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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Corporeal asks: Will the dog bark
Sex and politics is an explosive mix and one that has driven a lot of scandals in British history, from Parnell’s divorce through the Profumo affair, Jeremy Thorpe, and up to the present day scandals to not even scratch the surface.
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Arguing whether RPI or CPI should be used as a benchmark for comparison with earnings is a pointless academic exercise.
If you believe it would show substantial differences in the ratio over a long historical period put forward your arguments. But first I would suggest you look at this chart [ http://bit.ly/1eAeQrv ] comparing the movements of the four main indices since 1989. Between 1992 and 2009, RPI was clearly higher than CPI, but the reverse (or near parity) is true for the periods before and after.
All my ideas are brilliant, ar, but, unlike Charles, I do not seek royalty payments for their use by others. Remember Charles's family has always been in trade.
Yvette Cooper - 11/4
Tim Farron - 2/1
As UKIP try to burn the apostates, a flood of good news puts out the fire.
More good news from foreign companies who have recently decided to headquarter in the UK. And news which will fire up the Scots as it promises to join us all together in one happy union.
Hitachi Ltd. said it secured 2.7 billion pounds from international institutions to finance its contract to build 65 high-speed trains for use on Britain’s East Coast rail line between London and Scotland.
Lenders including Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, HSBC Holdings Plc, Lloyds Banking Group Plc and the European Investment Bank agreed to provide funds, allowing Hitachi to reach financial close with the U.K. government, company spokeswoman Daniela Karthaus said.
Today’s deal secures the last tranche of funding for the 5.7 billion-pound Intercity Express Program to replace diesel and electric trains built as early as 1976 on two of Britain’s busiest long-distance rail arteries. Tokyo-based Hitachi reached financial close in 2012 on financing for 57 IEP trainsets to be deployed on the Great Western line.
“These new trains will transform rail travel between many of the great towns and cities of England and Scotland,” U.K. Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said in a statement. [Bloomberg]
And it is not only the Scots who will be delighted with this news. George and Danny will welcome it too as evidence that the UK is not only attracting increasing inbound investment from multinational manufacturers, it is also attracting private sector finance for infrastructure development from foreign and UK banks, thereby relieving the burden on the national debt.
But don't worry, MikeK. If UKIP gets 5% or more at the 2015 GE, Cameron will ask College to design a new livery for the Hitachi trains.
Good article, Mr. Corporeal. I think it's also worth noting, as it's been little remarked upon, that male staff are not merely just as at the same risk of sexual harassment as female staff, but even more so. Despite what a certain UN rapporteur might say, we have a serious gender divide when it comes to taking certain things seriously from a male perspective. Male victims of domestic violence (by women) are a very significant minority, but almost all mentions of domestic violence are depicted as man on woman (worth mentioning it also, of course, happens in gay relationships).
Spent a horrendous amount of money today - if that doesn't help to keep the Irish economy growing then it's toast!
Some MPs were atrocious employers without any sexual harassment at all - just domineering types expecting 24/7 support, always ready to lose their temper over trivial mistakes. Some MPs were really good employers - thoughtful, kind, undemanding. But the high-pressure envioronment and the intense media scrutiny exaggerate whatever tendencies there are.
This is the age of the professional politician. PPE students are streaming out of Oxford and elsewhere with no thought other than to get straight into politics and as quickly as possible into positions of power.
With no money, contacts, track record, career or community behind them, these ambitious young things are obviously going to be at the mercy of powerful figures in political parties.
It probably pays to go out into the real world first for a while, like David Laws or Sajid Javed. That way you are in a stronger position to tell the wandering hands where to go.
Labour's 106 targets:
Bradford East, Colne Valley.
Con top 30 targets from Lab:
Great Grimsby, B'ham Edgbaston, Wakefield, Gedling, Walsall South.
Con top 30 targets from LD:
Eastleigh, Argyll & Bute.
LD top 30 targets:
Sheffield Central, Edinburgh South, Swansea West, Watford, Edinburgh North & Leith, Newport East, Northampton North, Bristol NW, City of Durham.
@AveryLP
UKIP welcomes with open arms all the international companies that opens HQ's, offices and factories in the UK.
That will not prevent the Turquoise Party from losing around 80 seats at the 2015 GE.
AveryLP can make all the yellow boxes ad infinitum, It won't prevent the Turquoise Party succumbing to their inevitable doom.
Talk about the scorpion stinging the frog half way across the river, as the poor thing was giving him a lift.
I'd also suggest UKIP take a sensible approach to the General Election. Given they/you are on 20% I think there's absolutely no chance of that happening, and the odd seat (maybe) plus broad but shallow support will happen again.
Meanwhile, Miliband is likely to become PM and we won't have a referendum. Again.
[Well, assuming Scotland doesn't leave. If it does, that changes the game].
the Duchess of Argyll’s divorce case is inexplicably obscure now
But it was made into one of the most notorious operas written by a British composer in the last twenty years.
"Powder Her Face" by Thomas Adès with a libretto by Philip Hensher premiered in 1995. It quickly became famous for being the first opera to set an act of fellatio to music and the first also to set the exact words of an High Court Judgement.
It was not to everyone's taste however. Premiered at The Almeida Theatre in SeanT-land it received its second London performance in 2006 at the Barbican under the baton of the composer. Time Out was most abused:
Camp, spiteful, sneering little opera unworthy of Thomas Adès' talent. This bitchy little piece is based on the infamous Duchess of Argyll (she of the 'headless man' sex photos), seen in her last impoverished days, mocked by hotel staff and presumably smart-arse literati looking for a target for their adult wit. This performance is announced as 'semi-staged'; whether that includes the blow-job that's written into it is about the only point of interest in this arid little piece of superannuated adolescent exhibitionism. The composer conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in his pointlessly nifty score, with a cast led by the expert Mary Plazas and Valdine Anderson."
I do like "arid little piece of superannuated adolescent exhibitionism". Isn't this what Corporeal's thread article is mainly about?
'In less than six months, the Scottish people will vote in a referendum that could see the country break away from the rest of the UK.
Using polling data collated by the UK Polling Report and What Scotland Thinks, we have analysed all polls conducted in the past year that used the referendum question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”
The responses for each poll are plotted on the chart below. The trend line shows a rolling average of the past seven polls, excluding the maximum and minimum values for each seven-poll set. This excludes the impact of big outliers.
This poll tracker will be updated as new polls are released in the run-up to the referendum.'
http://tinyurl.com/q7mmv5b
Labour peer @LordSugar keen to let you know his thoughts on @edballsmp "cost of living crisis" pic.twitter.com/3UHH6w5tv7
Lord Sugar ✔ @Lord_Sugar
.@LouiseMensch RT:Labour peer keen to let you know his thoughts on......Shut up you stupid cow.Keep up your hobby of seek more publicity
Louise Mensch ✔ @LouiseMensch
.@UKLabour peer Alan "Shut up you stupid cow" @Lord_Sugar has thoughts on feminism before, of course. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-513264/Sir-Alan-Sugar-Why-I-think-twice-employing-woman.html
LOL
If it's standard practice for child-molesting MPs to be covered up for then it's not likely.
The mistake that some Conservatives make is in thinking that Ukip, being a relatively new party, commands tenuous loyalty. In this view, the smaller the body in the political firmament, the weaker its gravitational pull; so if a giant, such as the Tory party, moves in close, voters are dragged into its orbit. This is the traditional arrogance of the ancient party towards parvenu challengers and recedent suggests it is misplaced. The presumption that voters have nowhere else to go is usually wrong, as Labour has found in many of its former seats now held by Liberal Democrats; also in Bradford (Respect); in Brighton (Green) and, above all, in Scotland, where the demise of the Tories accompanied a surge in Nationalist support."
http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2014/04/bad-press-farage-doesnt-automatically-help-tories
Many thanks for taking the trouble to write that and post it.
I was just thinking we don't have enough discussion on the Scottish vote.
It is a really serious issue, but I can't help but feel unless something dramatic happens we're going to talk it to death.
[NB perhaps worth mentioning I usually avoid the preamble and, er, postamble with F1. I really like the sport but I don't need an hour of warming up. Superfluous chat detracts from rather than enhances a subject].
Hard to believe he's 80 though.
My best guess for LD MEPs is 2-4, FWIW...
i) Executor has been dragging his feet for 6 months nearly. Won't resign, won't move forward. Is now suggesting he appoint me as "his attorney" to administer the will while he remains Executor. Searched around for info but can find little. What does this really mean? And most importantly, where would liability lie in the administering the estate, if I were to accept this role?
ii) The PA1 and IHT 400 forms (plus schedules) are a nightmare. 50 pages enquiring potentially into 40 years of family transactions... How accurate do they have to be to apply for the initial grant, to get this thing moving. I presume they can be amended subsequently as more info and detail come to light?
Man c 2 - 2 sunderland ,Great result for Chelsea and Liverpool.
What I think she was really objecting to is that modern Britain is coarse and vulgar. That's correct, but it always has been, except for a period from the 1850s to the 1960s. And women are just as capable of being coarse and vulgar as men (visit Borehamwood on a Friday or Saturday night).
Things can and should change to reflect the modern-day workforce of this century.
One good starting point is that there is a Unite the union branch in the House for parliamentary staff but he most obvious change is that the staff should be employed by the parliamentary authorities and seconded to individual MPs.With such clarification of the collective employer,the usual policies any good employer would want to put in place on bullying and harassment,whistleblowing,safety at work etc,etc can be put in place in conjunction with the union and then joint monitoring procedures can be established to make the implementation work.
This kind of work was long under-taken in many parts of the public and private sectors.Any change takes time but such places are now much better places to work if you happen to be a woman,BAME,or LGBT.Employers know a workplace free of abuse is a happier and,
,therefore, more productive environment.
The other area where policy needs to be applied is the adoption of a strictly regulated alcohol policy as an urgent matters of personal safety are being compromised,leaving the employer wide open due to vicarious liability.
The booze should not be subsidised by the taxpayer,either.
However, they are perhaps the minority. Most MPs are and to an extent have to be extrovert and self-confident to a degree; it's in the nature of the job of both an MP and a candidate. Mix those characteristics in with the testosterone-atmosphere in parliament (the deliberately confrontational layout of the Chamber is just one example), and the concentration of power and money in Westminster and it's not surprising that some try it on. Even more so when emotions run high, hours run late and alcohol is freely available.
The surprise is that scandals don't happen more often. Presumably, that's because as Corporeal says, they have a tendency to stay under wraps. I agree with the great thrust of the leader piece. The only point I'd add is that one other reason the scandals don't get out is that, as with expenses, none of the parties is clean and so none sees any advantage in making capital on the issue as they know it would come back to bite them (indeed, with the rise of Others, it's not even a zero-sum game for the Westminster parties; it's a negative-sum game).
Newer and smaller parties do have a smaller gravitational pull. That doesn't mean they can't establish themselves but in the last hundred years, how many have actually achieved that really? It's a very tough task because quite simply the larger parties can and do drag voters into their orbit more readily. Again, it's not automatic - all voters have to be persuaded - but habit, name recognition, media inertia and established track record ("only X can beat Y" and all that) makes it far harder for new, minor parties to hold onto voters as a positive asset rather than as a temporary vehicle for a negative protest.
Sun Politics @Sun_Politics
YouGov/Sun poll tonight - Labour have six point lead: CON 33%, LAB 39%, LD 9%, UKIP 11%
If you instruct solicitors, a stiff letter from them may persuade him to resign.
An executor has 12 months from the date of death, before you can apply to the court to remove him.
ii). Those forms are complicated. You can enter provisional values.
Nick Sutton ✔ @suttonnick
Thursday's Daily Telegraph front page - "Cameron puts God back into politics" #tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers pic.twitter.com/iSMQdxCzg4
Duncan Sandys was understood to have offered his resignation once these details were revealed in the 1963 trial but an inquiry by Lord Denning had drawn up a shortlist of five possible identities: Duncan-Sandys; Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; John Cohane, an American businessman; Peter Combe, a former press officer at the Savoy Hotel; and Sigismund von Braun, brother of the German scientist Wernher von Braun. An analysis of the handwriting on the photograph concluded (but kept secret) that the headless man was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
The Duchess never revealed the identity of the "headless man," and Fairbanks denied the allegation to his grave. Long afterwards, it was claimed that there were actually two "headless men" in the photographs, Fairbanks and Sandys, the latter identified on the basis of the Duchess's statement that the "only Polaroid camera in the country at that time had been lent to the Ministry of Defence." In December 2013 her ex-daughter-in-law Lady Colin Campbell revealed that the headless man was William H. "Bill" Lyons, then sales director of Pan American Airlines.
But it really could have been anyone. As Lord Wheatley, the judge who granted the Duke the divorce, stated the evidence established that the Duchess of Argyll "was a completely promiscuous woman (who indulged in "disgusting sexual activities" and) whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied with a number of men."
How the times have changed!
[Most quotes from Wikipedia]
FECK!
Of course that would involve talking about where the current economic stimulus package is coming from
http://rowans-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/london-money-laundering-capital-of.html
"On the Andrew Marr programme on 23rd March 2012, the writer Max Hastings reported a conversation he had had with a ' senior central banker' recently in which he had been told that today, London is considered to be the money laundering capital of the world."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-clarke-villains-choose-safe-london-to-launder-their-dirty-money-9155974.html
"Buy an expensive property. Central London's sky-high prices mean you can wash tens of millions of pounds at a time these days. If you need real income, you can live on the rent or, if you have the opposite problem and need to launder more cash, you can claim money is pouring in from fake tenants. In fact, of course, the "rent" is your own ill-gotten booty. "
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/08/09/london-is-the-global-capital-of-money-laundering/
"When Private Eye asked one former policeman why the bankers aren’t getting arrested for money laundering, the answer was simple: ‘They are untouchable’."
Economic stimulus through abandoning the rule of law. What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-02-20/27-bishops-and-16-clergy-attack-coalition-welfare-policy/
http://alexkimmell.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/fat-squirrel.jpg
I expected you would be disinclined to put annual earnings increases less RPI within a yellow box.
RPI is clearly the better indicator than CPI because of its wider base and longer heritage.
It also, for example, shows the boost to spending and the 'feel good factor' which the interest rate falls of 2009 gave.
Far too much feed-back looping for RPI to be taken too seriously.
http://sexymp.co.uk/
Thank you for a very balanced piece.
Unfortunately politics is not the only place where this occurs, seems to be a growing problem in the not for profit sector and in some charities which now act as pseudo public sector organisations and quite often by the so-called fairer sex.
It prompted Michael Beloff to comment "to hear my learned condemn disgusting sexual activities is like receiving a lecture in ethics from the devil."
RPI and CPI share the same base (e.g. the 'shopping basket' is identical. Admittedly, there are minor differences in the methods of calculation but these do produce material differences in the output.
The main difference between the two is that RPI includes housing costs which are excluded from the basic CPI: : e.g. "council tax, mortgage interest payments, house depreciation, buildings insurance, ground rent, solar PV feed in tariffs and other house purchase costs such as estate agents' and conveyancing fees". The ONS does publish ab index based on CPI which includes housing costs called, surprise surprise, CPIH.
There are long and very boring papers on why the EU and International Community should move to a CPI/CPIH based Index. I have read one long paper which is enough for a lifetime.
After a lot of argument, the consensus conclusion is that CPI and CPIH are the more reliable measures of inflation. RPI has been retained by the government for the indexing of gilts mainly because of contractual obligations by the BoE in the prospectuses of pre-DMO issuance of index linked gilts. I believe it is also (controversially) still used to index housing association and council owned rents.
Basically RPI will be phased out, once the legal obstacles are flushed out by maturity of the gilts and replacement of the rental legislation.
You were invited to celebrate crossover over a bottle or two of Pol Roger Brut Imperial. We waited but in the end decided to empty seat you.
Shame. It was a good party.
One for Carlotta Vance.
thanks.
i) It's awkward. He's a dear family friend, and I've cajoled him to renounce as his genuine pressures of work, and remote location, seem to prohibit him from engaging fully in the role of Executor. Not to mention my Dad seemingly didn't obtain his consent (!) But he seems to feel it's his duty to hold on to it in some way, hence his latest suggestion of making me "attorney". I am one of the residuary beneficiaries, together with my sister, who currently lives and works on the other side of the world... Could you elaborate a little, in the most general terms, on the rights and responsibilities of an Executor's attorney, or are they essentially the same as those of the Executor himself?
ii) But how provisional? Are "To follow", or "Don't know" acceptable responses to some questions? Figures (numerous individually) to the nearest £1000 each?
(Just a little rude about MrJones's lack of knowledge about money laundering)
The first step is placement. Turning up to buy a £70m house in Kensington with a suitcase full of cash just isn't going to work. In order to buy the house, the money must already be in the banking system. So the first stage of money laundering will have to have been completed.
The second stage is layering. This aims to conceal the origin of the money through multiple transactions. The UK banks (and solicitors) are all well aware of which are the risky countries and institutions, and would be suspicious of any large transfer from such an institution. The money will most likely have had to be layered before it can be transferred to the UK
The third stage is integration. It is fair to say that, should the property have already been successfully purchased, then you will be able to generate legitimate (integrated) income from it. But you are not going to be able to use it to convert dirty cash into placed funds - if you were to rent a £10m house at a 3% yield, you are talking about £300,000 income a year. Or about £6,000 a week. How do you think that a UK bank would react to someone depositing £6,000 per week in cash?
The first step is placement. Turning up to buy a £70m house in Kensington with a suitcase full of cash just isn't going to work. In order to buy the house, the money must already be in the banking system. So the first stage of money laundering will have to have been completed.
The second stage is layering. This aims to conceal the origin of the money through multiple transactions. The UK banks (and solicitors) are all well aware of which are the risky countries and institutions, and would be suspicious of any large transfer from such an institution. The money will most likely have had to be layered before it can be transferred to the UK
The third stage is integration. It is fair to say that, should the property have already been successfully purchased, then you will be able to generate legitimate (integrated) income from it. But you are not going to be able to use it to convert dirty cash into placed funds - if you were to rent a £10m house at a 3% yield, you are talking about £300,000 income a year. Or about £6,000 a week. How do you think that a UK bank would react to someone depositing £6,000 per week in cash?
My feeling (without experience to back it up) is that it used to be a lot more accepted and widespread, but with modern HR departments etc it's been improved a lot.
Politics, for the reasons I tried to outline, is particularly open to this kind of thing but also hasn't seen that kind of modernisation (along Nick Palmer's general point about some MPs being terrible employers).
I'm still pessimistic. We had a brief spate of news, a survey where 1 in 3 of the young men and women working there reported experiencing sexual harrassment, and it's gone from the news cycle already, and I could probably run this article again in 12-18 months time when a new 'isolated case' pops up.
The Threshold of Exclusion under D'Hondt is simply the Droop quota.
In other words the minimum number of votes to guarantee a seat in a constituency is 100%/(M+1), where M is the District Magnitude. This is independent of the rank order or votes for other parties.
The Threshold of Inclusion is the minimum number of votes to possibly win a seat, and is harder to calculate, dependent as it is on the performance of other parties.
We can deduce therefore that the LibDems will certainly win a South East seat if they score >9.091% - and possibly with fewer votes. Similar calculations can be performed for each region.
"Other costs" or 'a bit of the other'?
I expect Sam or Mike will explain.
Tell us, what do you think about the Farage story? Do you think it's a big story?
Let us know.
Want to bet on the debate appearance or still running scared?
If these stories carry any weight it must be free money for you
If these stories carry any weight it must be free money for you
Good luck with that.
You are asking him to express an opinion of his own, then back it.
It's impossible to do the former, never mind the latter.
Charles Indeed, must be all those 'Cameron cuties' have picked up where the 'Blair babes' left off
I expect Sam or Mike will explain.
I expect ukip voters will be spluttering their fry up all over their copy of The Times tomorrow morning
You are asking him to express an opinion of his own, then back it.
It's impossible to do the former, never mind the latter.
The wriggling to worm his way out of a bet that he said he was 100% certain to win had to be seen to be believed
Here I am offering him 1/2 about what considers to be as safe a bet as tomorrow being Thursday, and there is no wager struck
Bluffing and blustering, and accusing The Times of politically motivated attacks on his party is guaranteeing that the questions will keep on coming.
Until or unless Farage comes clean, campaigning will become increasingly difficult. Every time he or a senior party figure appears in front of a journalist the same questions will be asked again and again.
Farage needs to change his tactics and response to the allegations or this will bring him down.
The only people excited by it are desperate Conservatives. Almost every media outlet is saying its no big deal. Last night on Sky's press preview they said it actually added to Farages appeal.
At the risk if repeating myself, this ain't Westminster expenses or anything like it. Plenty worse has been flung at ukip before and still they get bigger and bigger
According to the ludicrous EU rules MEP's are given this money and according to Tory Dan Hannan (I presume because he is a Tory you will believe him) there is no mechanism to return any surplus. Apparently when Clegg was an MEP he ran a surplus and realising he could not return it I think used it to fund his office.
All this whole business is doing is highlighting how the EU throw money around with no accountability, which can only be good for Farage, but this seems to be beyond the wit of the desperate Tories on here.
That is no defence to allegations of fraud. For UKIP or for any political party.
Maria Miller went through a sixteen month formal investigation, report and review by official standards authorities. All the evidence was summarised, argued over and published. She was formally cleared of charges. Yet still the 'court of public opinion' brought her down.
Farage has not yet even opened his books to public scrutiny or agreed to submit evidence to an appropriate investigatory or standards body.
There can't be an exemption for UKIP and a set of rules and standards for other parties.
Can't you see this?
The allegations are that Farage and UKIP were in receipt of public monies which may not have been used in accordance with the guidelines published by the EP.
It is a very simple matter for Farage to state the amount of funds he received and how they were spent. Simply stating that surpluses were used to fund party activities is insufficient as an explanation especially without any evidence or paper trail.
This is a straight forward accounting and reporting issue.
Are you forgetting that Farage boasted of his £2m EU allowance claims five years ago?
I'm sorry for you, you seem a nice guy, but this isn't the same as the Westminster expenses debacle that Tory MPs are still embroiled in, and Farage won't be viewed by the public in that way.
But that's just my opinion. Lets see how it plays out.