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The cunning and awesomeness of Robert Jenrick – politicalbetting.com
The cunning and awesomeness of Robert Jenrick – politicalbetting.com
How Jenrick’s team tricked five Cleverly supporters to reach Tory leadership last two – @DavidPBMaddox https://t.co/6LdCHd7MEG
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On-topic: it's demented that five MPs apparently buggered Cleverly's chances.
He may well be a shit, but Jenrick isn't shit at climbing the greasy pole.
A broader and commonly used definition of the middle class includes the middle three quintiles, encompassing 60 percent of all households. In this case, middle-class incomes range from $30,000 to $130,000. Others prefer to use two quintiles: Reeves and Busette identify a “lower-income” middle class as the second and third income quintiles, or those with incomes between $30,000 and $85,000. Perotti goes in the opposite direction, choosing the third and fourth quintiles.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/defining-the-middle-class-cash-credentials-or-culture/
Nobody in the UK who has a household income as little as £20-30k is being defined as middle class. A combined income of £100k year yes, but they are saying that is the top end £65k ($85k) a year combined between two people in the UK isn't exactly smashing it either. And given all the taxes, fees, tips, etc etc etc, $85k a year household income in the US really doesn't go far.
Plus, professional / corporate jobs in the US pay a lot more. As we saw with dock workers, they are making money far in advance of this definition of "middle class".
To me that says another nibble at Georgia, or having a go at Moldova. But the Baltics despite being NATO must be tempting, so good on the Poles for ensuring they’re not seen as easy takings.
They think that liking football and having a regional accent is sufficient. Or having a father who made tools.
If China go for Taiwan, Putin might see that as a unique opportunity to go for the Baltics while most US (and many other) resources are focused there.
The Tories probably didn't lose enough MPs in July.
UK people to want to claim no I am definitely not rich, upper middle class, I might earn £100k, but you know times are tough, still struggling to get by....I know I was in a box at Taylor Swift gig, but I had to go, it was a gift, I wouldn't never choose that myself.
To get sartorial again, being in a white collar job is to be middle class.
My concern is that the obvious step for him if he gets into power is to go Trumpian. I suspect he'd happily do that whilst I think Badenoch would forge her own principled path which I think is healthier (even if I'd be on a path going the other way).
What an absolute shower of shite.
Anyone fooled by this bunch deserves all that's coming to them.
My point is in the US, people in white collar corporate jobs in America aren't describing themselves as middle class, middle class is basically what we used to call working class here. People in steady unfashionable jobs, getting by, but not much more as what politicians in the US are talking about when they bang on about the middle classes, not people complaining about VAT on private school fees or that they are now getting dragged in higher tax bands (as the traditional middle classes are here).
It's as absurd as Kemi believing that a sixth form job at McDonalds makes her working class.
Let's put these two together. He's a purer political operator, but also a liar and a cheat as well as a fool and a crook whom everyone has reason to despise. And he has the support of barely a third of MPs - less, if you include the ones claimed to be tricked into voting for him.
If he wins will he last twelve months?
He seems to me like Walter Long - the empty headed high priest of arch-Toryism beloved of the headbangers but despised by everyone else. And it was seriously canvassed in 1911 that Austen Chamberlain should let him win so after a year Long would be forced to resign with his reputation ruined.
(In the end both Long and Chamberlain stepped aside for Bonar Law. But that's another story.)
* Michael Rimmer
Doesn't change the key observation being that there at least five Conservative MPs who are so dim that they shouldn't be allowed unsupervised access to sharp objects.
I don't think of somebody in a call centre on £15/hr, probably no degree or a very poor one, having to rent with 3 other people to make ends meet as "middle class" in the way as any office job in the 60s had real status attached to it. The people doing call centre jobs and the low end paper pushing, would have 50-60 years ago being pushing around stuff in factories or down a mine or making a ship.
Yeah...
Not sure how many followed the drama over the TIPP/American Greatness poll which showed Harris leading in Pennsylvania by 4 points with registered voters which then turned into a 1 point Trump lead with likely voters .
Essentially the pollster dropped Philadelphia RV from 124 to 12 likely voters .
This was not some tabulation error . They have since stated that their screener did this . Even though a large proportion of those voters said they were likely to vote the other questions over rode that . They have also admitted that this screener will be used in all their future polling !
They seem to be falling into the same trap that effected Gallup several years ago , an over harsh screener is attempting to crack a nut with a sledge hammer .
A word about the female v male vote . So far we’ve seen just under 55% of the early vote combined being female in states which report that . We should also bear in mind assumptions in the polling around that , national gender gaps in polling are quite different to those assumed at state level.
The percentage of the female vote varies between states . This is especially important in the swing states. More about that later for those who like my US election musings ....
Sure, middle class jobs do not guarantee prospects in the way they did 50 years ago, but neither do most working class jobs. That's a separate issue though.
Boeing to axe 17,000 jobs amid strike and quality concerns
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevypzd9gklo
Looks like it will be a really happy ship either way.
Good morning, everyone.
That and the low threshold for a 1922 Committee challenge.
Truss and IDS met your metric.
And Cameron was in a different class to the others as a political operator.
1 - Food price differences (as I see it from reporting) between the USA and Europe, leaving aside good and bad food, availability of fresh produce etc.
2 - Biden's then Harris' going for expensive food by going at corporates, dismissed by Trump. I see that as targeting what amount to local monopolies, half created because the US is more spaced out, and to a significant created to exclude 'neighbourhood'.
https://x.com/RichardScribbl1/status/1844841482076745867
It's probably not unfair to say that questionable voter filters along these lines make a pretty large proportion of US polls highly unreliable.
All adds to the uncertainty.
https://x.com/baseballot/status/1844825151214412037
The poll got our attention because, while its registered-voter version included 124 RVs from Philadelphia, 116 of whom said they were “very” or “somewhat” likely to vote, the LV version had only 12 LVs from there.
...We thought this might be an error, so we reached out to TIPP & American Greatness. The president of TIPP responded and said it wasn’t an error: This poll’s LV model assigns a vote probability to each respondent based on their demographics & vote history, and…
...a disproportionate # of their Philly respondents had factors that made them unlikely to vote: they were young, not a college graduate, and/or nonwhite. So a ton of them happened to fall beneath the threshold to count as a likely voter.
..(He also said that respondents’ answer to the “how likely are you to vote” question was a factor in this poll’s LV model as well, but only a small one. He also confirmed that TIPP alone, and not American Greatness, determined the LV model.)
...Now, this is a different LV model than some past TIPP polls have used. For example, their September polls of AZ and NC counted everyone as a likely voter if they reported that they were “very” or “somewhat” likely to vote. (But, notably, more recent GA and NV polls did not.)
...When I asked about this, he said that TIPP actually has 5 different LV models. While he would not tell me how they decide which LV model to use on which poll, he did say that they have decided to use the PA model on all polls going forward...
Now its gone the opposite, even fast food is expensive, plus the out of control tips. There is a problem with monopoly providers all the way through the supply chain, but also the inflation led to push on minimum wage rapidly upwards which broke the dam on lots of companies business models ability to keep things 99c, $1.49, etc (plus inflation is great for companies to pump prices as in general people can't work out if they are suffering an 8.4% increase of a 9.4% increase).
Before 1997 since 1923 when the position was created the following Conservative leaders served less than five years:
Bonar Law (died)
Chamberlain (died)
Anthony Eden (would have died, although to be fair he would have been out anyway)
Home (inept)
Since 1997, just one leader has lasted longer than five years:
Cameron.
And one lasted less than two months (lettuce not go there).
Even if we go before 1923, the only leader to serve less than five years was Austen Chamberlain, but we could then conceivably take Bonar Law off the list of under five years of service as well. Since 1832 there had been Peel (14 years) Derby (22 years) Disraeli (13 years) Salisbury (if we discount the duumvirate with Northcote, 21 years) Balfour (9 years) and Bonar Law (ten years).
(I note that Jenrick is a lawyer.)
Generic Bob seems to be building up his stock of enemies quite early on. How will this affect the possibility of Cleverly being offered, and accepting, a Shadow Cabinet position?
Aside from that, if an election can be swung by a conversation or three, it highlights how marginal the Conservatives currently are, and has a feel of the 1999 film "Election" about it in the sabotaging of opponents etc - apart from, I hope, tampering with the count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_(1999_film)
The reason that IDS, Truss and Jenrenoch got/will get the gig was that the alternatives didn't get much support either.
That, and Conservative MPs seeming to think that House of Cards was history, not fiction.
Edit - also, Eden was told he would have died had he not resigned. Chamberlain was booked either way.
On the leadership question, I suppose there is an outside chance that the remaining candidates have some special quality not yet revealed, but I should think most usually Tory voters will just wait and see on the basis that the party has a huge amount to prove to its distantly vanishing supporters.
Cleverly, the rejected candidate, is the one least likely to have surprised us as leader, either on the upside or the downside. So at least there is a chance of the outcome being interesting
Even worse 538 continue to include clearly biased pollsters in their model . The excuse being that this poll only effected the model by 0.1 towards Trump . Ignoring that if enough dodgy polls get included even with their down weighting they can move that more substantially . GOP biased pollsters have accounted for nearly half of those published recently , there’s very few Dem biased polls published so there’s no counter weight .
This is all about helping Trumps stolen election narrative if he loses .
It's a few days ago, and is slightly complex as a case.
I was always sceptical of the allegations as the one video that was not heavily clipped showed them fooling around with a mobile phone filming for some time before exiting vehicle as requested; that did not seem to be to be the way to behave in those circs.
https://news.sky.com/story/met-police-officers-sacked-over-athlete-stop-and-search-handed-jobs-back-after-winning-appeal-13227649
..Former Chief of Staff of Poland's Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak:
"If Russian forces cross the border into Lithuania, allies will target all of Russia’s strategic assets within 300km radius in the first minutes. We will strike directly at St. Petersburg."
Statement at the Defending Baltics conference ..
https://x.com/PawelSokala/status/1844783322775654551
Ex-Trump Official Calls Former President ‘A Total Fascist’
The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Trump administration said the former president "is now the most dangerous person to this country.”
Retired Army General, Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, now says Trump is a “total fascist” and “fascist to the core,” according to a forthcoming book by Bob Woodward, the famed Watergate journalist.
“He is the most dangerous person ever,” Milley told Woodward for his book “War,” according to The Guardian. “I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realise he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.”
“A fascist to the core,” Milley said.
Part of Milley’s warning about Trump revolves around the former president’s promise to get revenge on his perceived political enemies. Trump has frequently told his supporters on the campaign trail: “I am your retribution.” Milley, who clashed with Trump in the White House and who has since been publicly critical of the current Republican presidential nominee, told Woodward that he’s afraid of being recalled from retirement to be court-martialled if Trump wins the election next month.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/ex-trump-official-calls-former-president-a-total-fascist_uk_670a2f35e4b03acb5636e768
2) Not a lot, assuming they are using modern accounting software. You run a quarterly report in SAGE or whatever, it spits out the VAT collected on sales, VAT paid on purchases. Submit it to HMRC, and they either direct debit the balance or credit you a refund the following month.
3) Pass. Probably depends a bit on how the existing accounting system is set up.
"What to do after a Leave vote" was a question which seems to have no good answer. That being the case, it was a bad question to ask.
And yes, that did undo (and more) the earlier positives. Still better than what followed.
I may be an idiot (probably) but I simply don't get it. Russia cannot even get to Kharkiv yet if we listen to some, they have an endless force of men and weapons ready to sweep (pace Alexander I) across Europe to enslave us all. When the Warsaw Pact had troops two hours drive from the Rhine, it made some sense though I suspect even then the nature of the "threat" was grossly exaggerated to maintain a) the security state and b) keep the military-defence complex happy.
We had the head of MI5 going on about Russia "causing mayhem in our streets". Given everything that's happened in the last decade, we really don't need Russia to do that - we're more than capable of creating our own mayhem.
How to get UK university spinouts out of the ‘valley of death’
https://www.ft.com/content/4d0dc010-e146-4148-a900-2322e05c5951
One big problem is these universities ask for large chunks of equity.
Universities shouldn't ask the 🇬🇧Government for more money for spinouts, without first reforming their own policies. @UniofOxford could reduce the 20% equity they take to the fair @Cambridge_Uni levels & cut their exhausting spinout approval process:
https://x.com/MacfarlaneJamie/status/1844477378422243659
Awesome stuff.
Is Trump a fascist really ? Or is it just a word people throw around about people they don’t like.
On the subject of David Cameron, I'll offer two thoughts. The EU Referendum left him mentally and physically exhausted - he had already suggested he wouldn't serve the full term and the general thought was he would hand over to Osborne who would then seek his own mandate in 2020.
The result of the EU Referendum left him, for all the protestations of loyalty, a prisoner. His power was gone - he would have been effectively held hostage in No.10 by the LEAVE supporters in the Party - and what remained of his influence in the EU would have been gone as well.
If, as a Prime Minister, you don't have the freedom to act or control events even within your own party, what is the point of you? It's a lesson both Theresa May and Liz Truss would also learn.
...he did say that they have decided to use the PA model on all polls going forward..
But politically it's an inept analogy.
Falsifies figures? Check.
Refuses elections that give the wrong result? Check.
Pretends to be much richer than he is? Check.
Talks about helping the poor while doing nothing for them? Check.
Builds grandiose projects that don't work and suck the money away from useful things? Check.
He's not a Fascist.
He's a Commie.
The danger is that this time round his team aren't old style Washington; they are more determined than he is - and considerably more organised.
This is because this cohort normally shows voter turnout higher in men than women . This is the reverse of 18 to 64 year olds.
What he's saying is given a situation with real percentage supporters (Pa Pb Pc) you can calculate that you'd get a poll with the responses (a, b, c) a certain percent of the time. And (with a large electorate) the most likely (Pa Pb Pc) are a/n, b/n, c/n - but with a small sample size that can be way off.
You'd typically use a Bayesian prior as to the probability of a given (Pa, Pb, Pc) (uniform? based on the last election?) to calculate the probability of any possible (Pa, Pb, Pc) given that poll.
Given a single candidate (Pa Pb Pc) it's pretty trivial to run a Monte Carlo analysis, or use a standard formula to find out how often A, B, C are FPTP.
So using your Bayesian derived probabilities you could randomly generate candidate (Pa Pb Pc), then with that candidate you could then run an estimate of the actual result and add the results. That's the sort of thing 538 does.
And all that's only useful if the poll is representative!
If the primary purpose of winning power is not to do the best you can for the citizens of your country but to use the office for your both your personal advancement and for seeking revenge against those who you believe have wronged you, what would you call that?
It's almost impossible to listen to his stump speeches, because there is no policy content, just rambling bile. He is an extraordinarily angry old man. He lists al those who have slighted him, mixed with bald lies and inate racism.
In the UK we have never been offered anything like Trump. It's why it is so difficult for us to comprehend his appeal. If he stood for PM in this country, he would be mocked and pilloried - point and laugh at the crazy guy. And vote for someone else.
What a twat. Makes Zarah Sultana deducted from Richard Burgon look like an intellectual.
Some people would have been content with that, but nowhere near enough.
Also remember that boxes 2, 8 and 9 are Northern Ireland to or from EU only now
Most likely scenario was Jenrick supporters trying to game the system by lending votes to Cleverley in the 3rd round and taking them back in the 4th round.
Now we have cosplay Johnson?!
With any crime you have motive, means and opportunity. Russia probably lacks the means to take on a NATO country in a proper fight, but it certainly has a motive. The country is now entirely a war polity with a war economy. Its whole raison d’etre is to be at war with or attempting to exert political control over its neighbours, and has been since at least the early 2000s, arguably well before. War is what gives Russia meaning and identity nowadays.
After Ukraine it will go looking for an easier target. That’s what bullies do. In that light it makes absolute sense that the countries of Eastern Europe don’t give it an inch of opportunity.
And, then, when you watch the clip you discover it's anything but.
https://x.com/DirtyTesLa/status/1844654819920970160
Looks like Leon is going to be washing his dirty smalls for quite a while longer....
But there is one thing Trump is correct on (even if his methods are distasteful and highly concerning). Europe as a whole does need to spend more on its defence.
Robert Waller used the term professional/managerial for ABs and non-manual for ABCs in his constituency guides.
Francis Fukuyama makes a useful distinction between conservative authoritarianism and fascism. Authoritarians believe in church, family, monarchy (or its republican equivalent), paternalism and patriarchy, and trace their beliefs back to the past. They emphasise continuity. Authoritarianism is conservative with a small c.
Fascism on the other hand is a revolutionary ideology that seeks to transform the state, it’s distrustful of religion and whilst it pays lip service to “family values” it puts the needs of the state above those of the family unit. It seeks war and conquest as a form of self actualisation. Continuity is anathema.
Hence for example Franco was an authoritarian, while Mussolini was a (the) fascist.