI.
For sponsorships, she has the twin advantages of being recognisable (now the Williamses have gone, I don't think there's another female tennis player I'd recognise) and easy on the eye.
Sponsorship income equates to more than just overall ability.
Yes but she only got the sponsorships after winning. She’s been on the downhill ever since. My point is that they backed her way too early.
A shame about Raducanu. She gets a lot of flak which I think is really undeserved. I don’t blame her for making hay when the opportunities came through to her. I do think she has also been unlucky with injury but it’s also clear she was far from the finished article when she won the US Open and I think there is real resilience training needed. But hey, she doesn’t owe anything to anyone and she’s done something very few people will ever do in winning a tennis grand slam.
If any of us could make millions out of sponsorships from outfits with money to burn making useless overpriced products we would take the chance while we could.
I hope ER will be more than a one hit wonder, but if she is....that's life. Who remembers anything or anyone else from 'Bob Massie's Test Match' in 1972.
I hadn't heard of Bob Massie so looked that up, thanks for the interesting story and you don't get sideburns like that these days, very impressive.
Raducanu isn't even the British number one. She will never win another Slam.
Greens opposing solar farms in AONBs, nature reserves etc doesn't mean they oppose them everywhere. A handful of cherry-picked local examples doesn't mean it's their national policy.
Are we in a climate emergency or not? If we are then building out easily reversible solar farms in AONBs is just fine: It’s literally just lines of solar panels on steel frames in the grass & you can graze sheep underneath them. Opposing them is the height of hypocrisy frankly.
I was interested to discover that the panels don't even need concrete footings - according to the chap I was talking to, his were installed on metal stakes hammered into the ground, with a small ground level plate to stop them sinking in further. There was a smallish concrete platform for the electronics to sit on.
So you could remove them all in a few hours, leaving nothing behind except the cabling. Which was trenched, but not deeply. So a day or 2 work, and *nothing* would be left behind.
Exactly! Great isn’t it? You can stick everything on a few flatbeds & truck it to a new site any time you like & the original site can go back to whatever crops you like, having had the benefit of lying fallow for a few years & being grazed by the odd sheep.
The Greens should be all over this tech, surely? Oh wait...
Even people who hate Trump are often weirdly desensitised to some of the just plain barmy stuff he frequently says. His speeches and social media posts read like parodies.
His social media output says more about the team around him. Unlike Trump, I don't think he writes his own material.
Trumps is very authentic to him, I can believe he dictates it.
It's very very apparent when he does not, when there's a serious point with no side rambling, self-aggrandizing, or over capitalisation.
Biden I'm sure it's a slick bunch of party operatives.
Thanks! The stroke was reasonably serious (4 days completely blotted out from my memory, but apparently I was in hospital), but it's left few physical marks - a tendency to want to sleep in the day now and then. Mentally it's left gaps when I'm tired - I was puzzling over the names of close relatives last night, which seem absolutely clear now - but I'm gradually returning to normal.
Would it be wise to look much beyond Sabalenka (3/1), Swiatek (7/2), or Rybakina (9/2)? Possibly not. All three of those odds have reasons to be attractive bets and a case could be made for any of the three.
I’m beginning to think @Sandpit that you were correct about Emma Raducanu when you suggested that her US Open win would prove her to be a one-hit wonder. However, she has shown a bit of form in 2024 especially in the Billie Jean Cup and she will be playing back on grass.
At 33/1, widely available right now, I think she’s worth a flutter.
This is not a proposition that she is going to win Wimbledon. It’s a proposition that 33/1 is worth a casual bet.
She's a serious contender for Wimbledon and 33/1 is a fantastic price.
Radacanu must be the most overhyped tennis player in history. The sponsorships she’s got are just crazy, I can’t believe there has been any ROI.
For sponsorships, she has the twin advantages of being recognisable (now the Williamses have gone, I don't think there's another female tennis player I'd recognise) and easy on the eye.
Sponsorship income equates to more than just overall ability.
Yes but she only got the sponsorships after winning. She’s been on the downhill ever since. My point is that they backed her way too early.
A shame about Raducanu. She gets a lot of flak which I think is really undeserved. I don’t blame her for making hay when the opportunities came through to her. I do think she has also been unlucky with injury but it’s also clear she was far from the finished article when she won the US Open and I think there is real resilience training needed. But hey, she doesn’t owe anything to anyone and she’s done something very few people will ever do in winning a tennis grand slam.
If any of us could make millions out of sponsorships from outfits with money to burn making useless overpriced products we would take the chance while we could.
I hope ER will be more than a one hit wonder, but if she is....that's life. Who remembers anything or anyone else from 'Bob Massie's Test Match' in 1972.
I hadn't heard of Bob Massie so looked that up, thanks for the interesting story and you don't get sideburns like that these days, very impressive.
Raducanu isn't even the British number one. She will never win another Slam.
Interesting. Ofcourse there's two ways of looking at this ; he's trying to get the RFK vote and help build distrust in institutions by fusing it with the UFO issue. There's plenty of far-right loons as well as reasonable people interested in this issue, and unfortunately that helps to stigmatise for people in the centre.
But there's also another, maybe more unconventional explanation, that I would try and go with. He might well be trying to rope in these kind of topics to encourage distrust in government and attract far-right loons, but he might also simultaneously be talking about genuinely convincing conversations he's had, with military people who might more often be his supporters.
An attempt to debunk the Tehran UFO footage. Not terribly convincing, to my mind
Angela Rayner is a huge plus for Labour and that’s why the DM and Tories went after her .
If she had been charged that would have been a huge blow to the party and impacted their election chances .
Thankfully that black swan didn’t get off the ground .
What's most impressive about Rayner is how disciplined she is, how good a team player. I strongly suspect that she would have liked to present a more radical manifesto offer (taxing the rich more, a bit more nationalisation etc.), but she has ensured that no chink of light could be exposed between her and Starmer's views. Such loyalty to the collective cause is something she can be rightly proud of.
Surprisingly strong performance from Tories in Greenwich and an unsurprisingly strong performance from Scottish Labour in Clydebank. Discussion thread with figures here:
Thanks! The stroke was reasonably serious (4 days completely blotted out from my memory, but apparently I was in hospital), but it's left few physical marks - a tendency to want to sleep in the day now and then. Mentally it's left gaps when I'm tired - I was puzzling over the names of close relatives last night, which seem absolutely clear now - but I'm gradually returning to normal.
Hi Nick, great to see you post and sorry to hear you were so sick. Best of luck for your recovery.
Normal people don't pay attention to polls like we do, but the 'Reform overtaking Tories' narrative has broken through to the mainstream media - and I suspect social media for the right demographic.
So I suspect the next move for Reform is up rather than down. I still predict a low ceiling - not above 20% - but in any case the direction of travel is just terrible for the Tories.
It hasn’t “broken through to the mainstream media” as much as the mainstream media decided an angle that was exciting and newsy which they could all talk to each other about. There were four (?) polls out yesterday and 3 had the Tories ahead of reform.
The media could have reported that there was a surprise where one of the four polls yesterday had a reform lead over the Tories however the other three had Tories ahead of reform.
But the media have run and focussed on the one poll.
Now it doesn’t absolve Sunak and the Tories of being dismal but how things are reported can have a massive sway - put it this way, if for arguments sake, this one poll snowballed and led to a crazy situation where reform became the opposition most people in the political media would be having the vapours about how terrible it is that so many people are racists, like Brexit all over again.
They won’t however think - “why did we give such prominence to Farage and give him and his party a boost and a status they didn’t warrant just because in our little pathetic game playing politics media world we love a wild story rather than sober politics.”
Thanks! The stroke was reasonably serious (4 days completely blotted out from my memory, but apparently I was in hospital), but it's left few physical marks - a tendency to want to sleep in the day now and then. Mentally it's left gaps when I'm tired - I was puzzling over the names of close relatives last night, which seem absolutely clear now - but I'm gradually returning to normal.
Fantastic news. Recovery can be a frustrating process with these things, best of luck!
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
I guess we need starting points. Albeit red lines here that will be light years apart form each other.
I do believe there will need to be some concessions from the Ukraine side, but how this can happen I don't know - certainly I can't imagine any scenario that isn't also somehow up problems for the future (the whole Azov Brigade thing is real).
This war cannot go on forever. It's not about appeasement, it's about stopping people getting killed. Even the vaguest talk of ceasefire, I have to hope is a positive step.
I deprecate death and destruction of war as much as the next person, but I don’t think that negotiation in this instance is wise. Most people can work out that Putin will use any negotiated agreement as a way to reconstruct his forces and then come back for another slice. I think Ukraine and the allies are correct to reject any approach that gives Putin anything whatsoever. It’s not about appeasement but about a hard headed, but belated, understanding of the character of the person in the Kremlin.
Normal people don't pay attention to polls like we do, but the 'Reform overtaking Tories' narrative has broken through to the mainstream media - and I suspect social media for the right demographic.
So I suspect the next move for Reform is up rather than down. I still predict a low ceiling - not above 20% - but in any case the direction of travel is just terrible for the Tories.
It hasn’t “broken through to the mainstream media” as much as the mainstream media decided an angle that was exciting and newsy which they could all talk to each other about. There were four (?) polls out yesterday and 3 had the Tories ahead of reform.
The media could have reported that there was a surprise where one of the four polls yesterday had a reform lead over the Tories however the other three had Tories ahead of reform.
But the media have run and focussed on the one poll.
Now it doesn’t absolve Sunak and the Tories of being dismal but how things are reported can have a massive sway - put it this way, if for arguments sake, this one poll snowballed and led to a crazy situation where reform became the opposition most people in the political media would be having the vapours about how terrible it is that so many people are racists, like Brexit all over again.
They won’t however think - “why did we give such prominence to Farage and give him and his party a boost and a status they didn’t warrant just because in our little pathetic game playing politics media world we love a wild story rather than sober politics.”
Commentators have been talking up a crossover for 2 weeks. I don't say that caused it to happen, but many would have been so disappointed had it not.
Interesting. Ofcourse there's two ways of looking at this ; he's trying to get the RFK vote and help build distrust in institutions by fusing it with the UFO issue. There's plenty of far-right loons as well as reasonable people interested in this issue, and unfortunately that helps to stigmatise for people in the centre.
But there's also another, maybe more unconventional explanation, that I would try and go with. He might well be trying to rope in these kind of topics to encourage distrust in government and attract far-right loons, but he might also simultaneously be talking about genuinely convincing conversations he's had, with military people who might more often be his supporters.
I can't remember who said it on a previous thread, but Trump is like a comedian. He tries out his new material on a test crowd, then sticks with and amplifies the stuff that gets the biggest positive response.
In that way Trump reflects America's id, the impuslive part of the brain driven by base instincts and desires. There is no real Trump, no real belief in anything - just a collection of what an American audience will howl at.
A number of American comedians have made that point. He works in the same way they do, coming up with an idea, then changing the words around each time he says it, until he has something that always hits.
South Park nailed it by portraying his rallies as an Andrew Dice Clay-esque stand up routine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gfmTXSMsQA (NSFW unless you have headphones on).
I remember the exact moment I realised Trump was going to win, I was conducting a focus group in New Jersey in early 2016, and the topic of Trump came up unprompted, and people started talking about how he was their guy, how he spoke their language, how different he was to conventional politicians. IIRC I bet on him then at 50/1, but also cashed out at 5/1 after the first Presidential debate because I didn't think anyone could take him seriously as president of the free world after that. How wrong I was.
Keir Starmer was a toolmaker’s son And when his candidate would visit, he'd come along When they gathered 'round and started canvassin’ That's when Keir would take me votin’ Through the hustings, we'd go walkin' Then, he'd look into my eyes Lord knows, to my surprise.
The only boy who could ever reach me Was the son of a toolmaker man The only boy who could ever teach me Was the son of a toolmaker man Yes, he was, he was Ooh, yes, he was, uh
To repeat, this isn't a standard opinion poll and shouldn't be treated as such. It's an extrapolation from the MRP model which is a different thing.
It's only a different way of weighting the sample. It's not a fundamental methodological difference.
I'm not the expert some on here are but it's an important nuance, isn't it?
I think the weighting process is critical and it would be helpful (though it'll never happen) to determine how the sample has been weighted and on what criteria.
Are YouGov suggesting other pollsters are over-sampling Labour voters and under-representing LDs and Reform? It's a theory which we'll know more about in three weeks.
The other thing was the level of Don't Knows (15%) which runs well ahead of other pollsters (around 10%).
Starmer is following Mandy / Bad Al advice and tactics. Remember if you watched the whole of interviews back in the day of New Labour politicians giving interviews they sounded like a broken record repeating the same slogan. But they know nobody watches the actual interview, they watch the soundbite. Its the same here.
At worst the public probably heard him say it a handful of times.
Rory on TRiP spoke of hearing Priti Patel use the same phrase seven times in a three minute interview. I think the debates we have seen show the danger of over-stuffing your candidate with approved, focus-grouped and wargamed lines to take, with Rayner and Mordaunt, and Starmer and Sunak, sounding stiff and unconvincing.
Thanks! The stroke was reasonably serious (4 days completely blotted out from my memory, but apparently I was in hospital), but it's left few physical marks - a tendency to want to sleep in the day now and then. Mentally it's left gaps when I'm tired - I was puzzling over the names of close relatives last night, which seem absolutely clear now - but I'm gradually returning to normal.
I see Putin has proposed a basis for a ceasefire which amounts to “give me all your lunch money and I’ll definitely stop punching you”. I can’t work out whether he is so delusional he thinks this approach has any likelihood of being successful or whether he’s so committed to the war that he’s deliberately trolling.
I guess we need starting points. Albeit red lines here that will be light years apart form each other.
I do believe there will need to be some concessions from the Ukraine side, but how this can happen I don't know - certainly I can't imagine any scenario that isn't also somehow up problems for the future (the whole Azov Brigade thing is real).
This war cannot go on forever. It's not about appeasement, it's about stopping people getting killed. Even the vaguest talk of ceasefire, I have to hope is a positive step.
I deprecate death and destruction of war as much as the next person, but I don’t think that negotiation in this instance is wise. Most people can work out that Putin will use any negotiated agreement as a way to reconstruct his forces and then come back for another slice. I think Ukraine and the allies are correct to reject any approach that gives Putin anything whatsoever. It’s not about appeasement but about a hard headed, but belated, understanding of the character of the person in the Kremlin.
Quite. He'll take what he can. The reason nations belatedly backed Ukraine this time and not over Crimea was recognising how the prior approach did not work and has led to more violence down the line. Slowly but surely nations will forget that lesson if they are not careful.
Normal people don't pay attention to polls like we do, but the 'Reform overtaking Tories' narrative has broken through to the mainstream media - and I suspect social media for the right demographic.
So I suspect the next move for Reform is up rather than down. I still predict a low ceiling - not above 20% - but in any case the direction of travel is just terrible for the Tories.
It hasn’t “broken through to the mainstream media” as much as the mainstream media decided an angle that was exciting and newsy which they could all talk to each other about. There were four (?) polls out yesterday and 3 had the Tories ahead of reform.
The media could have reported that there was a surprise where one of the four polls yesterday had a reform lead over the Tories however the other three had Tories ahead of reform.
But the media have run and focussed on the one poll.
Now it doesn’t absolve Sunak and the Tories of being dismal but how things are reported can have a massive sway - put it this way, if for arguments sake, this one poll snowballed and led to a crazy situation where reform became the opposition most people in the political media would be having the vapours about how terrible it is that so many people are racists, like Brexit all over again.
They won’t however think - “why did we give such prominence to Farage and give him and his party a boost and a status they didn’t warrant just because in our little pathetic game playing politics media world we love a wild story rather than sober politics.”
I wonder if any Labour partisans have ever noticed that the media can have an unfair influence against a major party in an election?
It's the Tories turn, and its their first turn in at least fifty years to get that treatment, so not much sympathy given they have enabled and worked with the press to create this environment in the first place.
Greens opposing solar farms in AONBs, nature reserves etc doesn't mean they oppose them everywhere. A handful of cherry-picked local examples doesn't mean it's their national policy.
Are we in a climate emergency or not? If we are then building out easily reversible solar farms in AONBs is just fine: It’s literally just lines of solar panels on steel frames in the grass & you can graze sheep underneath them. Opposing them is the height of hypocrisy frankly.
I was interested to discover that the panels don't even need concrete footings - according to the chap I was talking to, his were installed on metal stakes hammered into the ground, with a small ground level plate to stop them sinking in further. There was a smallish concrete platform for the electronics to sit on.
So you could remove them all in a few hours, leaving nothing behind except the cabling. Which was trenched, but not deeply. So a day or 2 work, and *nothing* would be left behind.
Exactly! Great isn’t it? You can stick everything on a few flatbeds & truck it to a new site any time you like & the original site can go back to whatever crops you like, having had the benefit of lying fallow for a few years & being grazed by the odd sheep.
The Greens should be all over this tech, surely? Oh wait...
Experience of the Greens in the Scottish Government was that they hadn’t an economic clue. The apparent return to sensible economics under Swinney and Forbes is already making a difference.
Thanks! The stroke was reasonably serious (4 days completely blotted out from my memory, but apparently I was in hospital), but it's left few physical marks - a tendency to want to sleep in the day now and then. Mentally it's left gaps when I'm tired - I was puzzling over the names of close relatives last night, which seem absolutely clear now - but I'm gradually returning to normal.
Angela Rayner is a huge plus for Labour and that’s why the DM and Tories went after her .
If she had been charged that would have been a huge blow to the party and impacted their election chances .
Thankfully that black swan didn’t get off the ground .
What's most impressive about Rayner is how disciplined she is, how good a team player. I strongly suspect that she would have liked to present a more radical manifesto offer (taxing the rich more, a bit more nationalisation etc.), but she has ensured that no chink of light could be exposed between her and Starmer's views. Such loyalty to the collective cause is something she can be rightly proud of.
I think she is instinctively eurosceptic too, and is a self-declared hardliner on crime, but she holds the party line extremely well. She is a rare talent.
Normal people don't pay attention to polls like we do, but the 'Reform overtaking Tories' narrative has broken through to the mainstream media - and I suspect social media for the right demographic.
So I suspect the next move for Reform is up rather than down. I still predict a low ceiling - not above 20% - but in any case the direction of travel is just terrible for the Tories.
It hasn’t “broken through to the mainstream media” as much as the mainstream media decided an angle that was exciting and newsy which they could all talk to each other about. There were four (?) polls out yesterday and 3 had the Tories ahead of reform.
The media could have reported that there was a surprise where one of the four polls yesterday had a reform lead over the Tories however the other three had Tories ahead of reform.
But the media have run and focussed on the one poll.
Now it doesn’t absolve Sunak and the Tories of being dismal but how things are reported can have a massive sway - put it this way, if for arguments sake, this one poll snowballed and led to a crazy situation where reform became the opposition most people in the political media would be having the vapours about how terrible it is that so many people are racists, like Brexit all over again.
They won’t however think - “why did we give such prominence to Farage and give him and his party a boost and a status they didn’t warrant just because in our little pathetic game playing politics media world we love a wild story rather than sober politics.”
Commentators have been talking up a crossover for 2 weeks. I don't say that caused it to happen, but many would have been so disappointed had it not.
The funny thing is that it would be absolutely fair if the commentators were disappointed with no crossover because they were reform supporters/thought reform could fix the country but the commentators are probably some of the furthest removed set of people from agreeing with Reform’s politics and would be the first to be devastated at Reform success.
Again they are infinitely more interested in gossip, games, the big story, breathless commentary in a media circle jerk than actually analysing what politicians really mean or want, what manifestos are really offering, what they aren’t saying. The latter is hard work, the former is just having WhatsApp and a contact list from the same politics bubble.
My father was a toolmaker. Started on the bench during the war, became a foreman and ended up a manager of toolmakers. I feel an affinity with Starmer.
Comments
"Well, obviously, this is not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of industrial products."
"See? If you hadn't been going on, we'd have heard that, Big Nose."
*Whether the bosses or the actual folk on the shop floor, though. The term is ambiguous, like much occupational terminology in English, in the sense that (say) Michelle Mone made underwear, but she didn't use a sewing machine much of her working time as a company director, or so I assume. And in any case, people change their work with time. I can well believe that someone who was a shop floor worker when his son was at school could own his own business a decade or two later.
Then the chap will hand over the docs to Starmer showing that Starmer Senior was a co founder of Foxtons and designed the branding on their minis.
It will be a real tearjerker.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4831885#Comment_4831885
(Almost - my version was better obvs.)
I prefer the Aretha Franklin version of Son of a preacher man over the Dusty Springfield version.
(Some just get there sooner.)
Research indicates that consumers do not retain an advertising message until they have seen it at least three times... and of course, if you run an ad three times, then only a tiny fraction of your desired audience will be in the right place at the right time to see the message 3 times. So you run it ten times. A day. That's how advertising works.
People who spend their entire day obsessing over politics will hear Starmer use his "toolmaker" line a half a dozen times a day. Ditto Sunak and the 2k line he was pushing at the start of the campaign. Political obsessives will see these messages hundreds of times. The general public might only see them three or four.
A good advertising campaign will attempt to reach 80% of the target audience with its message, so 11% to 27% is actually pretty piss poor. Over to Roger to explain the importance of good creative rather than just shouting the same thing at your audience over and over...
As long as he doesn't murder a puppy live on the hustings, he'll be PM once the vote is in.
Once people find out he's a lawyer his stock should go down, though!
But I inagine Biden could do exactly the same for Trump
https://www.instagram.com/realdonaldtrump/reel/C8LGmVhMvZe/
cheesemakerstoolmakersI suspect Starmer will run a Gordon Brown 2 type government though as his diehard Labour father would have wished, it will not be Blairism revived once the Tory swing voters are safely in the ballot box for Labour
I confess to having a bit of a wobble last night when the third poll in two days came out with Labour in the 30s. But by the end of the evening common sense had returned: Cons now averaging 19% in recent polls, Starmer's personal rating on the rise, tactical voting giving the LDs a boost...
All is well. Relax...
The clips of Biden just staring off into space, zoning out, trying to sit down when there isn't a chair, etc, are far more devastating IMHO.
The guy is clearly past it, but then again, as you point out, so is Trump.
Not sure Starmer's able to do comedy, mind.
Especially since the audience had laughed at him bringing it uo earlier on.
Then you grin and shrug when they laugh again.
Sorry to carry this over FPT but just to mention to @TSE and others the wording in the YouGov data tables:
Westminster Voting Intention
[Headline voting intention projected by YouGov MRP model]
To repeat, this isn't a standard opinion poll and shouldn't be treated as such. It's an extrapolation from the MRP model which is a different thing.
It’s pretty much dead now. The question is whether it has the space and time to renew in opposition or whether it continues to dwindle and decline (or the GE kills it off completely).
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-biden-neck-and-neck-06-09-2024/
https://youtu.be/s2n87YKSjrA?si=0P9j_HUBhkkf7u_O&t=146
"My father was a toolmaker, and so, in a different way, was Boris Johnson's."
This is also interesting. Trump was - quite notably - the one living president who has always scoffed at the idea of UAPs/UFOs
He is changing his tune
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1801379710406128079
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/14/russias-putin-outlines-conditions-for-peace-talks-with-ukraine.html
But its still a News at Ten story.
I think that’s a story of aspiration and hard work and compared to Keir Starmer, who had the advantage of being a white male, a triumph over bigotry.
At worst the public probably heard him say it a handful of times.
But there's also another, maybe more unconventional explanation, that I would try and go with. He might well be trying to rope in these kind of topics to encourage distrust in government and attract far-right loons, but he might also simultaneously be talking about genuinely convincing conversations he's had, with military people who might more often be his supporters.
numbertwelve said:
» show previous quotes
A shame about Raducanu. She gets a lot of flak which I think is really undeserved. I don’t blame her for making hay when the opportunities came through to her. I do think she has also been unlucky with injury but it’s also clear she was far from the finished article when she won the US Open and I think there is real resilience training needed. But hey, she doesn’t owe anything to anyone and she’s done something very few people will ever do in winning a tennis grand slam.
She is photogenic ( many of them look like the back end of a horse ) and the sponsors will be doing all right out of her. Good luck to her.
Buttigieg is the best President the US will never have, because most of America simply won't vote for a gay man. Although in many respects, I think his 'wine cave' gaffe - painting him as a coastal elite - was more damaging.
“Well yes, quite clearly he did.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/14/ukraine-russia-war-latest-news9/
“We can negotiate a ceasefire tomorrow” (If Ukranian soldiers withdraw on current boundaries, and Ukraine says they’ll never join NATO).
“The G7 security agreements are ‘just pieces of paper’.” (They’re commitments to billions in military aid).
“Western ‘theft’ of Russian assets shows that ‘anyone’ could be next” (Anyone who invades another European country, maybe).
“I never planned to storm Kiev” (but the vehicles blown up in the original assault south from Chernobyl contained a load of military #1 uniforms and large Russian flags).
He’s totally deranged.
It is good in a way that Putin has made some sort of ceasfire offer - it indicates that he might be concerned about the USA's latest weapons package to Ukraine. That's really what the West needs to do now - find something in Mother Hubbard's cupboard that scares Putin enough to threaten him with it, and make him come to the table with a half decent offer. We're not there yet but perhaps we're getting there.
These were made to the Russians - on the lines of "We will give up *some* of the territory we have conquered. We will not disarm or allow any foreigners to touch Japanese soil. You will help up rearm. Then we will jointly attack the US in a decades time."
The Americans were reading all this, through their ciphers breaks...
In that way Trump reflects America's id, the impuslive part of the brain driven by base instincts and desires. There is no real Trump, no real belief in anything - just a collection of what an American audience will howl at.
I do believe there will need to be some concessions from the Ukraine side, but how this can happen I don't know - certainly I can't imagine any scenario that isn't also somehow up problems for the future (the whole Azov Brigade thing is real).
This war cannot go on forever. It's not about appeasement, it's about stopping people getting killed. Even the vaguest talk of ceasefire, I have to hope is a positive step.
But Reform have overtaken the Tories in the latest poll. Surely that makes the Tories ‘Labour enablers’, and if they’re that terrified of the consequences of a Labour government, then it’s surely their solemn duty to step down and encourage all their voters to switch to Reform?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13528353/Tories-Penny-Mordaunt-brands-Nigel-Farage-Labour-enabler-warns-hell-make-easier-Keir-Starmer-PM-Reform-UK-leader-hits-says-Conservatives-deceived-voters-migration.html
If she had been charged that would have been a huge blow to the party and impacted their election chances .
Thankfully that black swan didn’t get off the ground .
That is unusual with a minor party vs the big two late in a campaign, but imo is where we are.
So I suspect the next move for Reform is up rather than down. I still predict a low ceiling - not above 20% - but in any case the direction of travel is just terrible for the Tories.
So you could remove them all in a few hours, leaving nothing behind except the cabling. Which was trenched, but not deeply. So a day or 2 work, and *nothing* would be left behind.
Riddle me this: How can localism be more important than the climate emergency to a Green politician? When they aren’t really all that green in the first place obviously.
Scratch a Green, find a Nimby.
The Greens should be all over this tech, surely? Oh wait...
It's very very apparent when he does not, when there's a serious point with no side rambling, self-aggrandizing, or over capitalisation.
Biden I'm sure it's a slick bunch of party operatives.
Thanks! The stroke was reasonably serious (4 days completely blotted out from my memory, but apparently I was in hospital), but it's left few physical marks - a tendency to want to sleep in the day now and then. Mentally it's left gaps when I'm tired - I was puzzling over the names of close relatives last night, which seem absolutely clear now - but I'm gradually returning to normal.
https://youtu.be/CI3vYqMKSU0?si=VaPCBPhbYYq_3ar-
It needs Mick West on the case. He's the best debunker in town
Surprisingly strong performance from Tories in Greenwich and an unsurprisingly strong performance from Scottish Labour in Clydebank. Discussion thread with figures here:
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/18941/local-council-elections-13th-june
The media could have reported that there was a surprise where one of the four polls yesterday had a reform lead over the Tories however the other three had Tories ahead of reform.
But the media have run and focussed on the one poll.
Now it doesn’t absolve Sunak and the Tories of being dismal but how things are reported can have a massive sway - put it this way, if for arguments sake, this one poll snowballed and led to a crazy situation where reform became the opposition most people in the political media would be having the vapours about how terrible it is that so many people are racists, like Brexit all over again.
They won’t however think - “why did we give such prominence to Farage and give him and his party a boost and a status they didn’t warrant just because in our little pathetic game playing politics media world we love a wild story rather than sober politics.”
I remember the exact moment I realised Trump was going to win, I was conducting a focus group in New Jersey in early 2016, and the topic of Trump came up unprompted, and people started talking about how he was their guy, how he spoke their language, how different he was to conventional politicians. IIRC I bet on him then at 50/1, but also cashed out at 5/1 after the first Presidential debate because I didn't think anyone could take him seriously as president of the free world after that. How wrong I was.
And when his candidate would visit, he'd come along
When they gathered 'round and started canvassin’
That's when Keir would take me votin’
Through the hustings, we'd go walkin'
Then, he'd look into my eyes
Lord knows, to my surprise.
The only boy who could ever reach me
Was the son of a toolmaker man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a toolmaker man
Yes, he was, he was
Ooh, yes, he was, uh
I think the weighting process is critical and it would be helpful (though it'll never happen) to determine how the sample has been weighted and on what criteria.
Are YouGov suggesting other pollsters are over-sampling Labour voters and under-representing LDs and Reform? It's a theory which we'll know more about in three weeks.
The other thing was the level of Don't Knows (15%) which runs well ahead of other pollsters (around 10%).
It's the Tories turn, and its their first turn in at least fifty years to get that treatment, so not much sympathy given they have enabled and worked with the press to create this environment in the first place.
Again they are infinitely more interested in gossip, games, the big story, breathless commentary in a media circle jerk than actually analysing what politicians really mean or want, what manifestos are really offering, what they aren’t saying. The latter is hard work, the former is just having WhatsApp and a contact list from the same politics bubble.