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Voting has now closed and can Bobby J sink any lower? – politicalbetting.com

Voting closed at 5pm in the race to succeed Rishi Sunak and Robert Jenrick’s chances are near rock bottom (but he has been lower before) but I do think he remains a smidgen of value given the last YouGov poll had him losing to Badenoch by a mere 4%.
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I think most of us agree the country is in a mess, don't think that is in dispute
So given that how many believe a government can actually get elected with policies that could fix the mess.
Personally my view is however you fix it either to the left or right......you wont get elected being honest about it
Q: What do hillbillies do for Halloween?
A: Pump kin.
Is she amazing? Probably not, though just referring to past primaries doesn't mean anything, Biden went through two and still ended up winning a third and the presidency. Record as VP? Not much to go on.
The campaign itself? Hard to judge these things until we see the outcomes. She's not done much open questioning, but had plenty of the big crowd events Americans love. She's reached out to disaffected Republicans and taken a tougher stance on the border etc to serk to address concerns. And the end result is it's sadly still 50/50, but hardly disastrous then.
So is it enough? Probably not, and that will be it's own statement. But has she been horrendous? No. And a tie breaker.
We need to decide the core priorities of the state, and focus on doing those and providing for those better. Probably moving to an insurance based NHS model along the lines of the continent
You need very strong leaders to overcome that and bring the public with them. Our leaders are weak, often running scared even with big majorities.
The idea politicians can't be honest comes from 2017 but imo blaming the social care manifesto completely misreads that election. Lynton Crosby ran a dire campaign apparently designed for Boris, but most important were the two terrorist outrages against a backdrop of massive police cuts. Law and order scuppered the law and order party.
But in general on the major political markets does the 70% chance comes through 70% of the time, the 20% chance 20% of the time etc.?
She's on the record as favouring the abolition of all private schools and all grammar schools. And she's tone-deaf to why either are beneficial. She's had multiple appeals over recent months about the impact rushing a major tax change in the middle of an academic year will have on pupils and staff, who still don't know what the legislation will say and have barely a few weeks to plan for it, and she's ignored them all. Education is a public good, that's why it's never been taxed, and she's now about to do so because she has an axe to grind.
All because a couple of pompous public school boys ribbed her over her background when she was playing chess 30 years ago and she's had a chip on her shoulder ever since.
It tells you a lot about someone who's that determined and bloody-minded about revenge: none of it good.
Any chance someone will stop doing the same old thing again and again, and perhaps consider what actually works elsewhere?
And, for what??
I think Jenrick will still pip 40% of the members vote but it's pretty clear Kemi has won this.
The 1.15 is free money
This anecdote would be really good if I knew how well the POTUS market was calibrated, now wouldn't it...
And you with woke and this has a pretty personal element, though you're not a leading politician.
I've not seen Reeves reference this stuff, do you have sources?
I have sympathy with both Kemi's sorry and encountering public school oiks (who have also played a major role in the failure of the nation in the last 15 years), but public policy against such perceived issues should be on
some kind of more objective footing.
As a country we spent less than comparable nations. So yes £200 billion.
'This analysis examines how health care spending in the UK compares with EU countries in the decade preceding the pandemic. Taking a longer term view enables us to see how trends in spending may have impacted health care resilience today.
Average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 per person – 18% below the EU14 average of £3,655.
If UK spending per person had matched the EU14 average, then the UK would have spent an average of £227bn a year on health between 2010 and 2019 – £40bn higher than actual average annual spending during this period (£187bn).
Matching spending per head to France or Germany would have led to an additional £40bn and £73bn (21% to 39% increase respectively) of total health spending each year in the UK.
Over the past decade, the UK had a lower level of capital investment in health care compared with the EU14 countries for which data are available. Between 2010 and 2019, average health capital investment in the UK was £5.8bn a year. If the UK had matched other EU14 countries’ average investment in health capital (as a share of GDP), the UK would have invested £33bn more between 2010 and 2019 (around 55% higher than actual investment during that period).'
https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/how-does-uk-health-spending-compare-across-europe-over-the-past-decade
Also my accent has been compared to 'If Jimmy Carr* was from Yorkshire.'
*Also Hugh Grant.
the corollary to that is therefore democracy can no longer work as we can't fix the country while using it. I have an absolute preference for democracy however if it can't fix our current situation maybe for a time we need to fall back on something else. Just like in ww2, I don't think anyone wanted rationing but we needed to do it.
Eg this idea that the government (Tory or Labour) can enact policies to transform our growth prospects relative to our peers. That's delusional. I'd like politicians to stop promising it. Banning them from even talking about growth would be ideal tbh.
TSE can be amusing.
I've no idea why anyone would compare him to Jimmy C.
Actual policies that might go some way to fixing things seem to me to be only likely if from nowhere a bit of a different political movement emerges. Somewhere in the Traditional Liberal/Traditional Tory space would do very nicely. I can't really think of a single politician though that is somehow going to leap to the challenge.
a) The country is in a mess
b) The country can't be fixed by parties that get elected for a five year term
I believe both a and b to be true
When she was younger, a female relative had a close shave with an attacker on the street. She did not report it to the police, and told only her fellow nurses. Nowadays, it might be local or national headlines.
Expectations of behaviour are higher, and the limits of tolerable behaviour much narrower. and stepping outside both of those can become much more widely known than was possible decades ago.
I'd argue that rather than making the country a 'mess', it makes us stronger.
https://x.com/Joe_Mayes/status/1852037042781249797
https://x.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1852033622494105832
No.
However I wasn't just talking about daily services I was referring to the ever expanding bill we are paying for less and less, lots of causes none of which can be addressed by a party that actually wants to be elected
It started off badly for Trump with the hate rally and joke gate , Biden then rode in to help him with his garbage gaffe and now the Trump campaign is trying to distance itself from the House Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments on Obamacare .
Trump then decides to crash and burn even more with women by telling them he’ll protect them whether they like it or not .
After all the rapist is going to protect American women.
The result will be announced at 11.00 am on Saturday.
Frank Luntz
@FrankLuntz
I spoke with @SaraSidnerCNN this morning about why I think Trump currently has a slight advantage in momentum, but also how the election could go either way next Tuesday.
Not a bold stance, I know – but it is the reality.
https://x.com/FrankLuntz
Unfortunately with rare exceptions like the presidential markets they're just not big enough that (imo) you could do this for a living, or certainly not my trading style. But it's nice to have a hobby that makes money.
Going to be shocked when you find your Clarkson did not support Brexit.
I thought the "too many people, not enough machines" issue was broadly accepted.
A possible suggestion. Mutually agreed governments of occupation. So (say) we elect the German government, they elect the French, the French elect ours. Stops voters voting themselves pay rises but gives a guardrail against dictators going sour.
fivetwo years, all those PB Tories who have cast their votes for Kemi are doing a public service.So you have lots of people milling around, trying to do.... stuff.
Anecdotally she seems to have won on PB, but lost amongst members I know, some of whom really "ought" to have been voting for her.
But, I’ll likely rejoin if Kemi wins.
It would probably have been better to raise the money via income tax or VAT but that's politically impossible - made so by political parties themselves and their perceived (and probably correct) estimate of how we the public would react.
(Incidentally, *still* trying to find that video of the RSS in black shorts. Dammit, that was so perfect...)
'This analysis shows that over the past decade the UK has spent less on both day-to-day care and investment spending on health care compared with the average EU14 countries. This is mirrored by less capacity, fewer physical resources and therefore greater vulnerability to sudden surges in demand. This meant the UK had to increase spending more rapidly than other countries to respond to the pandemic. Of course, international comparisons also have limitations. Population characteristics differ, and some countries may use resources more efficiently than others and there may be differences in how countries recorded COVID-19 spend.
Overall if the UK had matched EU14 levels of spending per person on health, day-to-day running costs would have been £39bn higher each year, on average, over the past decade (£30.5bn of which would have been additional government spending). For capital spending, matching the cumulative EU14 average over the past decade would have resulted in the UK investing £33bn more in health-related buildings and equipment. These are significant gaps in spending. Had UK spending kept up with European neighbours it is fair to assume the NHS would have been more resilient and had greater capacity to provide care during the pandemic and reduce the large backlog of care that is its legacy.'
This underinvestment was a choice. We're now living in the bit of the future Cameron & May chose not to think about.
If you've actually heard him talk on the subject, he puts across an interesting, funny and attention grabbing case why Remain was the right answer.
Here's hoping for an uneventful twelve days or so.
What are the odds on Boris?
Birmingham City council has become the latest local authority to discuss barring cyclists from pedestrian-only areas to curb anti-social cycling.
A report by the council’s regulation and community safety executives has raised concerns that food and parcel couriers on e-bikes, travelling “at speed and without care for pedestrians”, pose a particular danger to the public in areas of high footfall.
The report, published earlier this month, proposes extending the city’s public spaces protection order to encompass cycling. The move would add it to a list of anti-social behaviours that includes graffiti, street drinking, large gatherings, and excessive noise.
The report said cycling could be “restricted by time periods” or banned outright, with the issue being put to a public consultation.
I think I get where you're coming from. Growth can't be magicked out of nowhere simply by wanting it, just as you can't legislate for sunshine.
But politicians can do a lot to inhibit growth. So by not doing those things, they can promote growth.
Of course, some of those obviously growth-inhibiting things are things which on balance we might want to do anyway - like, for example, green belt protection.