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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
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.
He was actually going Lib Dem. Llandudno fortunately not in one of our target seats.
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.
I remember when we first moved up north to Selby and went round to our neighbours for a BBQ. They were jokingly mocking the accent of their friends from Hull. Realising we were looking baffled, they asked us if we didn't find it funny - we had to explain that we couldn't spot any difference in accents between them and their friends, being hardly able to understand either. Which caused a lot of laughter all round.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
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...
Personally I dislike Farage a great deal, but I would never vote Tory tactically to defeat him. Reform and the Tories are basically the same anyway, so if he wins, he wins and he will be in parliament. The good people of his constituency will then be able to judge if he is as lazy and useless as an MP as he was as an MEP. Good luck to them, they will need it.
Well, that's exactly the point. I could easily see a defeated Farage being allowed to join the Tories and ending up with a by-election seat a year or two down the line. For all that the so-called "one nation" Tories want Reform to just fuck off and die, they don't see how Reform-minded their own party has become. Enablers gonna enable.
If Farage loses in Clacton then he is toast.
I've heard promises of Farage's imminent political demise for a while now
He’ll always be around. Farage has a lot of superficial charm and is entertaining on telly, ditto Johnson, so he will always get airtime and clicks. However neither shows any inclination to the administrative tedium of running a country which is, like it or not, part the job. Which is the essence of why Leon pisses me off. It’s not that he’s a rightist, plenty of those on here, and in my family TBH, it’s his constant ramping of politics as entertainment. It’s infected the Tory Party as a whole - they have watched too much West Wing, and apparently Veep and The Thick of It, and see it as a big game of clever quips and briefings. In the Tories’ case (not Farage obvs) the Oxford Union has a lot to answer for in this regard.
I’m naturally a dripping wet centrist melt Lib Dem. Large sections of the Labour Party repel me. Corbyn was appalling. But they are by several orders of magnitude more serious than the Conservatives, which is why I’m lending them my vote this time.
How do I “constantly ramp politics as entertainment”?
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
Hi PfP. Not sure. But as someone who a few weeks ago came close to backing the Tories to win 150+ seats and who also considered selling LD seats at 36, I already feel like a winner!
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss 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.
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.
Set in different eras, I think - 1840s vs 1900s (?). I believe some Gibbonm has been filmed for the big screen and/or TV but have never tried that.
JGoG is in part about the Disruption of the Kirk - quite an insight into the rise of Liberalism and the Free Kirk in that kind of area (ironically perhaps in view of the current situation, but we'll have to see of course!).
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.
ECMWF are still based in Reading. They're independent of the EU, though there's obviously a lot of overlap of member countries.
They were more upset about the Met Office moving down to Exeter (219km away) from their previous location in Bracknell (18km away), than by Brexit.
The ECMWF, UKMO, Reading University Met. Department triangle was the greatest concentration of Meteorological ability that the world will ever see. Broken apart by house prices.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
Hi PfP. Not sure. But as someone who a few weeks ago came close to backing the Tories to win 150+ seats and who also considered selling LD seats at 36, I already feel like a winner!
Oh come on stjohn, you're having us on ... surely?
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
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"
Who is the English Lib Dem leader, then? The English party don't have a separate conference, they just hand off policy making to the Federal Party.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I'd sell Lib Dem at that level. It's not beyond the realms of possibility but is top end of their targeting approach. I'd probably still buy Tory - suspect the bridge will just about hold when push comes to shove.
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.
And it would have given the RuthJacksonDouglaswhoever party some cover for their reverse ferret from their pro EU position pre referendum, though they'd never turn down the opportunity to drape themselves in the UJ whatever the circumstances.
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.
utter bollox, a few nutjobs don't represent a country. More dark heart nationalism/racism by a mile in England.
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.
ECMWF are still based in Reading. They're independent of the EU, though there's obviously a lot of overlap of member countries.
They were more upset about the Met Office moving down to Exeter (219km away) from their previous location in Bracknell (18km away), than by Brexit.
The ECMWF, UKMO, Reading University Met. Department triangle was the greatest concentration of Meteorological ability that the world will ever see. Broken apart by house prices.
They moved their data (and I thought the computer itself?) to Bologna.
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.
utter bollox, a few nutjobs don't represent a country. More dark heart nationalism/racism by a mile in England.
Every culture has its allocation of bigotry. In the UK much of it is spent on class rather than ethnicity. Surveys of public attitudes to race, gender, sexuality and other topics typically show very similar results for the 3 GB nations.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I'd sell Lib Dem at that level. It's not beyond the realms of possibility but is top end of their targeting approach. I'd probably still buy Tory - suspect the bridge will just about hold when push comes to shove.
I’ll be happy with 30+, shrug at 25-30 and be disappointed at <25.
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.
Set in different eras, I think - 1840s vs 1900s (?). I believe some Gibbonm has been filmed for the big screen and/or TV but have never tried that.
JGoG is in part about the Disruption of the Kirk - quite an insight into the rise of Liberalism and the Free Kirk in that kind of area (ironically perhaps in view of the current situation, but we'll have to see of course!).
And I see I misspelt the name - it's Johnny.
The 1970s tv production is good and quite faithful to the book, though a bit creaky now. The recent film by Terence Davies, great film maker that he is, is pretty ropey. The accent of the actress playing Chris is awful, and it was mostly filmed in New Zealand so not a hint of a North Sea haar.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
I am baffled that the BBC can no longer afford the Met Office weather fee so gives us something worse instead. Both our funded with our money!
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.
A weak simile.
My sex teacher at school was asked whether VD could go through a condom? "VD" he said "could go through a wellington boot!"
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I'd sell Lib Dem at that level. It's not beyond the realms of possibility but is top end of their targeting approach. I'd probably still buy Tory - suspect the bridge will just about hold when push comes to shove.
The "safest" Conservative seats will typically fall to the Lib Dems if they go. Getting to 55+ LD seats is the other side of the coin of below 100 seats for Cons.
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...
Personally I dislike Farage a great deal, but I would never vote Tory tactically to defeat him. Reform and the Tories are basically the same anyway, so if he wins, he wins and he will be in parliament. The good people of his constituency will then be able to judge if he is as lazy and useless as an MP as he was as an MEP. Good luck to them, they will need it.
Well, that's exactly the point. I could easily see a defeated Farage being allowed to join the Tories and ending up with a by-election seat a year or two down the line. For all that the so-called "one nation" Tories want Reform to just fuck off and die, they don't see how Reform-minded their own party has become. Enablers gonna enable.
If Farage loses in Clacton then he is toast.
I've heard promises of Farage's imminent political demise for a while now
He’ll always be around. Farage has a lot of superficial charm and is entertaining on telly, ditto Johnson, so he will always get airtime and clicks. However neither shows any inclination to the administrative tedium of running a country which is, like it or not, part the job. Which is the essence of why Leon pisses me off. It’s not that he’s a rightist, plenty of those on here, and in my family TBH, it’s his constant ramping of politics as entertainment. It’s infected the Tory Party as a whole - they have watched too much West Wing, and apparently Veep and The Thick of It, and see it as a big game of clever quips and briefings. In the Tories’ case (not Farage obvs) the Oxford Union has a lot to answer for in this regard.
I’m naturally a dripping wet centrist melt Lib Dem. Large sections of the Labour Party repel me. Corbyn was appalling. But they are by several orders of magnitude more serious than the Conservatives, which is why I’m lending them my vote this time.
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.
Although I disagree with your last sentence, your first para is pretty much bang-on. I'm politically homeless in this election for the first time...well, ever. I don't like this at all.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
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...
Personally I dislike Farage a great deal, but I would never vote Tory tactically to defeat him. Reform and the Tories are basically the same anyway, so if he wins, he wins and he will be in parliament. The good people of his constituency will then be able to judge if he is as lazy and useless as an MP as he was as an MEP. Good luck to them, they will need it.
Well, that's exactly the point. I could easily see a defeated Farage being allowed to join the Tories and ending up with a by-election seat a year or two down the line. For all that the so-called "one nation" Tories want Reform to just fuck off and die, they don't see how Reform-minded their own party has become. Enablers gonna enable.
If Farage loses in Clacton then he is toast.
I've heard promises of Farage's imminent political demise for a while now
He’ll always be around. Farage has a lot of superficial charm and is entertaining on telly, ditto Johnson, so he will always get airtime and clicks. However neither shows any inclination to the administrative tedium of running a country which is, like it or not, part the job. Which is the essence of why Leon pisses me off. It’s not that he’s a rightist, plenty of those on here, and in my family TBH, it’s his constant ramping of politics as entertainment. It’s infected the Tory Party as a whole - they have watched too much West Wing, and apparently Veep and The Thick of It, and see it as a big game of clever quips and briefings. In the Tories’ case (not Farage obvs) the Oxford Union has a lot to answer for in this regard.
I’m naturally a dripping wet centrist melt Lib Dem. Large sections of the Labour Party repel me. Corbyn was appalling. But they are by several orders of magnitude more serious than the Conservatives, which is why I’m lending them my vote this time.
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.
ECMWF are still based in Reading. They're independent of the EU, though there's obviously a lot of overlap of member countries.
They were more upset about the Met Office moving down to Exeter (219km away) from their previous location in Bracknell (18km away), than by Brexit.
The ECMWF, UKMO, Reading University Met. Department triangle was the greatest concentration of Meteorological ability that the world will ever see. Broken apart by house prices.
They moved their data (and I thought the computer itself?) to Bologna.
Their data centre is in Bologna, yes. But the scientists are still in Reading.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I would sell Labour buy Conservartive buy SNP sell Reform and leave the Lib Dems alone
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
If you seriously think the Met Office has more money than its American counterpart, you are in line for the Shapps-Abbott award. £250 million vs $6 billion.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
The NOAA are swimming in money, but the underperformance of their main model has always been a bit of a mystery. That despite periodic upgrades.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
If you seriously think the Met Office has more money than its American counterpart, you are in line for the Shapps-Abbott award. £250 million vs $6 billion.
I think the Met Office have more money than they would do if they were reliant on departmental spending alone.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
If you seriously think the Met Office has more money than its American counterpart, you are in line for the Shapps-Abbott award. £250 million vs $6 billion.
I think the Met Office have more money than they would do if they were reliant on departmental spending alone.
That’s really my original point. We treat all departmental spending as a cost sink and don’t think strategically enough about the industrial benefits of targeted investment.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
There seems to very little interest in the Tory Party returning to the centre after losing the election. They don't seem to be interested in voters like me at all and seem more interested in more immigration and culture war debates.
There are so many voters like me - younger voters - who could be persuaded to vote for a Tory Party aimed at people under fifty. But as they are not, I really do think long term they will come to pay an even bigger prize as we won't be becoming Conservative and instead Labour will establish a new base in us.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
Tr. leave some sort of viable remnant of the Tory party for me to lead.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
The NOAA are swimming in money, but the underperformance of their main model has always been a bit of a mystery. That despite periodic upgrades.
Very probably an institutional policy, guarded by a few key individuals.
There’s a fascinating example of this in the NASA space suit area.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
The trick is to tax unearned wealth rather than economic activity. It's why I wouldn't be opposed to, say, a very small (5%?) capital gains tax on primary residence. Most boomers are sitting on gains of half a mil or more simply because they bought great houses back when you could get a half decent one for 70p (with no net benefit to the economy). Why should that go completely untaxed, when my investment in a startup (generating economic activity) does not?
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
None of those people, including Cameron, holds a candle to Sunak in the shit PM stakes. He wrote the book. He is the essence, the id of shit PM.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
If you seriously think the Met Office has more money than its American counterpart, you are in line for the Shapps-Abbott award. £250 million vs $6 billion.
I think the Met Office have more money than they would do if they were reliant on departmental spending alone.
That’s really my original point. We treat all departmental spending as a cost sink and don’t think strategically enough about the industrial benefits of targeted investment.
The Met Office, though, are really a major exception to that rule. There have been several key government decisions to invest money in its capability that have really paid dividends in its performance today.
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.
I’ll grudgingly vote Conservative, unless they fall further in the polling, and are consistently behind Reform. In that case, a Conservative vote would become pointless, and I’ll back Reform.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
The trick is to tax unearned wealth rather than economic activity. It's why I wouldn't be opposed to, say, a very small (5%?) capital gains tax on primary residence. Most boomers are sitting on gains of half a mil or more simply because they bought great houses back when you could get a half decent one for 70p (with no net benefit to the economy). Why should that go completely untaxed, when my investment in a startup (generating economic activity) does not?
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
You can buy prime farmland for relatively small amounts. A few years back I nearly bought some in Kent at £2,500 an acre.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I would sell Labour buy Conservartive buy SNP sell Reform and leave the Lib Dems alone
One is tempted to remind you, Roger, of your infamous prediction in respect of a certain Barack Obama, but you have suffered enough so let's just pass lightly over this latest effort.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
The NOAA are swimming in money, but the underperformance of their main model has always been a bit of a mystery. That despite periodic upgrades.
Very probably an institutional policy, guarded by a few key individuals.
There’s a fascinating example of this in the NASA space suit area.
The obvious solution is to turn the Met Office website into a betting exchange. It's all very well offering 9-1 against rain this afternoon but if they backed their judgment with folding money we'd take it more seriously.
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.
I’ll grudgingly vote Conservative, unless they fall further in the polling, and are consistently behind Reform. In that case, a Conservative vote would become pointless, and I’ll back Reform.
Fair enough.
I wasn't going to vote for them anyway, I could never bring myself to give tacit approval.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
The trick is to tax unearned wealth rather than economic activity. It's why I wouldn't be opposed to, say, a very small (5%?) capital gains tax on primary residence. Most boomers are sitting on gains of half a mil or more simply because they bought great houses back when you could get a half decent one for 70p (with no net benefit to the economy). Why should that go completely untaxed, when my investment in a startup (generating economic activity) does not?
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
You can buy prime farmland for relatively small amounts. A few years back I nearly bought some in Kent at £2,500 an acre.
The issue is land you are allowed to live on.
Surely the trick is knowing a local councillor who would be receptive to a small donation in order to convert the land to residential use... perhaps one who is also a member of the same lodge?
But I think the problem is land concentrated by value, rather than volume. How much of London does the Duke of Westminster own?
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
2015 was also completely negative (Labour Chaos and Ed Miliband in Alex Salmonds pocket)
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
Hi there, my old alter ego. Long time no see. You ok?
I can tell you what I have done, and hope that helps.
No bets on Labour. Sold Con at 164 and again at 139. Got LDs hopelessly wrong at the outset and sold at 36. Closed out at a loss on 48 and bought back in at 44. Recently bought Reform at 5.5. I've no wish to close any of these out, or to further invest. There's better value on Betfair. If I were entering the market afresh I might buy Reform and SNP. They're both low risk. Can't see any value elsewhere.
I see the spectator has decided the entire election is absurd because it’s ignoring the most important issue of all
Thank you for the post, which I found interesting.
I assume you are referring to the latest missive from that former PBer @SeanT, who left here a few years back never to return. It's called "AI will change everything – so why is the election ignoring it?" and can be found here[1]
Just for shits and giggles I ran the AI article thru an AI summarizer[2] thus
"...The main point of the text is that Britain is not addressing the impending revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on various sectors. The author criticizes politicians for not discussing AI, despite its potential to transform societies, economies, and endanger humanity. The author argues that AI will have a massive impact on education, rendering university education pointless as AI technology advances. The creative sector, including Hollywood and British TV, is also predicted to be decimated by AI. The author suggests that jobs in various cognitive sectors, such as coding, law, management, and design, are at risk of being replaced by AI. The Chinese AI expert, Kai Fu Lee, predicts that 50% of jobs will be lost in three years. The author emphasizes that this is a world-changing event comparable to a global war, and politicians are not addressing it adequately. The text concludes with an analogy of politicians squabbling over trivial matters while a tsunami of AI revolution looms on the horizon..."
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.
A suggestion for the mods. In support of @RochdalePioneers, the site should be renamed The Doric Column for the duration of the election campaign.
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
2015 was also completely negative (Labour Chaos and Ed Miliband in Alex Salmonds pocket)
His leadership campaign was all positive hope and change though.
There are some conspiracy theorists in the Tory rank and file who don't actually believe Cameron won that fairly - 'I don't know anyone who voted for him' etc. It's interesting to think how Davis might have performed.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I'd sell Lib Dem at that level. It's not beyond the realms of possibility but is top end of their targeting approach. I'd probably still buy Tory - suspect the bridge will just about hold when push comes to shove.
The "safest" Conservative seats will typically fall to the Lib Dems if they go. Getting to 55+ LD seats is the other side of the coin of below 100 seats for Cons.
My reason, ultimately, for thinking the Tory bridge will hold is that the Lib Dems in particular have been badly burned by over-targeting in recent elections. They will therefore be steered by a fairly risk-averse party HQ away from stretch targets and towards making top targets secure.
Those stretch targets will then not get the squeeze message as strongly, the Labour vote will be somewhat higher, and the Tories will just about survive on the split. I can see that happening particularly where there are clusters of seats which MRP has as tight Tory/LD contests (Surrey, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Devon/Somerset/Dorset).
In essence, Lib Dem HQ would bite your hand off for the 55 seats implied by the spread now and will be very cautious about gambling for more... a gamble which may, but crucially may not, pay off. It's a case of, "we've had a lovely time, Jim, and will let someone else have a go on the prize board".
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
Well, yes, to an extent. I would like to see more Met Office data made public. But the Met Office manages to produce better forecasts than the US. Why is that? Maybe the hybrid approach has delivered more money and a degree of competitive discipline to the Met Office.
The NOAA are swimming in money, but the underperformance of their main model has always been a bit of a mystery. That despite periodic upgrades.
Very probably an institutional policy, guarded by a few key individuals.
There’s a fascinating example of this in the NASA space suit area.
The obvious solution is to turn the Met Office website into a betting exchange. It's all very well offering 9-1 against rain this afternoon but if they backed their judgment with folding money we'd take it more seriously.
Fantastic idea, Alphabet, but on all known form they'd be broke in a week.
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
None of those people, including Cameron, holds a candle to Sunak in the shit PM stakes. He wrote the book. He is the essence, the id of shit PM.
Rishi might be a bad party leader, purely in electoral terms, but when the history books are written, Sunak might fall into the Theresa May bucket of PMs who were dealt a bad hand and played it badly, rather than actively making things worse. And I say that as someone who has found every decision of Rishi's unfathomable.
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.
It’s not really a vote up though. BigG may have been clutching his pearls hard enough to almost crush them but he was never ‘really’ going to vote any other way than Tory.
We’ve seen this pantomime play out too many times.
The spread prices from Spreadex/Sporting for the number of seats to be won by each of fhe main parties remain unchanged this morning in the absence of any further polls. Does anyone consider there's any value to had, by buying or selling at these levels? Sell Buy Labour Seats 428 438 Conservative Seats 108 116 Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57 SNP Seats 19 22 Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
I would sell Labour buy Conservartive buy SNP sell Reform and leave the Lib Dems alone
One is tempted to remind you, Roger, of your infamous prediction in respect of a certain Barack Obama, but you have suffered enough so let's just pass lightly over this latest effort.
No, @Roger’s greatest prediction was on observing the queues for Northern Rock - at the very beginning of the GFC - and declaring “this will all be forgotten by Friday” - a prognosis which, IIRC, provoked exPBer @seant to name him Rogerdamus, thus giving birth to that entire meme
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead) 30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead) 29% in Rotherham (22pts behind) 29% in Castle Point (4pts behind) 26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead) 30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead) 29% in Rotherham (22pts behind) 29% in Castle Point (4pts behind) 26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
2015 was also completely negative (Labour Chaos and Ed Miliband in Alex Salmonds pocket)
Good point, and the Tories went backwards in England but were delivered a thumping majority by the SNP capturing Scotland.
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead) 30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead) 29% in Rotherham (22pts behind) 29% in Castle Point (4pts behind) 26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
None of those people, including Cameron, holds a candle to Sunak in the shit PM stakes. He wrote the book. He is the essence, the id of shit PM.
Rishi might be a bad party leader, purely in electoral terms, but when the history books are written, Sunak might fall into the Theresa May bucket of PMs who were dealt a bad hand and played it badly, rather than actively making things worse. And I say that as someone who has found every decision of Rishi's unfathomable.
There are times when inaction is the worst course of action. Britain's current situation means this has been such a time. He's done nothing, so he has nothing to point to in this election. Nothing on energy, nothing on housing, nothing on food, nothing on civil service productivity, nothing to reduce the tax burden, nothing on immigration.
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.
It’s not really a vote up though. BigG may have been clutching his pearls hard enough to almost crush them but he was never ‘really’ going to vote any other way than Tory.
We’ve seen this pantomime play out too many times.
I've been called a 'PB Tory' on many occasions on PB (*). I have nothing against my current Tory MP, and he's certainly a better candidate than at least a couple of the other constituency candidates. But there's zero way I can vote for him, because of the mess his party have made of running the country. Which is a shame, because I usually prefer to vote for candidate over party (**)
That does not mean I in any way automatically endorse the policies of the other parties.
(*) Then again, ISTR a posted called @NickPalmer a 'PB Tory', which led to my 'We're all PB Tories now, comrade!' (**) It's a shame I never had the chance to vote against Lansley, AKA the invisible man....
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead) 30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead) 29% in Rotherham (22pts behind) 29% in Castle Point (4pts behind) 26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
The polling currently suggests the Conservatives will not be maintaining their majority after the next election.
If that does turn out to be the case, it is likely that Rishi Sunak will stand aside and there will be a contest to replace him.
Public affairs firm Charlesbye - run by former Downing Street communications chief and Boris Johnson aide Lee Cain - has asked 2,447 people who they would like to see takeover.
The most popular choice among the public was current foreign secretary and former prime minister Lord David Cameron - backed by 25.5% of those polled.
This was followed by Nigel Farage - on 20.3% - despite him not being a member of the party.
In third was Penny Mordaunt with 18.6%, followed by Kemi Badenoch on 7.7%, James Cleverly on 6.6%, Priti Patel on 6%, Tom Tugendhat on 5.2%, Suella Braverman on 4.7%, Claire Coutinho 3.2% and, in last, Robert Jenrick with 2.3%.
Sorry, I'm pretty sure that this has already been discussed before at some point, but I just find it highly amusing that the three least unpopular choices amongst the public for leader of what's left of the Tories after this election are a peer (ineligible,) not actually a Tory (ineligible) and a sitting MP with a majority of only about 16K over Labour (therefore likely to be ineligible as well, on account of losing her seat.) All the likely actual contenders register as nuclear waste.
Disclaimer: I'm obviously relating second hand information so no, I don't know if they prompted for Boris Johnson. Or Liz Truss. Or the lettuce.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
The trick is to tax unearned wealth rather than economic activity. It's why I wouldn't be opposed to, say, a very small (5%?) capital gains tax on primary residence. Most boomers are sitting on gains of half a mil or more simply because they bought great houses back when you could get a half decent one for 70p (with no net benefit to the economy). Why should that go completely untaxed, when my investment in a startup (generating economic activity) does not?
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
You can buy prime farmland for relatively small amounts. A few years back I nearly bought some in Kent at £2,500 an acre.
The issue is land you are allowed to live on.
Unless it’s suitable for viticulture. Then the going rate is around 20k per acre.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
The trick is to tax unearned wealth rather than economic activity. It's why I wouldn't be opposed to, say, a very small (5%?) capital gains tax on primary residence. Most boomers are sitting on gains of half a mil or more simply because they bought great houses back when you could get a half decent one for 70p (with no net benefit to the economy). Why should that go completely untaxed, when my investment in a startup (generating economic activity) does not?
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
You can buy prime farmland for relatively small amounts. A few years back I nearly bought some in Kent at £2,500 an acre.
The issue is land you are allowed to live on.
Surely the trick is knowing a local councillor who would be receptive to a small donation in order to convert the land to residential use... perhaps one who is also a member of the same lodge?
But I think the problem is land concentrated by value, rather than volume. How much of London does the Duke of Westminster own?
If those acres had had planning permission, could have easily put a £1 million+ pound house on half an acre. I was looking at 35 acres*. £70 million of sales. Land worth £90,000
Given those numbers, it is surprising that everyone in planning doesn’t drive a Mercedes encrusted in diamonds.
*actual plan was solar farming, sheep and enjoy the profits until the dam breaks on housing. The land was considered as being a long way down the list that *might* be granted planning.
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.
Thanks LP. I may drop in. My son works there, so I can catch up with him at the same time.
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
The Met Office are a nice little case study in how Britain messes up partial privatisation and public-private partnerships. An example of missed opportunities in industrial strategy.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
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"
Who is the English Lib Dem leader, then? The English party don't have a separate conference, they just hand off policy making to the Federal Party.
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.
David Cameron ran an entirely negative campaign on Brexit which conceded that Brexiteers were right that the EU was terrible, but always keep tight hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
Post of the day. David Cameron screwed this country by his calamitous Brexit Referendum decision. He is arguably the worst PM this country ever had and he has the audacity to come back to public life. F*ck off to your woodshed and ffs stay there!
Incredible - Sunak pulling out of the £1500/head Hurlingham club fundraiser - incredible way to treat the only people gullible enough to still be donating to you.
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead) 30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead) 29% in Rotherham (22pts behind) 29% in Castle Point (4pts behind) 26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
Rotherham would be an interesting one. Alarmingly similar to Rochdale - both places I have lived in, both with radically divergent populations in different parts of town, covered up scandals with racial undertones.
Galloway winning Rochdale was bad one way. Reform winning Rotherham would be bad the other way. Same coin, different side.
There has been a lot of talk about Labour's Ming vase strategy but really, from here on in, the Tories need to adopt their own Ming vase strategy: keep a low profile, try not to spook the horses any further, and hope that a sizeable swathe of their habitual voters hold their noses and support their local Tory MP.
There’s something to be said for that. Plus the “don’t give Labour carte blanche” Australia strategy, which I suspect will work with many elderly habitual Tory voters.
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
Jenrick is in the Telegraph today banging the 'don't let them win a landslide' drum.
In which case the Conservatives should have pursued policies that didn't alienate well over half their natural vote from them then.
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
Another factor us that if the Tories somehow scared enough people into winning then it would be another five years of the same incompent, voter contempt s***show.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
The trick is to tax unearned wealth rather than economic activity. It's why I wouldn't be opposed to, say, a very small (5%?) capital gains tax on primary residence. Most boomers are sitting on gains of half a mil or more simply because they bought great houses back when you could get a half decent one for 70p (with no net benefit to the economy). Why should that go completely untaxed, when my investment in a startup (generating economic activity) does not?
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
You can buy prime farmland for relatively small amounts. A few years back I nearly bought some in Kent at £2,500 an acre.
The issue is land you are allowed to live on.
Surely the trick is knowing a local councillor who would be receptive to a small donation in order to convert the land to residential use... perhaps one who is also a member of the same lodge?
But I think the problem is land concentrated by value, rather than volume. How much of London does the Duke of Westminster own?
If those acres had had planning permission, could have easily put a £1 million+ pound house on half an acre. I was looking at 35 acres*. £70 million of sales. Land worth £90,000
Given those numbers, it is surprising that everyone in planning doesn’t drive a Mercedes encrusted in diamonds.
*actual plan was solar farming, sheep and enjoy the profits until the dam breaks on housing. The land was considered as being a long way down the list that *might* be granted planning.
It's not just planning permission. Land can be optioned as well: which makes buying farmland, especially around here, rather a fraught matter if you are not careful.
Incredible - Sunak pulling out of the £1500/head Hurlingham club fundraiser - incredible way to treat the only people gullible enough to still be donating to you.
It’s another “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for him. You are hitting him for not respecting “ the only people gullible enough to still be donating” but if he went to a £1500 per head dinner others would be criticising him for hanging out with rich toffs showing he doesn’t live in a relatable world etc and others would be questioning why he’s at a party when the Party are so far behind and he should have been working on that.
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead) 30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead) 29% in Rotherham (22pts behind) 29% in Castle Point (4pts behind) 26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
Farage will lose from there. He's not going to win more support - and plenty of time for the mass of forces ranged against him to get their shit together.
I see the spectator has decided the entire election is absurd because it’s ignoring the most important issue of all
Thank you for the post, which I found interesting.
I assume you are referring to the latest missive from that former PBer @SeanT, who left here a few years back never to return. It's called "AI will change everything – so why is the election ignoring it?" and can be found here[1]
Just for shits and giggles I ran the AI article thru an AI summarizer[2] thus
"...The main point of the text is that Britain is not addressing the impending revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on various sectors. The author criticizes politicians for not discussing AI, despite its potential to transform societies, economies, and endanger humanity. The author argues that AI will have a massive impact on education, rendering university education pointless as AI technology advances. The creative sector, including Hollywood and British TV, is also predicted to be decimated by AI. The author suggests that jobs in various cognitive sectors, such as coding, law, management, and design, are at risk of being replaced by AI. The Chinese AI expert, Kai Fu Lee, predicts that 50% of jobs will be lost in three years. The author emphasizes that this is a world-changing event comparable to a global war, and politicians are not addressing it adequately. The text concludes with an analogy of politicians squabbling over trivial matters while a tsunami of AI revolution looms on the horizon..."
AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound human
Writer Benjamin Miller – not his real name – was thriving in early 2023. He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. "It was really engaging work," Miller says, a chance to flex his creativity and collaborate with experts on a variety of subjects. But one day, Miller's manager told him about a new project. "They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs," he says. (Miller signed a non-disclosure agreement, and asked the BBC to withhold his and the company's name.)
A month later, the business introduced an automated system. Miller's manager would plug a headline for an article into an online form, an AI model would generate an outline based on that title, and Miller would get an alert on his computer. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, his writers would create articles around those outlines, and Miller would do a final edit before the stories were published. Miller only had a few months to adapt before he got news of a second layer of automation. Going forward, ChatGPT would write the articles in their entirety, and most of his team was fired. The few people remaining were left with an even less creative task: editing ChatGPT's subpar text to make it sound more human.
By 2024, the company laid off the rest of Miller's team, and he was alone.
Comments
I've always understood that the results were there for those prepared to do a little delving, but what I want is something akin to the table for tipsters you see in the Racing Post. Something readily accessible and understandable for the general public would probably be good PR for them too, but they don't seem to get it.
Sell Buy
Labour Seats 428 438
Conservative Seats 108 116
Liberal Democrat Seats 53 57
SNP Seats 19 22
Reform UK Seats 3.5 5.5
This followed Cameron's negative Sindyref campaign, too poor, too wee, too stupid, which saw Yes rising in the polls until the intervention of Gordon Brown and Ruth Davidson to sell the positive side of the union.
This followed Cameron's negative 2010 general election campaign which even after the GFC turned poll leads into a face-saving coalition.
David Cameron is a lousy campaigner, whose instinct is always negative, and he is not above putting his thumb on the scales. David Cameron is how we got Brexit. Cameron still lays claim to be our worst Prime Minister since Lord North, and we've had Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss since!
JGoG is in part about the Disruption of the Kirk - quite an insight into the rise of Liberalism and the Free Kirk in that kind of area (ironically perhaps in view of the current situation, but we'll have to see of course!).
And I see I misspelt the name - it's Johnny.
They were more upset about the Met Office moving down to Exeter (219km away) from their previous location in Bracknell (18km away), than by Brexit.
The ECMWF, UKMO, Reading University Met. Department triangle was the greatest concentration of Meteorological ability that the world will ever see. Broken apart by house prices.
Years ago the government (I can’t remember of it was under Labour or Tories) decided the office needed to stand on its own two feet and reduced subsidies while requiring it to earn commercial income from its forecasting. Find, but what it means is that the Met offers hardly any free content to the public. It’s all subscription based.
Contrast with the NOAA in the US. They are subsidised massively by the military. As a result they make more data available for free than pretty much all the other agencies put together.
The result? Despite the ECMWF and Met office having more accurate models, most commercial forecasters, apps and websites integrate GFS data. It’s the first thing I look at each day because there’s so much more of it.
And guess what, that’s spawned a huge multi billion dollar private forecasting industry in the US and clusters of industrial investment around NOAA sites.
The US government has mastered this kind of public-private ecosystem in many fields like its aviation and defence industries, computing and internet and biomedical research.
The English party don't have a separate conference, they just hand off policy making to the Federal Party.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QviNqwfHrVo
Our numerically-challenged Defence Secretary is not being derided like Diane Abbott. Can anyone think of another difference between Shapps and Abbott?
https://boards.greenhouse.io/outlier/jobs/4372708005?gh_src=b41570b55us
My sex teacher at school was asked whether VD could go through a condom? "VD" he said "could go through a wellington boot!"
Definitely more Shakespearean.
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/uknews/armando-iannucci-quips-cbe-is-signal-to-carry-on-championing-public-broadcasters/ar-BB1ofz9c
Turnout remains the big unknown. I’d expect the habitual Tories to come out in much greater numbers than the pissed off Reform voters.
I suspect the police would get less opprobium if they had violated a member of the Royal Family.
https://x.com/JeremyClarkson/status/1802289165989486980?t=t0uN72hCK8MXJPuCRmQEMQ&s=19
As it stands, they need a good, long period in opposition to go away and have a think about the voters they abandoned and why we won't vote for them any more. From small business owners to homeowners, anyone of working age really, socially liberal right of centre types, anyone opposed to conscription, anyone who thinks 750k a year net immigration is unsustainable, the list really does go on.
Like others downthread I am deeply worried about Labour's authoritarian and anti-aspirational streaks that are already rearing their heads, and they aren't even in power yet.
But I'm not lending the Conservatives my vote until they change their tune. They completely deserve their spell in opposition.
There are so many voters like me - younger voters - who could be persuaded to vote for a Tory Party aimed at people under fifty. But as they are not, I really do think long term they will come to pay an even bigger prize as we won't be becoming Conservative and instead Labour will establish a new base in us.
Meanwhile the Labour left would say "I told you so" and we would be in an even worse position in 2029 with a Corbynite nutjob leading labour.
And, frankly, reforms to council tax and tax on unearned income are needed, however painful for some individuals.
Personally I would favour replacement of council tax with a land value tax. Most of the land in this country is still owned by the descendents of William 1st's Cronies, after he did what China have done to Tibet, which is iniquitious.
There’s a fascinating example of this in the NASA space suit area.
But as you say, most of the land in this country is owned by people who have owned it since King Harold lost an eye.
The issue is land you are allowed to live on.
I wasn't going to vote for them anyway, I could never bring myself to give tacit approval.
But I think the problem is land concentrated by value, rather than volume. How much of London does the Duke of Westminster own?
Hi there, my old alter ego. Long time no see. You ok?
I can tell you what I have done, and hope that helps.
No bets on Labour. Sold Con at 164 and again at 139. Got LDs hopelessly wrong at the outset and sold at 36. Closed out at a loss on 48 and bought back in at 44. Recently bought Reform at 5.5. I've no wish to close any of these out, or to further invest. There's better value on Betfair. If I were entering the market afresh I might buy Reform and SNP. They're both low risk. Can't see any value elsewhere.
What you up to, betting and otherwise?
I assume you are referring to the latest missive from that former PBer @SeanT, who left here a few years back never to return. It's called "AI will change everything – so why is the election ignoring it?" and can be found here[1]
Just for shits and giggles I ran the AI article thru an AI summarizer[2] thus
"...The main point of the text is that Britain is not addressing the impending revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on various sectors. The author criticizes politicians for not discussing AI, despite its potential to transform societies, economies, and endanger humanity. The author argues that AI will have a massive impact on education, rendering university education pointless as AI technology advances. The creative sector, including Hollywood and British TV, is also predicted to be decimated by AI. The author suggests that jobs in various cognitive sectors, such as coding, law, management, and design, are at risk of being replaced by AI. The Chinese AI expert, Kai Fu Lee, predicts that 50% of jobs will be lost in three years. The author emphasizes that this is a world-changing event comparable to a global war, and politicians are not addressing it adequately. The text concludes with an analogy of politicians squabbling over trivial matters while a tsunami of AI revolution looms on the horizon..."
Notes
There are some conspiracy theorists in the Tory rank and file who don't actually believe Cameron won that fairly - 'I don't know anyone who voted for him' etc. It's interesting to think how Davis might have performed.
Those stretch targets will then not get the squeeze message as strongly, the Labour vote will be somewhat higher, and the Tories will just about survive on the split. I can see that happening particularly where there are clusters of seats which MRP has as tight Tory/LD contests (Surrey, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Devon/Somerset/Dorset).
In essence, Lib Dem HQ would bite your hand off for the 55 seats implied by the spread now and will be very cautious about gambling for more... a gamble which may, but crucially may not, pay off. It's a case of, "we've had a lovely time, Jim, and will let someone else have a go on the prize board".
We’ve seen this pantomime play out too many times.
Current Britain Predicts forecast has Reform getting...
32% in Clacton (4pts ahead)
30% in Boston and Skegvegas (0 ahead)
29% in Rotherham (22pts behind)
29% in Castle Point (4pts behind)
26% in Rayleigh and Wickford (7pts behind)
https://x.com/BNHWalker/status/1802323915240243668
That does not mean I in any way automatically endorse the policies of the other parties.
(*) Then again, ISTR a posted called @NickPalmer a 'PB Tory', which led to my 'We're all PB Tories now, comrade!'
(**) It's a shame I never had the chance to vote against Lansley, AKA the invisible man....
Oh, who am I kidding...
The polling currently suggests the Conservatives will not be maintaining their majority after the next election.
If that does turn out to be the case, it is likely that Rishi Sunak will stand aside and there will be a contest to replace him.
Public affairs firm Charlesbye - run by former Downing Street communications chief and Boris Johnson aide Lee Cain - has asked 2,447 people who they would like to see takeover.
The most popular choice among the public was current foreign secretary and former prime minister Lord David Cameron - backed by 25.5% of those polled.
This was followed by Nigel Farage - on 20.3% - despite him not being a member of the party.
In third was Penny Mordaunt with 18.6%, followed by Kemi Badenoch on 7.7%, James Cleverly on 6.6%, Priti Patel on 6%, Tom Tugendhat on 5.2%, Suella Braverman on 4.7%, Claire Coutinho 3.2% and, in last, Robert Jenrick with 2.3%.
Sorry, I'm pretty sure that this has already been discussed before at some point, but I just find it highly amusing that the three least unpopular choices amongst the public for leader of what's left of the Tories after this election are a peer (ineligible,) not actually a Tory (ineligible) and a sitting MP with a majority of only about 16K over Labour (therefore likely to be ineligible as well, on account of losing her seat.) All the likely actual contenders register as nuclear waste.
Disclaimer: I'm obviously relating second hand information so no, I don't know if they prompted for Boris Johnson. Or Liz Truss. Or the lettuce.
Given those numbers, it is surprising that everyone in planning doesn’t drive a Mercedes encrusted in diamonds.
*actual plan was solar farming, sheep and enjoy the profits until the dam breaks on housing. The land was considered as being a long way down the list that *might* be granted planning.
I want to be up for Mogg.
Galloway winning Rochdale was bad one way. Reform winning Rotherham would be bad the other way. Same coin, different side.
https://missingnumbers.org/land-options-the-little-known-contracts-used-to-control-land/
Knowing how often they are used, I do wonder if cancelling all covenants would free up a fair amount of building land / properties...
Looks like Reform zero seats to me.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240612-the-people-making-ai-sound-more-human
AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound human
Writer Benjamin Miller – not his real name – was thriving in early 2023. He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. "It was really engaging work," Miller says, a chance to flex his creativity and collaborate with experts on a variety of subjects. But one day, Miller's manager told him about a new project. "They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs," he says. (Miller signed a non-disclosure agreement, and asked the BBC to withhold his and the company's name.)
A month later, the business introduced an automated system. Miller's manager would plug a headline for an article into an online form, an AI model would generate an outline based on that title, and Miller would get an alert on his computer. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, his writers would create articles around those outlines, and Miller would do a final edit before the stories were published. Miller only had a few months to adapt before he got news of a second layer of automation. Going forward, ChatGPT would write the articles in their entirety, and most of his team was fired. The few people remaining were left with an even less creative task: editing ChatGPT's subpar text to make it sound more human.
By 2024, the company laid off the rest of Miller's team, and he was alone.