So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
HAHA I will indeed Peter. Although it was meant quite light-heartedly hence the at the end.
I didn’t run away when I was ridiculed by just about every single person on here for telling you all that there was going to be a Labour landsli … oh ...
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
Anyway, a mountain of leaflets are looking at me in a surly way. Better get rid of them.
Laters...
Thanks for doing it. Although they're not my cup of tea I increasingly want the Tories to outperform expectations. Current seat projections put us in a very dangerous place democracy-wise imv. Hope it goes well.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Innate tribalism? Mate…take a look at yourself.
You’re privileged and comfortable enough in a Conservative society. Good for you. But for many other people the Tories have been interfering in their families’ lives with disastrous effect. The Windrush generation and anyone with a variable rate mortgage to name but two. They need a break from it. Others actually need government help. It’s because of those two groups, not the small minority unaffected by Tory interference, that it is looking likely your tribe will have a somewhat suboptimal election.
It's word like "privileged", that feature so heavily in the Labour lexicon, which I find so deeply disturbing.
I started off with zero in the bank account post graduation, and I was on an average salary 10 years ago. I only entered the tax trap 2.5 years ago with a big promotion.
It's the thin end of the wedge of a war on aspiration and success that will damage the country, to all of our detriment.
I'm sure others might get to this too, but your line "I started off with zero in the bank account post graduation" precisely plays into the hidden nature of your privilege; that you envisage this as somehow starting from zero just shows how blinkered you are.
Not a dig at you personally by the way, many others see the world in the same way. Indeed I probably did when I was younger and more naive
Can I just be clear? How clean does the starting line have to be before you accept someone isn't "privileged"?
Would I have had to have been in care in a Barnardos Home, and left with no qualifications and without even my own clothes on my back, to start sweeping streets for the council first before you accepted I wasn't?
Yes, it's easier for some than others. We all know that. But it's also better for all of us if we encourage everyone to make the best use of their own talents, and applaud them when they succeed.
For sure. But everyone deserves a fair chance, which is why Sure Start centres are a higher priority than private schools.
The priority fallacy again.
It's a way of muting opposition into the long grass - i.e. never- and this policy will never see an extra bean going to Sure Start centres or anything else in the state sector.
In fact, it will make things worse. Most of the senior roll from our local closed school have signed up for the local state secondary in September.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Of course they do. They look after their own. You are not affected by the stuff they do to other people.
And, I've already been affected by the stuff that Labour do to other people.
Hell would freeze over before I'd vote for them.
No, you haven't. But you want to believe you have been and that is fine. I just wish more people who are apoplectic about VAT on private school fees had cared as much about the cuts to Sure Start centres the government they supported inflicted on so many. Maybe a lot of young lives would have turned out a lot better than they have.
Er, yes I have. The policy was specifically cited in the letter issued to parents and teachers by the Board of Trustees as a key factor in dropping the academic roll for next year. The school exists in an area that's not particularly wealthy, and a 20% price demand shock was one that local parents simply couldn't afford; it was enough to tip the school into bankruptcy.
I know you want to tell me differently. It's much easier for you to dismiss it because otherwise you might have to engage with it, which would mean admitting that a Labour policy is already doing real damage only weeks before a GE.
However, your last two sentences are so very telling because there the mask slips and you try and flip it around with a bit of "whataboutery"; deep down, buried beneath your cognitive dissonance, you know that's it.
But, as far as you're concerned, an eye for an eye.
Again, that's what you're voting for if you vote Labour, folks.
The policy was specifically cited in a letter sent by a school whose management had failed to attract enough pupils over a sustained period of time and who wanted to avoid taking responsibility for that failure. It's what managements do.
Closing down Sure Start centres was a Tory decision taken on the basis that it would not adversely affect their voting demographic. It has had an appalling impact on countless individual young lives and many communities. You had no problem with it.
That's what you're voting for if you vote Tory, folks.
You haven't a clue what you're talking about. This directly affects my son, his teachers - who will lose their jobs - and our local community, which loses a school that's been here almost 90 years. This is all deeply personal and upsetting locally here, and I've had teachers who are personal friends in tears with us discussing it. Most recently yesterday at Anstey Park where we met up with one for a takeaway coffee and a playdate.
You'll forgive me if I don't have much time for you calling me a liar.
You don't want to admit that any policy Labour proposes, or enacts, can do any damage, whereas you are all too ready to move the spotlight back onto Tory ones where, funnily enough, you are happy to admit they do.
It just shows you up to be a rather-limited partisan stooge, I'm afraid, and your posts on this subject this morning has lowered my respect for you.
I did not call you a liar. It's silly to pretend I did.
I have no doubt that you are very upset by the VAT policy and by the school's closure, and because you are a highly partisan Tory you want a connection to exist and truly believe that one does.
Plenty of policies Labour pursues cause damage. I think the refusal to look again at Brexit is one such instance. Ironically, you don't.
I have absolutely no interest in whether you respect me or not. It does not bother me in the slightest. Beyond PB you are of no consequence to me, nor I to you. As I have said previously when you have said similar things because I have made arguments you do not like, I do not know you and you do not know me. This is an internet posting board and almost all of us use anonymous names.
p.s. Peter it’s possible that this is a bit of reverse psychology on my part. If so, it’s subconscious and not deliberate.
I just think the Conservatives on the day will do better than current polling, and we might see a slight uptick in the opinion polls over the next fortnight to reflect that.
And Reform are doing the usual flattering to deceive
For balance I disagree with the hope of the destruction of the conservative party not least because there is a place for a centre right party in our politics
I broke the story of Sunak debacle over DDay and am very angry to this day and I said I would vote Lib Dem in protest
With the postal votes about to arrive I told my wife, who said that nothing could bring her to vote for that 'Clown' Ed Davey after watching him foolng around on water and the role he played in the Post Office disgrace not least because she knows Alan Bates and was a customer at his post office here in Llandudno
She is not generally political, but we spoke about our votes and both agreed Sunak has failed and the conservatives are in a desperate state but far more worrying is the rise of Farage which horrifies us
To us it is important that the conservatives out poll Reform, and we have agreed that we will vote for the conservative candidate though it will have no effect on labour regaining the seat
I know Ed Davey and his antics are popular on here but certainly not reflected by my wife's opinion
And today's shock news, BigG ends up voting Tory after all just as most of us knew he always would despite him constantly telling us he wouldn't. Hilarious.
This is the kind of unpleasant personal pile-on that drags down this site.
It’s a broad church, and was always so under Mike Smithson’s watch. We should be able to disagree without getting so personally abusive.
It's not the disgreement, Heathener, so much as the idea of telling someone else how to vote.
The Site is at its best when it's an exchange of views, preferably on politics or betting, but pizza and Radiohead is also acceptable. That's different from telling someone what to do when they get in the booth.
Anyone tries that with me, they'll get a piece off pizza up the arse, with topping.
Does @Topping know he’s about to be used as a punishment suppository?
If it was sort of good enough for Prince Charles as was it's good enough for me. God Save the King.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
HAHA I will indeed Peter. Although it was meant quite light-heartedly hence the at the end.
I didn’t run away when I was ridiculed by just about every single person on here for telling you all that there was going to be a Labour landsli … oh ...
Well done, H.
If you back those outcomes, and are right, you will be a considerably wealthier Heathen on July 5th!
Rishi Sunak has been talking to the Sunday Times, as then quoted by the Guardian.
“In Hinduism there’s a concept of duty called dharma, which is roughly translated as being about doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it.”
I find this a really interesting thing for him to say, and I like to see this sort of talk about ideas and principles a bit more, rather than a relentless focus on the "retail offer".
It also, in my view, really exposes his failure as PM. His job, after taking over after the Truss Calamity, was to do exactly dharma, to do his duty to the country and not worry about the electoral outcomes. Instead we've seen an increasingly frenetic and desperate search for the silver bullet that would avert electoral defeat.
I think he would have fared better with a keep calm and carry on approach, and received a better election result and greater respect from the voters.
No doubt you'll approve, and maybe have a go yourself, but it's a cowardly and weak way of engaging in political debate, that commands zero respect from me.
Britain has always had a 'crab bucket' mentality, i.e. when one crab tries to escape, the other crabs prevent him, by dragging him back into the bucket.
Contrast and compare that to the US, which has an aspirational mentality. Get filthy rich, send your kids to the most expensive school in the country, buy a big gaudy McMansion with all the trimmings, whatever floats your boat. Buy a boat too, come to think of it.
Whereas in the UK we sneer, and that sneer can come from those above or below you on the pecking order. "A bit of a social climber" "Such a tacky house" "Buys his own furniture, don't you know" etc.
The idea is that everyone is expected to know their place. And British people _hate_ people who don't know their place. Because it reminds them that they, too, don't have to accept their place, but are too pathetic to do anything about it.
Your last sentence indicates that you hold the exact same attitudes that you are trying to condemn. If you don’t want people to be resentful of your success then calling those less successful pathetic isn’t a good way to go about it. Many people have huge barriers to economic success such as physical and mental disabilities and their situation has been made worse by recent government policy.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Innate tribalism? Mate…take a look at yourself.
You’re privileged and comfortable enough in a Conservative society. Good for you. But for many other people the Tories have been interfering in their families’ lives with disastrous effect. The Windrush generation and anyone with a variable rate mortgage to name but two. They need a break from it. Others actually need government help. It’s because of those two groups, not the small minority unaffected by Tory interference, that it is looking likely your tribe will have a somewhat suboptimal election.
A good post but you missed Brexit. That's buggered everybody who lives in the UK
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
No doubt you'll approve, and maybe have a go yourself, but it's a cowardly and weak way of engaging in political debate, that commands zero respect from me.
But you've got to suck it up, like you used to tell Remainers. The Tories ain't getting back in and you'll go mad carrying in the way you do. For your own wellbeing, you need to let it go.
My own wellbeing would be greatly enhanced by people like you avoiding snide personal attacks on the welfare of my family because it's politically convenient for you to stick the boot in.
Just a tip.
I've made no snide personal attacks on your family, and I wish you all well, genuinely, but I don't care about your family in any meaningful way, I don't know them and the wellbeing of them and you have no bearing on my life. You're a well off family and will be fine.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Innate tribalism? Mate…take a look at yourself.
You’re privileged and comfortable enough in a Conservative society. Good for you. But for many other people the Tories have been interfering in their families’ lives with disastrous effect. The Windrush generation and anyone with a variable rate mortgage to name but two. They need a break from it. Others actually need government help. It’s because of those two groups, not the small minority unaffected by Tory interference, that it is looking likely your tribe will have a somewhat suboptimal election.
A good post but you missed Brexit. That's buggered everybody who lives in the UK
Roger, you’re about as useful in promoting the cause you hold so dearly to your heart as a fishnet condom.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
That’s pretty much where I am. It’s a pain personally as that’s quite a bit of extra money, and I don’t think it’s a particularly sensible policy on its own terms, but it’s several orders of magnitude less of a big deal for the country than Brexit, HS2 being canned, local government being hollowed out and various other damaging economic decisions made by the current government.
Rishi Sunak has been talking to the Sunday Times, as then quoted by the Guardian.
“In Hinduism there’s a concept of duty called dharma, which is roughly translated as being about doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it.”
I find this a really interesting thing for him to say, and I like to see this sort of talk about ideas and principles a bit more, rather than a relentless focus on the "retail offer".
It also, in my view, really exposes his failure as PM. His job, after taking over after the Truss Calamity, was to do exactly dharma, to do his duty to the country and not worry about the electoral outcomes. Instead we've seen an increasingly frenetic and desperate search for the silver bullet that would avert electoral defeat.
I think he would have fared better with a keep calm and carry on approach, and received a better election result and greater respect from the voters.
Although dharma isn't a great place to start. It means radically different things dependant on which Indian origin religion you are talking about. And has multiple usages within each Buddhist school and between them. That, and having no translatable word into English means it is a concept of limited utility in our discourse.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
It can be pretty grim. I've been told to "go back home" on a doorstep. Not pleasant.
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
Yes. The Tories have bogged it up. I am tempted to say that Covid did a lot to exacerbate the problems (in particular the levelling up agenda) but that's just excuses.
There is a demographic (which includes @Casino) which is going to be badly affected by Lab's VAT policy. Now, there are a hundred arguments to say so what they're rich, privileged, toffs, what have you. But Lab's policy will severely disadvantage them for it is widely assessed no particular benefit. Nor does it appear to make anything "fairer". It is a totemic issue for the Left and fair enough because the Left, or at least today's Lab is about to be voted into government.
Lab is therefore not only not the party of aspiration, but, and this is why I can never as it stands voter for them, it also actively doesn't like people like me and my sort (which I can see includes @Casino). I couldn't vote for them when Jezza was in charge and I am simply not altruistic enough to vote for them when they dislike me so much. In this election that won't matter a tuppenny f**k but it might in years to come.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
I would agree with that and add that I think the SNP will get about 20 seats.
I know exactly one full on Q Anon style conspiracy theorist, an older middle class, retired, educated, graduate lady.
We don't often talk what counts as politics (I too soon give up the will to live) but it popped up this week. Between the cracks in the pot there were gleams of light. I think she was saying that Reform and Farage is the party that is on the side of 'Light' against 'Darkness', Trump of course being the USA version. All references to World Economic Forum, Vaccination, Covid are signals to the illuminati that this is the case.
I stopped listening when the name Rothschild got dropped in.
Can anyone illuminate me further about Q Anon garbage and Reform?
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Brexit wasn't a Tory policy. Dave plus team campaigned like bastards to avoid it. In contradistinction to one J Corbyn, and plenty on the Lab side. Of course it was a huge error but it was a cross-party huge error.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
We once had a joiner from round there it was like that scene in Hot Fuzz with multiple layers of translation. I'm fine with someone from Huntly or something but occasionally you come across someone using a distinct dialect. Even the emails and texts were barely comprehensible.
I love it. Do you still get a Yorkshire dialect or has that all died off now?
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
You're seeing first hand the dark heart of (Scottish) nationalism.
It is why it must be rejected and everyone in Scotland should vote tactically to stop the SNP.
Indeed. And we have to stop the dark heart of English nationalism as well. Vote tactically to stop both the Tories and SNP...
Vote Tory, the Tories were right when they said devolution would see the Scot Nats surge whilst Labour were boasting devolution would kill Scottish nationalism stone dead.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Very nice! Or rather, not nice. But it's interesting.
I just query the £30pp. Seems low for people who jump out of planes for charity.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
I would agree with that and add that I think the SNP will get about 20 seats.
I hereby consider that both of your views on this matter are reasonable 👍
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
Doric is more legend than reality. I hear an awful lot of Scots dialects or which Doric is only one. But I'm from Lancashire - where the dialects barely extend beyond your own town. I'm use to dialects, I understand enough.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Fascinating. Any cause worth supporting is worth supporting even if you don't stand upside down in a wheelbarrow full of custard while crossing the Gobi desert. This entire industry is of more interest to psychiatry than it is to funding.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Innate tribalism? Mate…take a look at yourself.
You’re privileged and comfortable enough in a Conservative society. Good for you. But for many other people the Tories have been interfering in their families’ lives with disastrous effect. The Windrush generation and anyone with a variable rate mortgage to name but two. They need a break from it. Others actually need government help. It’s because of those two groups, not the small minority unaffected by Tory interference, that it is looking likely your tribe will have a somewhat suboptimal election.
It's word like "privileged", that feature so heavily in the Labour lexicon, which I find so deeply disturbing.
I started off with zero in the bank account post graduation, and I was on an average salary 10 years ago. I only entered the tax trap 2.5 years ago with a big promotion.
It's the thin end of the wedge of a war on aspiration and success that will damage the country, to all of our detriment.
I'm sure others might get to this too, but your line "I started off with zero in the bank account post graduation" precisely plays into the hidden nature of your privilege; that you envisage this as somehow starting from zero just shows how blinkered you are.
Not a dig at you personally by the way, many others see the world in the same way. Indeed I probably did when I was younger and more naive
Can I just be clear? How clean does the starting line have to be before you accept someone isn't "privileged"?
Would I have had to have been in care in a Barnardos Home, and left with no qualifications and without even my own clothes on my back, to start sweeping streets for the council first before you accepted I wasn't?
Yes, it's easier for some than others. We all know that. But it's also better for all of us if we encourage everyone to make the best use of their own talents, and applaud them when they succeed.
Fully agree with your last paragraph. But, to use one of your favoured sayings, I think your response to the word privilege is just projection. It's a fact of life, not a dirty word.
I used to be terrified of being called racist. But, being one of the ones who used Floyd's killing to jump on the bandwagon of self-education, I've realised (I think) that's it's much more productive to accept and use these words than to be terrified of them. So, for example, despite efforts not to be, I'm a teacher who displays racism (eg I will struggle to learn black kids names as quickly as white kids because I've had less cultural experience telling them apart). I don't feel guilty about this, it's just a fact of life, and I'm aware of it and trying to get better at it (but not to the exclusion of other things that are more important, like teaching maths well on little sleep).
I think the same can apply to privilege. Ditch the fragile response and it becomes quite a useful term.
Though I do agree not everyone uses the terms in this way.
I'm putting together a list of themed election-night snacks. So far I have:
Labour - Revels, because you don't know what you're going to get. Tories - Crackers, because that's what they've been. Reform - Pork pie. Greens - Lentil crisps. SNP - Shortbread. Plaid Cymru - Welsh cakes.
I'm only missing something for the Liberal Democrats. Any ideas?
Rice cake? Bland but probably good for you
SuperValu do these chocolate and orange rice cakes, so combining the jaffa cakes and rice cake suggestions. A bland substrate dressed up with a fun, but superficial, veneer. I think it fits.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
I would agree with that and add that I think the SNP will get about 20 seats.
I think there is a chance the Tories could get high 20s but fewer than 100 seats.
Brexit wasn't a Tory policy. Dave plus team campaigned like bastards to avoid it. In contradistinction to one J Corbyn, and plenty on the Lab side. Of course it was a huge error but it was a cross-party huge error.
I've always thought Corbyn as Labour leader was a decisive factor in the result. Privately, as an old Bennite, I'm sure he was anti-EU or, at best, ambivalent.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
Back when we had compartments on trains a man went in to one with 2 Aberdeenshire men in it and wished them good morning. Silence. Several stops later he left wishing them a good day. One looked to the other and muttered “talkative bugger”.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Innate tribalism? Mate…take a look at yourself.
You’re privileged and comfortable enough in a Conservative society. Good for you. But for many other people the Tories have been interfering in their families’ lives with disastrous effect. The Windrush generation and anyone with a variable rate mortgage to name but two. They need a break from it. Others actually need government help. It’s because of those two groups, not the small minority unaffected by Tory interference, that it is looking likely your tribe will have a somewhat suboptimal election.
It's word like "privileged", that feature so heavily in the Labour lexicon, which I find so deeply disturbing.
I started off with zero in the bank account post graduation, and I was on an average salary 10 years ago. I only entered the tax trap 2.5 years ago with a big promotion.
It's the thin end of the wedge of a war on aspiration and success that will damage the country, to all of our detriment.
I'm sure others might get to this too, but your line "I started off with zero in the bank account post graduation" precisely plays into the hidden nature of your privilege; that you envisage this as somehow starting from zero just shows how blinkered you are.
Not a dig at you personally by the way, many others see the world in the same way. Indeed I probably did when I was younger and more naive
Can I just be clear? How clean does the starting line have to be before you accept someone isn't "privileged"?
Would I have had to have been in care in a Barnardos Home, and left with no qualifications and without even my own clothes on my back, to start sweeping streets for the council first before you accepted I wasn't?
Yes, it's easier for some than others. We all know that. But it's also better for all of us if we encourage everyone to make the best use of their own talents, and applaud them when they succeed.
Fully agree with your last paragraph. But, to use one of your favoured sayings, I think your response to the word privilege is just projection. It's a fact of life, not a dirty word.
I used to be terrified of being called racist. But, being one of the ones who used Floyd's killing to jump on the bandwagon of self-education, I've realised (I think) that's it's much more productive to accept and use these words than to be terrified of them. So, for example, despite efforts not to be, I'm a teacher who displays racism (eg I will struggle to learn black kids names as quickly as white kids because I've had less cultural experience telling them apart). I don't feel guilty about this, it's just a fact of life, and I'm aware of it and trying to get better at it (but not to the exclusion of other things that are more important, like teaching maths well on little sleep).
I think the same can apply to privilege. Ditch the fragile response and it becomes quite a useful term.
Though I do agree not everyone uses the terms in this way.
On racism you are spot on. The human brain works largely on pattern recognition and subconscious racism will creep into all of us. It is how we deal with those biases that matter, and the reality is we can never be perfect and it is not worth striving to do so, but we should do what we sensibly can to keep getting better.
Brexit wasn't a Tory policy. Dave plus team campaigned like bastards to avoid it. In contradistinction to one J Corbyn, and plenty on the Lab side. Of course it was a huge error but it was a cross-party huge error.
And many of the same people who screeched like lunatics for Brexit are taking glee in the thought that Putinist Farage's latest party might overtake the Conservatives....
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Very nice! Or rather, not nice. But it's interesting.
I just query the £30pp. Seems low for people who jump out of planes for charity.
I’m sure their methodology’s in the paper but that’s behind a paywall.
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
Yes. The Tories have bogged it up. I am tempted to say that Covid did a lot to exacerbate the problems (in particular the levelling up agenda) but that's just excuses.
There is a demographic (which includes @Casino) which is going to be badly affected by Lab's VAT policy. Now, there are a hundred arguments to say so what they're rich, privileged, toffs, what have you. But Lab's policy will severely disadvantage them for it is widely assessed no particular benefit. Nor does it appear to make anything "fairer". It is a totemic issue for the Left and fair enough because the Left, or at least today's Lab is about to be voted into government.
Lab is therefore not only not the party of aspiration, but, and this is why I can never as it stands voter for them, it also actively doesn't like people like me and my sort (which I can see includes @Casino). I couldn't vote for them when Jezza was in charge and I am simply not altruistic enough to vote for them when they dislike me so much. In this election that won't matter a tuppenny f**k but it might in years to come.
I think you are expecting too much of a political party. No one I know has either got rich through one or has been made poor through one. Talent and ability are what moves you forward.
I just want one which is decent and will do the right thing and the Tories with Braverman Patel and Rwanda were never that. They encouraged every bit of mean spiritedness they could find in the population. As a country we became pariahs and that did nobody any good.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
You brought polling numbers into the discussion, not RP.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
Interesting but those projections for Scottish seats are way off beam. Labour will not be second in ANME that's for sure.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
You brought polling numbers into the discussion, not RP.
Are Reform really going to get 14% in Aberdeenshire? Another MRP oddity.
No doubt you'll approve, and maybe have a go yourself, but it's a cowardly and weak way of engaging in political debate, that commands zero respect from me.
Britain has always had a 'crab bucket' mentality, i.e. when one crab tries to escape, the other crabs prevent him, by dragging him back into the bucket.
Contrast and compare that to the US, which has an aspirational mentality. Get filthy rich, send your kids to the most expensive school in the country, buy a big gaudy McMansion with all the trimmings, whatever floats your boat. Buy a boat too, come to think of it.
Whereas in the UK we sneer, and that sneer can come from those above or below you on the pecking order. "A bit of a social climber" "Such a tacky house" "Buys his own furniture, don't you know" etc.
The idea is that everyone is expected to know their place. And British people _hate_ people who don't know their place. Because it reminds them that they, too, don't have to accept their place, but are too pathetic to do anything about it.
This is one reason why the great and good are so fond of --isms and Liberal Guilt, it enables them to feel virtous without purging themselves of classim.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
Bloody hell, I wasn't expecting Labour to overtake the Tories there!
Edit: just noticed it's MRP and all that as just discussed, thanks to all.
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
The ideal scenario for Starmer/Labour is that they make the legislative change in such a way, i.e. not in a budget, that the Tories in the Lords can block it for a few years, thus creating a huge wedge argument that they're on the majority side of, and distracting from all the other things they are doing, while not implementing it for as long as possible.
It's one of the things which most reminds me of the incumbent government, and not in a good way.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
You brought polling numbers into the discussion, not RP.
Thank goodness polling numbers have nothing to do with 'helping to promote' an aspiring politician.
No doubt you'll approve, and maybe have a go yourself, but it's a cowardly and weak way of engaging in political debate, that commands zero respect from me.
Britain has always had a 'crab bucket' mentality, i.e. when one crab tries to escape, the other crabs prevent him, by dragging him back into the bucket.
Contrast and compare that to the US, which has an aspirational mentality. Get filthy rich, send your kids to the most expensive school in the country, buy a big gaudy McMansion with all the trimmings, whatever floats your boat. Buy a boat too, come to think of it.
Whereas in the UK we sneer, and that sneer can come from those above or below you on the pecking order. "A bit of a social climber" "Such a tacky house" "Buys his own furniture, don't you know" etc.
The idea is that everyone is expected to know their place. And British people _hate_ people who don't know their place. Because it reminds them that they, too, don't have to accept their place, but are too pathetic to do anything about it.
Your last sentence indicates that you hold the exact same attitudes that you are trying to condemn. If you don’t want people to be resentful of your success then calling those less successful pathetic isn’t a good way to go about it. Many people have huge barriers to economic success such as physical and mental disabilities and their situation has been made worse by recent government policy.
I was referring to people with a 'crab bucket mentality' as pathetic, not anyone who can't get on in life. I understand there are some people with disabilities, and I was also deeply critical of the government's clampdown on disabled benefits earlier this year.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I wanted to reply to your post but my keyboard is getting a bit warm to ty
I know exactly one full on Q Anon style conspiracy theorist, an older middle class, retired, educated, graduate lady.
We don't often talk what counts as politics (I too soon give up the will to live) but it popped up this week. Between the cracks in the pot there were gleams of light. I think she was saying that Reform and Farage is the party that is on the side of 'Light' against 'Darkness', Trump of course being the USA version. All references to World Economic Forum, Vaccination, Covid are signals to the illuminati that this is the case.
I stopped listening when the name Rothschild got dropped in.
Can anyone illuminate me further about Q Anon garbage and Reform?
I've got a couple of acquaintances that dabble in it. It gets a bit flat earth, antivax, Tommy Robinson is the new messiah, the country is being overtaken by muslims, and people are getting stopped by the police for leaving their 15 Minute City. Bill Gates, the bloke from the WEF and Soros all get dragged into it. I actually had coffee with one a couple of weeks ago. He's voting Reform. We used to be really close, known him since my first job at 16, but now he just seems a completely different person, and it's happened in only a year or so.
I wonder what it is that convicted felon Donald Trump finds so attractive about a technology that can facilitate illegal activity?
It is also a very stupid choice for criminal activity. Once your identity has been compromised, the block chain forms a digitally signed, legal evidence grade history of all your transactions.
See the long list of people who have gone to jail in the US for crimes, where their bitcoin transactions were major evidence.
I’ve long been of the (semi-joking) mind that Bitcoin was invented by the NSA. It was created by maths experts who managed to create a system that is superficially attractive to bad actors but is actually perfect for tracking their every action. And the said maths experts have stayed hidden ever since.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
Doric is more legend than reality. I hear an awful lot of Scots dialects or which Doric is only one. But I'm from Lancashire - where the dialects barely extend beyond your own town. I'm use to dialects, I understand enough.
I was at an event where Peter Chapman, Aberdeenshire farmer and former MSP recited two long Doric poems from memory. Probably only understood one word in three but the meaning was unmistakeable and it was immensely funny. Wonderfully expressive dialect.
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
The ideal scenario for Starmer/Labour is that they make the legislative change in such a way, i.e. not in a budget, that the Tories in the Lords can block it for a few years, thus creating a huge wedge argument that they're on the majority side of, and distracting from all the other things they are doing, while not implementing it for as long as possible.
It's one of the things which most reminds me of the incumbent government, and not in a good way.
Praise be to the Lords. No longer unelected woke enemies of the people.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
You brought polling numbers into the discussion, not RP.
Thank goodness polling numbers have nothing to do with 'helping to promote' an aspiring politician.
Your attempts at wry humour that make no fucking sense whatsoever are part of what makes this board, and you, so special.
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
The tories were always a coalition of the wealthy and aspirational middle/lower class.
They tended towards the latter under Thatcher but since Cameron became leader this has gone sharply into reverse and under their one nation vaneer, they have become the party of the wealthy who don't like Oiks muscling in.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Ah yes, a big power hungry, carbon dioxide spewing supercomputer, while preaching Gian hairshirtism to the plebs.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
Doric is more legend than reality. I hear an awful lot of Scots dialects or which Doric is only one. But I'm from Lancashire - where the dialects barely extend beyond your own town. I'm use to dialects, I understand enough.
Long years ago I worked as a relief pharmacist in East Manchester and as far North as Oldham. The difference in accents was considerable. I just stuck to my South Essex.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
We once had a joiner from round there it was like that scene in Hot Fuzz with multiple layers of translation. I'm fine with someone from Huntly or something but occasionally you come across someone using a distinct dialect. Even the emails and texts were barely comprehensible.
I love it. Do you still get a Yorkshire dialect or has that all died off now?
I drop bits of Lancashire and Yorkshire in for effect here and there. The English language is a glorious hodge-podge of words and rules that make no sense. It seems like a shame not to play with it.
As an example, I deploy "bobbins" quite often on my YouTube channel.
Brexit wasn't a Tory policy. Dave plus team campaigned like bastards to avoid it. In contradistinction to one J Corbyn, and plenty on the Lab side. Of course it was a huge error but it was a cross-party huge error.
And many of the same people who screeched like lunatics for Brexit are taking glee in the thought that Putinist Farage's latest party might overtake the Conservatives....
Brexit was not a small-c conservative policy.
It was Bennite. I make no apology for voting for it.
I know exactly one full on Q Anon style conspiracy theorist, an older middle class, retired, educated, graduate lady.
We don't often talk what counts as politics (I too soon give up the will to live) but it popped up this week. Between the cracks in the pot there were gleams of light. I think she was saying that Reform and Farage is the party that is on the side of 'Light' against 'Darkness', Trump of course being the USA version. All references to World Economic Forum, Vaccination, Covid are signals to the illuminati that this is the case.
I stopped listening when the name Rothschild got dropped in.
Can anyone illuminate me further about Q Anon garbage and Reform?
I've got a couple of acquaintances that dabble in it. It gets a bit flat earth, antivax, Tommy Robinson is the new messiah, the country is being overtaken by muslims, and people are getting stopped by the police for leaving their 15 Minute City. Bill Gates, the bloke from the WEF and Soros all get dragged into it. I actually had coffee with one a couple of weeks ago. He's voting Reform. We used to be really close, known him since my first job at 16, but now he just seems a completely different person, and it's happened in only a year or so.
Thanks. My example arose during Covid, with full on anti-vax, and a theory of covid both not existing (it's cold/flu) and being an instrument of global control (ie the vax). Asked 'How did Trump catch it then?' 'Don't know'. Refuses to register with GP or seek medical assistance (which is a worry); I innocently asked if she was registered to vote and she said "Why wouldn't I be".
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Yes, but they do it in private, LP.
I want them to show a little score up on the screen to indicate how accurate they were yesterday. Needn't be complicated. A simple percentage or score out of ten would do. Most days they are right, or sufficiently accurate not to warrant comment, but when they are hopelessly wrong (stats suggest that would be about 15% of the time) a word or two about where and why would be interesting, as well as suitably humble.
As it is, they are like tipsters who don't publish their results, publicly at least. I am sure they are much more forthcoming with their funders, but that's not good enough. I remember the Met Office used to be part of the MoD, and as you probably know the that is one of the most notoriously incompetent and inefficient departments in government. So that wasn't a lot of use. Damned if I know who it would be now.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Of course they do. They look after their own. You are not affected by the stuff they do to other people.
And, I've already been affected by the stuff that Labour do to other people.
Hell would freeze over before I'd vote for them.
No, you haven't. But you want to believe you have been and that is fine. I just wish more people who are apoplectic about VAT on private school fees had cared as much about the cuts to Sure Start centres the government they supported inflicted on so many. Maybe a lot of young lives would have turned out a lot better than they have.
Er, yes I have. The policy was specifically cited in the letter issued to parents and teachers by the Board of Trustees as a key factor in dropping the academic roll for next year. The school exists in an area that's not particularly wealthy, and a 20% price demand shock was one that local parents simply couldn't afford; it was enough to tip the school into bankruptcy.
I know you want to tell me differently. It's much easier for you to dismiss it because otherwise you might have to engage with it, which would mean admitting that a Labour policy is already doing real damage only weeks before a GE.
However, your last two sentences are so very telling because there the mask slips and you try and flip it around with a bit of "whataboutery"; deep down, buried beneath your cognitive dissonance, you know that's it.
But, as far as you're concerned, an eye for an eye.
Again, that's what you're voting for if you vote Labour, folks.
The policy was specifically cited in a letter sent by a school whose management had failed to attract enough pupils over a sustained period of time and who wanted to avoid taking responsibility for that failure. It's what managements do.
Closing down Sure Start centres was a Tory decision taken on the basis that it would not adversely affect their voting demographic. It has had an appalling impact on countless individual young lives and many communities. You had no problem with it.
That's what you're voting for if you vote Tory, folks.
You haven't a clue what you're talking about. This directly affects my son, his teachers - who will lose their jobs - and our local community, which loses a school that's been here almost 90 years. This is all deeply personal and upsetting locally here, and I've had teachers who are personal friends in tears with us discussing it. Most recently yesterday at Anstey Park where we met up with one for a takeaway coffee and a playdate.
You'll forgive me if I don't have much time for you calling me a liar.
You don't want to admit that any policy Labour proposes, or enacts, can do any damage, whereas you are all too ready to move the spotlight back onto Tory ones where, funnily enough, you are happy to admit they do.
It just shows you up to be a rather-limited partisan stooge, I'm afraid, and your posts on this subject this morning has lowered my respect for you.
As I pointed out before The simple fact is that Labour’s policy was a get clause for a school that was going to close anyway as I’ve pointed out multiple times - remember the school announced its closure before the election was called.
In fact the finances of that school look worse than the local private school that the owning charity gifted to the Government back in 2016 - the only proviso was existing pupils stayed and boarding continued until the existing pupils left
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
Yes. The Tories have bogged it up. I am tempted to say that Covid did a lot to exacerbate the problems (in particular the levelling up agenda) but that's just excuses.
There is a demographic (which includes @Casino) which is going to be badly affected by Lab's VAT policy. Now, there are a hundred arguments to say so what they're rich, privileged, toffs, what have you. But Lab's policy will severely disadvantage them for it is widely assessed no particular benefit. Nor does it appear to make anything "fairer". It is a totemic issue for the Left and fair enough because the Left, or at least today's Lab is about to be voted into government.
Lab is therefore not only not the party of aspiration, but, and this is why I can never as it stands voter for them, it also actively doesn't like people like me and my sort (which I can see includes @Casino). I couldn't vote for them when Jezza was in charge and I am simply not altruistic enough to vote for them when they dislike me so much. In this election that won't matter a tuppenny f**k but it might in years to come.
I think you are expecting too much of a political party. No one I know has either got rich through one or has been made poor through one. Talent and ability are what moves you forward.
I just want one which is decent and will do the right thing and the Tories with Braverman Patel and Rwanda were never that. They encouraged every bit of mean spiritedness they could find in the population. As a country we became pariahs and that did nobody any good.
Perhaps. They always say that the Cons think Lab supporters are stupid and Lab think Cons supporters are nasty. I don't suppose there is much difference if you are on the receiving end but it doesn't mean that such attitudes don't have an effect.
As for expectations yes of course but at heart I am a small-c conservative who wants the state to play as small a (but non-zero) part as possible in peoples' lives. Small government and individual freedom is why I would vote for a party but I don't think we've got any of those on offer right now.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
You brought polling numbers into the discussion, not RP.
Are Reform really going to get 14% in Aberdeenshire? Another MRP oddity.
Not very likely but there's cerainly a hard rump of pro UK fishing EU haterz that would be Reform friendly. That Moray 'almost' voted for Leave is often touted by the usual suspects as a reason that the Scots should just suck up Brexit.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
Your problem there is that the English Liberal Democrats are not Federalist.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
Doric is more legend than reality. I hear an awful lot of Scots dialects or which Doric is only one. But I'm from Lancashire - where the dialects barely extend beyond your own town. I'm use to dialects, I understand enough.
I was at an event where Peter Chapman, Aberdeenshire farmer and former MSP recited two long Doric poems from memory. Probably only understood one word in three but the meaning was unmistakeable and it was immensely funny. Wonderfully expressive dialect.
Very fond of the novel Johnnie Gibb of Gushetneuk myself.
Brexit wasn't a Tory policy. Dave plus team campaigned like bastards to avoid it. In contradistinction to one J Corbyn, and plenty on the Lab side. Of course it was a huge error but it was a cross-party huge error.
And many of the same people who screeched like lunatics for Brexit are taking glee in the thought that Putinist Farage's latest party might overtake the Conservatives....
Brexit was not a small-c conservative policy.
Corbyn was a follower of Tony Benn, who was our main opponent in the 1975 Referendum. It was quite odd how Tory Europeans turned Bennite!
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Ah yes, a big power hungry, carbon dioxide spewing supercomputer, while preaching Gian hairshirtism to the plebs.
Electricity can be generated without any carbon dioxide. The Met Office have a large solar panel array on their roof, albeit it only generated 2% of their power needs when it was installed.
Obviously energy efficiency is a no-brainer, but nobody serious advocates not doing things that use electricity when we can generate the electricity without fossil fuels.
Went would you make such an embarrassingly poor argument?
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
Interesting but those projections for Scottish seats are way off beam. Labour will not be second in ANME that's for sure.
Anyone would think I am a threat or something.
The only part of that chart that makes any sense is that the SNP are favourites. The rest? Give over. There hasn't been any polling done here, so applying UK models into it is just daft.
I do think there is a compare and contrast to deploy though SNP Policy - nasty Tories are anti-migrant, we want migration into Scotland CyberNat policy - get out of my country
Happily Cybernats are nothing but a small-minded minority. My own village has people from all the way across Europe. And all are welcomed. Pig-headed bigotry as displayed in my garden a month or so back horrified people. As they have openly told me.
I know exactly one full on Q Anon style conspiracy theorist, an older middle class, retired, educated, graduate lady.
We don't often talk what counts as politics (I too soon give up the will to live) but it popped up this week. Between the cracks in the pot there were gleams of light. I think she was saying that Reform and Farage is the party that is on the side of 'Light' against 'Darkness', Trump of course being the USA version. All references to World Economic Forum, Vaccination, Covid are signals to the illuminati that this is the case.
I stopped listening when the name Rothschild got dropped in.
Can anyone illuminate me further about Q Anon garbage and Reform?
I've got a couple of acquaintances that dabble in it. It gets a bit flat earth, antivax, Tommy Robinson is the new messiah, the country is being overtaken by muslims, and people are getting stopped by the police for leaving their 15 Minute City. Bill Gates, the bloke from the WEF and Soros all get dragged into it. I actually had coffee with one a couple of weeks ago. He's voting Reform. We used to be really close, known him since my first job at 16, but now he just seems a completely different person, and it's happened in only a year or so.
Thanks. My example arose during Covid, with full on anti-vax, and a theory of covid both not existing (it's cold/flu) and being an instrument of global control (ie the vax). Asked 'How did Trump catch it then?' 'Don't know'. Refuses to register with GP or seek medical assistance (which is a worry); I innocently asked if she was registered to vote and she said "Why wouldn't I be".
They get to the point where they don't believe in science or any government. It's a mental illness. My mate isn't there yet, but if he doesn't get help, he'll disappear down the rabbit hole. I just kept saying "I don't believe that" and he'd tell me to wake up and do my own research. It's hard to watch it happening.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Ah yes, a big power hungry, carbon dioxide spewing supercomputer, while preaching Gian hairshirtism to the plebs.
Electricity can be generated without any carbon dioxide. The Met Office have a large solar panel array on their roof, albeit it only generated 2% of their power needs when it was installed.
Obviously energy efficiency is a no-brainer, but nobody serious advocates not doing things that use electricity when we can generate the electricity without fossil fuels.
Went would you make such an embarrassingly poor argument?
So do they use their forecasts to switch it off when wind and solar isn't generating and the grid runs off gas?
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
Your problem there is that the English Liberal Democrats are not Federalist.
The Liberal Democrats are federalist. Both in terms of party structure and policy. Federalism is in the manifesto: "Support the creation of a UK Constitutional Convention, with the aim of drafting a new Federal Constitution"
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
Doric is more legend than reality. I hear an awful lot of Scots dialects or which Doric is only one. But I'm from Lancashire - where the dialects barely extend beyond your own town. I'm use to dialects, I understand enough.
Long years ago I worked as a relief pharmacist in East Manchester and as far North as Oldham. The difference in accents was considerable. I just stuck to my South Essex.
I grew up in Rochdale where most of the kids at school were from the cluster of communities around the school. Then I went to college in Oldham and was exposed to accents from across Oldham and East Manchester. Mind Blown.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Ah yes, a big power hungry, carbon dioxide spewing supercomputer, while preaching Gian hairshirtism to the plebs.
Electricity can be generated without any carbon dioxide. The Met Office have a large solar panel array on their roof, albeit it only generated 2% of their power needs when it was installed.
Obviously energy efficiency is a no-brainer, but nobody serious advocates not doing things that use electricity when we can generate the electricity without fossil fuels.
Went would you make such an embarrassingly poor argument?
So do they use their forecasts to switch it off when wind and solar isn't generating and the grid runs off gas?
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
The tories were always a coalition of the wealthy and aspirational middle/lower class.
They tended towards the latter under Thatcher but since Cameron became leader this has gone sharply into reverse and under their one nation vaneer, they have become the party of the wealthy who don't like Oiks muscling in.
And now they will pay the price. Bigly.
The Conservatives fundamentally exist for only two purposes: to ensure the transmission of wealth upwards, and to make sure that the already rich can preserve their estates and transmit them to their heirs as easily and completely as possible. In short, they're the gentry party.
This suited them well up until the point that their elderly core discovered that there wasn't enough money to pay both their gold plated state pensions and the immense cost of free, efficient, prompt and unlimited healthcare. When the money you were saving for a cruise to the Azores has to go on paying the Spire to fix your dodgy hip, the "but I paid my taxes" strop reflex is bound to be triggered. Big time.
If it were possible to screw enough money out of the under 50s and businesses to keep the NHS running smoothly then Sunak would be in with a fighting chance of winning this election. As it is, because he can no longer deliver for the half of the electorate that he cares about, the pure loathing that his party gets from the other half finally becomes really important. Hence the fact that we're talking about a Tory worst case scenario of 50 seats, not 250.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
If you don't speak Doric you shouldn't be standing in Aberdeenshire.
That would exclude an awful lot of SNP elected representatives...
I was thinking it would probably exclude most of the candidates for ANME. Maybe Douglas Ross speaks it.
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
Doric is more legend than reality. I hear an awful lot of Scots dialects or which Doric is only one. But I'm from Lancashire - where the dialects barely extend beyond your own town. I'm use to dialects, I understand enough.
I was at an event where Peter Chapman, Aberdeenshire farmer and former MSP recited two long Doric poems from memory. Probably only understood one word in three but the meaning was unmistakeable and it was immensely funny. Wonderfully expressive dialect.
Very fond of the novel Johnnie Gibb of Gushetneuk myself.
Not heard of that one. Have always meant to try Lewis Grassic Gibbon. One day, maybe.
VAT exemption on school fees is pretty much indefensible but it is also likely to do more harm than good and is political grandstanding from Lab. In the absence of any other policies to speak of, apart from gold-plating some existing Cons ones, they need a totemic issue to fire up the base, and adding VAT to school fees is it.
I think it's worth pointing out this Tony Blair quote on aspiration -
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
The tories were always a coalition of the wealthy and aspirational middle/lower class.
They tended towards the latter under Thatcher but since Cameron became leader this has gone sharply into reverse and under their one nation vaneer, they have become the party of the wealthy who don't like Oiks muscling in.
And now they will pay the price. Bigly.
The Conservatives fundamentally exist for only two purposes: to ensure the transmission of wealth upwards, and to make sure that the already rich can preserve their estates and transmit them to their heirs as easily and completely as possible. In short, they're the gentry party.
This suited them well up until the point that their elderly core discovered that there wasn't enough money to pay both their gold plated state pensions and the immense cost of free, efficient, prompt and unlimited healthcare. When the money you were saving for a cruise to the Azores has to go on paying the Spire to fix your dodgy hip, the "but I paid my taxes" strop reflex is bound to be triggered. Big time.
If it were possible to screw enough money out of the under 50s and businesses to keep the NHS running smoothly then Sunak would be in with a fighting chance of winning this election. As it is, because he can no longer deliver for the half of the electorate that he cares about, the pure loathing that his party gets from the other half finally becomes really important. Hence the fact that we're talking about a Tory worst case scenario of 50 seats, not 250.
No doubt you'll approve, and maybe have a go yourself, but it's a cowardly and weak way of engaging in political debate, that commands zero respect from me.
But you've got to suck it up, like you used to tell Remainers. The Tories ain't getting back in and you'll go mad carrying in the way you do. For your own wellbeing, you need to let it go.
My own wellbeing would be greatly enhanced by people like you avoiding snide personal attacks on the welfare of my family because it's politically convenient for you to stick the boot in.
Just a tip.
You need to stop pretending this is something it isn't, nobody is "going after your son". We are talking about a policy issue re VAT. Stop trying to play the victim. You dish out plenty of personal abuse as many of can attest you need to be less of a snowflake when you get it returned
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Yes, but they do it in private, LP.
I want them to show a little score up on the screen to indicate how accurate they were yesterday. Needn't be complicated. A simple percentage or score out of ten would do. Most days they are right, or sufficiently accurate not to warrant comment, but when they are hopelessly wrong (stats suggest that would be about 15% of the time) a word or two about where and why would be interesting, as well as suitably humble.
As it is, they are like tipsters who don't publish their results, publicly at least. I am sure they are much more forthcoming with their funders, but that's not good enough. I remember the Met Office used to be part of the MoD, and as you probably know the that is one of the most notoriously incompetent and inefficient departments in government. So that wasn't a lot of use. Damned if I know who it would be now.
They were moved to the Department of Business. There is lots of publicly available statistics on forecast accuracy. A lot of competition between the different forecast centres to score best.
For the Met Office there are also measures of forecast accuracy that are laid before Parliament, or at least they were a few years ago.
I agree that more discussion of how and why previous formats went wrong would be really helpful for public understanding of the forecast, as it would help people to know when it was more uncertain, and how to recalibrate the forecast in response to the changes they see in the weather during the day.
The 10-day and deep dive forecasts that the Met Office put out on youtube are pretty good at looking at the uncertainties in the forecast, but they don't look at how the previous forecast turned out, which is definitely a missed opportunity.
If you ever find yourself near the Department of Meteorology at Reading they run a weekly series of current weather seminars where they would start by examining the weather of the past week, and looking at how well the forecast did, before then looking ahead to the next week and discussing other interesting bits and pieces. Might be something you'd be interested in.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Ah yes, a big power hungry, carbon dioxide spewing supercomputer, while preaching Gian hairshirtism to the plebs.
Electricity can be generated without any carbon dioxide. The Met Office have a large solar panel array on their roof, albeit it only generated 2% of their power needs when it was installed.
Obviously energy efficiency is a no-brainer, but nobody serious advocates not doing things that use electricity when we can generate the electricity without fossil fuels.
Went would you make such an embarrassingly poor argument?
So do they use their forecasts to switch it off when wind and solar isn't generating and the grid runs off gas?
I thought not.
Why would they do that? Obviously the project to install non fossil fuel sources of electricity generation will take longer than a day, and everyone will use electricity while the transition is in progress.
Cybernats update! I am kept entertained by some of the comments that get posted. People supporting a party who openly advocate inward migration to Scotland seem to be unhappy with my funny accent. I am not for Scotland and should go home. And yet the same people are quite happy with their candidate Seamus Logan with his funny accent. He shouldn't go home.
Are the SNP looking to build a one party state?
At least you're completely at home with the Unionist MO of whining about cybernats when the polling aint good.
Whining? No no. They more they interact with my posts - posting emojis and commenting - the more they help to promote my content with the algorithm. I'm *delighted* that they are both helping to promote me and to show to other voters what the choice is in the election.
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
So your numbers would be even worse, sorry, not as good, if it wasn't for the Cybernats?
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
You brought polling numbers into the discussion, not RP.
Are Reform really going to get 14% in Aberdeenshire? Another MRP oddity.
Not very likely but there's cerainly a hard rump of pro UK fishing EU haterz that would be Reform friendly. That Moray 'almost' voted for Leave is often touted by the usual suspects as a reason that the Scots should just suck up Brexit.
If Cominic Dummings was worth his salt he'd have realised how close it was up there, carpet-bombed it in Facebook ads, and got leave over the line there. Would have saved an awful lot of aggravation and opportunities for La Sturgeon to drape herself in the yellow stars.
Time to put data over emotions. PB Tories are returning to the party with unbeatable reasons like "too good for state schools" and "my wife". No campaign can beat this trend. Betting on last week's polls could be a chimera.
Time to put data over emotions. PB Tories are returning to the party with unbeatable reasons like "too good for state schools" and "my wife". No campaign can beat this trend. Betting on last week's polls could be a chimera.
You are unaware of the hierarchy
1) You 2) Your Boss 3) Your Bosses Boss : 126) King 127) God 128) Wife
Time to put data over emotions. PB Tories are returning to the party with unbeatable reasons like "too good for state schools" and "my wife". No campaign can beat this trend. Betting on last week's polls could be a chimera.
BigG has returned - he was going to vote Labour. SeanF is the only Tory to Reform switcher we had (that I noticed), and I'm not sure what his update is.
In the real world, I'd hope NF's good debate performance would feed through and we'd see RefUK hold up. That is definitely a personal hope not a prediction.
So … leaving aside partisanship, in so far as that’s possible. I reckon:
- The Conservatives will do better than their current polling c. 25%, perhaps up to 27%. They will still be the main Opposition with 100+ seats. Maybe 150+
- Labour will do worse than 1997 on votes (37-39%, maybe sneaking above 40%) but better on seats. c.400+
- The LibDems will do well on seats: 40+
- Reform will underperform: 11-12%. Potentially 0 seats.
- The Greens won’t get above 5%. Remember their highest ever is 3.8%
I could be utterly wrong
Heathen, Will you please promise to keep that post and come back here on July 5th to receive the plaudits or opprobrium, as appropriate?
People who don't stand by their predictions and apologise for mistakes really annoy me.
It's why I can't stand weather forecasters.
Weather forecasters like nothing better than to pick apart the details of where a forecast went wrong so that they can improve future forecasts. The Met Office love that sort of thing, especially as the answer normally ends up being to buy a bigger supercomputer to run the forecast models in greater detail.
Yes, but they do it in private, LP.
I want them to show a little score up on the screen to indicate how accurate they were yesterday. Needn't be complicated. A simple percentage or score out of ten would do. Most days they are right, or sufficiently accurate not to warrant comment, but when they are hopelessly wrong (stats suggest that would be about 15% of the time) a word or two about where and why would be interesting, as well as suitably humble.
As it is, they are like tipsters who don't publish their results, publicly at least. I am sure they are much more forthcoming with their funders, but that's not good enough. I remember the Met Office used to be part of the MoD, and as you probably know the that is one of the most notoriously incompetent and inefficient departments in government. So that wasn't a lot of use. Damned if I know who it would be now.
The Met Office publishes its model skill statistics regularly and there are plenty of comparisons between different NWP models. In recent years the most accurate medium term (ie 3-10 days) model globally by some distance has been the European Centre for Medium Term Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) model.
The UKMO model is usually second most accurate, followed by the American Global Forecasting System (GFS) and Canadian GEM models.
At very short term high resolution the new Met Office UKV is jockeying for first place in accuracy of rainfall and temperature modelling with the French Arôme.
Note that MO uses both the ECMWF model and its own to make forecasts, as it is a contributor to and participant in ECMWF. They used to be based in Reading but moved to Italy after Brexit.
In terms of live accuracy reporting to the masses, the question is what screen would they put this on? The Met office don’t provide the BBC forecasts anymore. They’re from a different private agency after they lost a tender.
How many Labour/LibDem voters will want to risk letting in Farage as their MP? If there is one seat for tactical voting to support the Tory candidate, this is it...
Not really. Green and LD could deliver for Labour.
The problem however is the media are generating their scoop for the 4th July by cosying up to Farage. Isn't he on Kuenssberg today?
Even then, a Labour win would depend on the Con/Ref split being spot-on. Are there enough Conservatives prepared to trek out to Clacton to strangle Reform at late middle age?
But, objectively, Farage taking just enough votes to let Labour in would, objectively, be very very funny.
Why? Its just the entire election writ small.
Labour would probably have won anyway, it is time for a change and the Tories are exhausted, but the massacre will be a result of Reform/Farage splitting the centre right vote in 2. I think Farage is ok with that; he just needs someone to rail against and a dominant Labour government will do fine. Whether Reform voters have thought this through, however, is another matter.
If you (a) like Reform a lot and/or want an opportunity to vent and (b) think Lab and Con are two sides of the same coin, then what is there left to think about?
For all the many faults of the present government, and they are legion, those on the right who think that a Labour government is just going to be more of the same are in for a disappointing decade. They may not recognise their country when it is over.
Yep, many have simply forgotten what a Labour government means.
I think a fair few newer voters on the soft left will be surprised at the authoritarianism. The Labour Party has never pretended to be Liberal. You can see the start of it in the promise to bring back ASBOs. I think I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour but those will be the things that make be regret it. There will also inevitably be institutional vandalism through a lack of a sense of history.
All of that.
The leitmotif is its innate tribalism and desire to reshape and reorder society through regulation, taxation, nannying, authoritarianism, into whatever it pleases. It's happy to use bullying and threats to achieve this and to restructure institutions to stack the deck in its favour. It *will* interfere into your everyday life and pressure you to comply in your personal and professional life or there will be financial and legal consequences for you. It won't brook much dissent.
It's why I'm sticking with the Conservatives. For all their faults, they leave me and my family alone.
Many would have had the same blindness towards what the Tories are like when voting for them in 2019, especially as Johnson was good at talking up the 'levelling up' fiction. They then got a rude awakening with the crap we've all had to put up with since. You're just describing the natural cycle of our two-party system, fed by our remarkable ability to show collective amnesia.
As for your last sentence: - Inflation and mortgage rates over the past year or so? - Rotting teeth because there are no dentists left? - Spending all morning on the phone only to be told there are no appointments left for my sick one-year old? - Waiting four years for a sexual assault case to be heard? - Having to teach kids who have EHCPs that say they can only succeed in school with one-to-one support and yet who have no funding for that one-to-one support - etc etc etc
If this is what leaving me and my family alone looks like, I'll take my chances with the other lot, thanks.
You must have a very unfortunate life if all of those apply to you.
But for other people its a time of full employment, pay rises, interest on their savings, no problems in seeing a doctor or dentist, minimal crime and cheap wine, beer and toothbrushes at supermarkets.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that's all personal experience! Full disclosure: teeth are fine, no sexual assault. The rest apply
Just to add I am definitely one of the privileged ones. I work two jobs (you lot are currently distracting me from my team of exam markers who can't work out how to mark a grade 9 vectors GCSE question, the dolts), but am lucky enough to spend Fridays with my kids rather than at school, hence saving a day of childcare. I get to spend my marking money on a week skydiving in Spain in October (just affixing my helmet for the impending barrage from @topping for my rank hypocrisy on climate change) so can't complain that I'm on the breadline. I've got some savings too.
On a broader point you are absolutely right to challenge the tendency to catastrophise the present situation; many, nay most, are fine. But I do see lots of the real world through my students at school and for a significant minority (far more than a decade ago) life ain't pretty right now.
I just CANNOT BELIEVE you are taking a plane to go sky diving (so more planes) when we are in a climate catastrophe.
Why haven't you melted down your laptop to give you extra heat for an hour or two in *checks outside* this scorching heat/torrential rain.
I read an article, will post if I can find it, that posited that the medical bills that result from charity skydives exceeds the amount they raise for charity.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Very nice! Or rather, not nice. But it's interesting.
I just query the £30pp. Seems low for people who jump out of planes for charity.
It's a giant scam in most cases. Most of the money raised goes on the cost of the jump (~£300 which is itself inflated to keep costs for repeat punters lower - my dropzone makes almost no money on my £20 ticket, I just fill up the back end of a plane that is already going up to throw out first timers). So £30 might actually be a lot more raised but a small proportion going to charity. Still seems a low figure, though.
On the substantive point, it's as ridiculous that the NHS would pay for me breaking a femur skydiving as it is that it treats smokers for free. All this sort of stuff should require private insurance.
Comments
I didn’t run away when I was ridiculed by just about every single person on here for telling you all that there was going to be a Labour landsli … oh ...
My critiques of you have nothing to do with your sex but do with your behaviour. I don't especially appreciate you making out differently.
Anyway. Must go.
It's a way of muting opposition into the long grass - i.e. never- and this policy will never see an extra bean going to Sure Start centres or anything else in the state sector.
In fact, it will make things worse. Most of the senior roll from our local closed school have signed up for the local state secondary in September.
I have no doubt that you are very upset by the VAT policy and by the school's closure, and because you are a highly partisan Tory you want a connection to exist and truly believe that one does.
Plenty of policies Labour pursues cause damage. I think the refusal to look again at Brexit is one such instance. Ironically, you don't.
I have absolutely no interest in whether you respect me or not. It does not bother me in the slightest. Beyond PB you are of no consequence to me, nor I to you. As I have said previously when you have said similar things because I have made arguments you do not like, I do not know you and you do not know me. This is an internet posting board and almost all of us use anonymous names.
I just think the Conservatives on the day will do better than current polling, and we might see a slight uptick in the opinion polls over the next fortnight to reflect that.
And Reform are doing the usual flattering to deceive
If you back those outcomes, and are right, you will be a considerably wealthier Heathen on July 5th!
“In Hinduism there’s a concept of duty called dharma, which is roughly translated as being about doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it.”
I find this a really interesting thing for him to say, and I like to see this sort of talk about ideas and principles a bit more, rather than a relentless focus on the "retail offer".
It also, in my view, really exposes his failure as PM. His job, after taking over after the Truss Calamity, was to do exactly dharma, to do his duty to the country and not worry about the electoral outcomes. Instead we've seen an increasingly frenetic and desperate search for the silver bullet that would avert electoral defeat.
I think he would have fared better with a keep calm and carry on approach, and received a better election result and greater respect from the voters.
"His dad voted Labour, he said. He used to vote Labour, too. But he'd bought his own house now. He'd set up his own business. He was doing very nicely. "So I've become a Tory" he said. In that moment, he crystallised for me the basis of our failure... His instincts were to get on in life. And he thought our instincts were to stop him. But that was never our history or our purpose."
In totemic policies like the VAT on private schools, Labour is once again demonstrating its anti-aspirational nature. I would also point out that the mooted raise on CGT would badly affect said person quoted above when he comes to sell his business. Labour's anti-aspirational instincts will eventually doom them with the middle ground.
The problem is the Tories aren't the aspirational party either. Taxes are up, good luck 'aspiring' to buy a house if you're under 40, IR35 has shafted freelancers, and so on. The Conservatives need a long spell in opposition to remember what they're good at. Helping people get on in life, or better yet, getting government out of their way so they can get on in life.
And what tip are you offering?
How do you get on with Doric if I may ask? I admit as someone from another part of Scotland I struggle in the backwoods of the North East
It means radically different things dependant on which Indian origin religion you are talking about. And has multiple usages within each Buddhist school and between them.
That, and having no translatable word into English means it is a concept of limited utility in our discourse.
We just need to keep buggerin' on regardless.
There is a demographic (which includes @Casino) which is going to be badly affected by Lab's VAT policy. Now, there are a hundred arguments to say so what they're rich, privileged, toffs, what have you. But Lab's policy will severely disadvantage them for it is widely assessed no particular benefit. Nor does it appear to make anything "fairer". It is a totemic issue for the Left and fair enough because the Left, or at least today's Lab is about to be voted into government.
Lab is therefore not only not the party of aspiration, but, and this is why I can never as it stands voter for them, it also actively doesn't like people like me and my sort (which I can see includes @Casino). I couldn't vote for them when Jezza was in charge and I am simply not altruistic enough to vote for them when they dislike me so much. In this election that won't matter a tuppenny f**k but it might in years to come.
We don't often talk what counts as politics (I too soon give up the will to live) but it popped up this week. Between the cracks in the pot there were gleams of light. I think she was saying that Reform and Farage is the party that is on the side of 'Light' against 'Darkness', Trump of course being the USA version. All references to World Economic Forum, Vaccination, Covid are signals to the illuminati that this is the case.
I stopped listening when the name Rothschild got dropped in.
Can anyone illuminate me further about Q Anon garbage and Reform?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10476298/#:~:text=The amount raised per person,significant burden on health resources.
All parachute injuries from two local parachute centres over a 5-year period were analysed. Of 174 patients with injuries of varying severity, 94% were first-time charity-parachutists. The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11% at an average cost of 3751 Pounds per casualty. Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%, at an average cost of 5781 Pounds per patient. The amount raised per person for charity was 30 Pounds. Each pound raised for charity cost the NHS 13.75 Pounds in return. Parachuting for charity costs more money than it raises, carries a high risk of serious personal injury and places a significant burden on health resources.
Brexit wasn't a Tory policy. Dave plus team campaigned like bastards to avoid it. In contradistinction to one J Corbyn, and plenty on the Lab side. Of course it was a huge error but it was a cross-party huge error.
I love it. Do you still get a Yorkshire dialect or has that all died off now?
Incidentally, what do you mean Unionist? I am not a unionist, I'm a federalist. Get it right!
I just query the £30pp. Seems low for people who jump out of planes for charity.
I used to be terrified of being called racist. But, being one of the ones who used Floyd's killing to jump on the bandwagon of self-education, I've realised (I think) that's it's much more productive to accept and use these words than to be terrified of them. So, for example, despite efforts not to be, I'm a teacher who displays racism (eg I will struggle to learn black kids names as quickly as white kids because I've had less cultural experience telling them apart). I don't feel guilty about this, it's just a fact of life, and I'm aware of it and trying to get better at it (but not to the exclusion of other things that are more important, like teaching maths well on little sleep).
I think the same can apply to privilege. Ditch the fragile response and it becomes quite a useful term.
Though I do agree not everyone uses the terms in this way.
https://shop.supervalu.ie/sm/delivery/rsid/5550/product/supervalu-dark-chocolate-&-orange-rice-cakes-96-g-id-1799671001/
Brexit was not a small-c conservative policy.
Time for a Daveyesque stunt, nude skydiving maybe?
I just want one which is decent and will do the right thing and the Tories with Braverman Patel and Rwanda were never that. They encouraged every bit of mean spiritedness they could find in the population. As a country we became pariahs and that did nobody any good.
Edit: just noticed it's MRP and all that as just discussed, thanks to all.
It's one of the things which most reminds me of the incumbent government, and not in a good way.
I actually had coffee with one a couple of weeks ago. He's voting Reform. We used to be really close, known him since my first job at 16, but now he just seems a completely different person, and it's happened in only a year or so.
See the long list of people who have gone to jail in the US for crimes, where their bitcoin transactions were major evidence.
I’ve long been of the (semi-joking) mind that Bitcoin was invented by the NSA. It was created by maths experts who managed to create a system that is superficially attractive to bad actors but is actually perfect for tracking their every action. And the said maths experts have stayed hidden ever since.
They tended towards the latter under Thatcher but since Cameron became leader this has gone sharply into reverse and under their one nation vaneer, they have become the party of the wealthy who don't like Oiks muscling in.
And now they will pay the price. Bigly.
I just stuck to my South Essex.
As an example, I deploy "bobbins" quite often on my YouTube channel.
I want them to show a little score up on the screen to indicate how accurate they were yesterday. Needn't be complicated. A simple percentage or score out of ten would do. Most days they are right, or sufficiently accurate not to warrant comment, but when they are hopelessly wrong (stats suggest that would be about 15% of the time) a word or two about where and why would be interesting, as well as suitably humble.
As it is, they are like tipsters who don't publish their results, publicly at least. I am sure they are much more forthcoming with their funders, but that's not good enough. I remember the Met Office used to be part of the MoD, and as you probably know the that is one of the most notoriously incompetent and inefficient departments in government. So that wasn't a lot of use. Damned if I know who it would be now.
In fact the finances of that school look worse than the local private school that the owning charity gifted to the Government back in 2016 - the only proviso was existing pupils stayed and boarding continued until the existing pupils left
As for expectations yes of course but at heart I am a small-c conservative who wants the state to play as small a (but non-zero) part as possible in peoples' lives. Small government and individual freedom is why I would vote for a party but I don't think we've got any of those on offer right now.
Obviously energy efficiency is a no-brainer, but nobody serious advocates not doing things that use electricity when we can generate the electricity without fossil fuels.
Went would you make such an embarrassingly poor argument?
The only part of that chart that makes any sense is that the SNP are favourites. The rest? Give over. There hasn't been any polling done here, so applying UK models into it is just daft.
I do think there is a compare and contrast to deploy though
SNP Policy - nasty Tories are anti-migrant, we want migration into Scotland
CyberNat policy - get out of my country
Happily Cybernats are nothing but a small-minded minority. My own village has people from all the way across Europe. And all are welcomed. Pig-headed bigotry as displayed in my garden a month or so back horrified people. As they have openly told me.
I thought not.
Unable to even gerrymander properly.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/16/fewer-than-200000-britons-living-abroad-apply-vote-uk-election
This suited them well up until the point that their elderly core discovered that there wasn't enough money to pay both their gold plated state pensions and the immense cost of free, efficient, prompt and unlimited healthcare. When the money you were saving for a cruise to the Azores has to go on paying the Spire to fix your dodgy hip, the "but I paid my taxes" strop reflex is bound to be triggered. Big time.
If it were possible to screw enough money out of the under 50s and businesses to keep the NHS running smoothly then Sunak would be in with a fighting chance of winning this election. As it is, because he can no longer deliver for the half of the electorate that he cares about, the pure loathing that his party gets from the other half finally becomes really important. Hence the fact that we're talking about a Tory worst case scenario of 50 seats, not 250.
For the Met Office there are also measures of forecast accuracy that are laid before Parliament, or at least they were a few years ago.
I agree that more discussion of how and why previous formats went wrong would be really helpful for public understanding of the forecast, as it would help people to know when it was more uncertain, and how to recalibrate the forecast in response to the changes they see in the weather during the day.
The 10-day and deep dive forecasts that the Met Office put out on youtube are pretty good at looking at the uncertainties in the forecast, but they don't look at how the previous forecast turned out, which is definitely a missed opportunity.
If you ever find yourself near the Department of Meteorology at Reading they run a weekly series of current weather seminars where they would start by examining the weather of the past week, and looking at how well the forecast did, before then looking ahead to the next week and discussing other interesting bits and pieces. Might be something you'd be interested in.
https://research.reading.ac.uk/meteorology/news-and-events/seminars/wcd/
Don't make yourself look like such an idiot.
Unable even to select an arithmetically advantageous election date.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/16/students-summer-holidays-voting-uk-general-election-conservative-seats
1) You
2) Your Boss
3) Your Bosses Boss
:
126) King
127) God
128) Wife
Once you have realised this, it’s much easier
In the real world, I'd hope NF's good debate performance would feed through and we'd see RefUK hold up. That is definitely a personal hope not a prediction.
The UKMO model is usually second most accurate, followed by the American Global Forecasting System (GFS) and Canadian GEM models.
At very short term high resolution the new Met Office UKV is jockeying for first place in accuracy of rainfall and temperature modelling with the French Arôme.
Note that MO uses both the ECMWF model
and its own to make forecasts, as it is a contributor to and participant in ECMWF. They used to be based in Reading but moved to Italy after Brexit.
In terms of live accuracy reporting to the masses, the question is what screen would they put this on? The Met office don’t provide the BBC forecasts anymore. They’re from a
different private agency after they lost a tender.
It's a giant scam in most cases. Most of the money raised goes on the cost of the jump (~£300 which is itself inflated to keep costs for repeat punters lower - my dropzone makes almost no money on my £20 ticket, I just fill up the back end of a plane that is already going up to throw out first timers). So £30 might actually be a lot more raised but a small proportion going to charity. Still seems a low figure, though.
On the substantive point, it's as ridiculous that the NHS would pay for me breaking a femur skydiving as it is that it treats smokers for free. All this sort of stuff should require private insurance.