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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » How British politics might have been different If Gordon Banks had not had a bug before the 1970 West Germany match
The opening of the 2014 World Cup is a good peg to hang one of the great counter-factuals of politics and football written and created by YouGov’s Anthony Wells and the man who runs UKPollingReport.
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(Well, this is pb).
looks like there is a gang culture after all. i wonder how many fewer victims there would have been if the media had told the truth about this back when it started.
Farage faces jail threat over £200,000 donations
There is no incentive for local workers to be educated, trained and promoted when you can import experienced foreign workers, and those people have absolutely no allegiace to the UK and UK workers.
There is a wonderful (probably apocryphal) story:
- CFO to his CEO: "What if we invest a lot on training people and they leave us to work for our competitors?"
- CEO replies: "What if we don't and they stay?"
A good business will always have an incentive to invest in staff development. Especially in a increasingly capital-intensive economy, it's the best way to maximise productivity and hence returns in the long term.
It's no fun trying to sell an undifferentiated product that is dependent on low cost labour as its primary competitive advantage.
Football matters more than politics to a lot of normal people!
I doubt it. It looks like the old correlation does not equal causation phenomena to me, which has been built up into a popular myth since. The most you could probably say is that perhaps it led to a few more depressed Labour voters staying at home.
I suspect polling inaccuracies (similar to 1992), a poor turnout of Labour voters and a fired up Conservative base (possibly aided by Powell's speeches) and a heavy focus on the future of the economy (with poor trade and unemployment figures during the campaign) were the key factors.
The polarisation of American politics and the evils (not too strong a word) of using districting to create safe seats is increasingly making the US ungovernable. All of the focus is on appealing to ever more extreme views within the dominant party and any attempt at compromise is fatal. Combine that with a weak and somewhat ineffectual President and expecting a coherent, thought through and realistic response to the ongoing disaster in Iraq would be wildly optimistic.
A few weeks ago now I heard Max Hastings talking about his book on WW1. During the questions he pointed out that one of the great fallacies of historians is "cometh the hour, cometh the man". Whilst it does occasionally happen most history is made by people of very ordinary competence muddling through and making a mess of things. This was, in his view, a major contributor to the outbreak of WW1 and it is a major factor today. The world is full of problems right now and the US in particular has pretty ordinary leadership.
The somewhat tenuous link to the thread is that Wilson, like Cantor, suffered enormously from being thought far too clever and far too tricky for his own good, always seeking to manipulate people. I was pretty young in 1970 but I recall the visceral dislike for Wilson as an individual who could not be trusted.
Now of course were Aston Villa, inspired by David Cameron's support ha-ha, to go and win the Premier League and F.A. Cup double next season, then think of all those West Midlands would-be Labour seats unexpectedly falling to the Tories.
Pigs might fly!
On thread , IMHO,Its quite possible that feelgood does alter votes.
The original premise has, of course, an element of humour to it - probably a world cup result wouldn't have had such a big impact - but as an exercise in how well-meaning but incompetent politicians can enable a bad situation to spiral out of control, it's first-rate.
My favourite so far is from espares, tag line - 'Don't let a smelly fridge ruin your summer of sport'. It's the current front runner for my world famous Non Sequitur (2014) award.
Even more self-congratulatory than normal it has to be said but contains some interesting initiatives on housing as well as the remarkable growth and growth of the City.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2098970/Argentina-cheated-World-Cup-1978-says-Peru-senator.html
That victory, and the World Cup win that followed, probably saved the Junta from a popular uprising. Four years later, the government was facing similar unpopularity and sought (not-so-) foreign adventures to remedy the situation. Cue imperial Thatcher and all that followed.
No corrupt Peruvians, no Junta, no Falklands, no 1983 landslide - what instead?
England vs Argentina in 1982 had a major impact.
England vs Germany in 1918 and again in 1945 likewise.
USA vs Iraq looked like it was a deceisive win - but turned out to be a goalless draw with alot of red cards..
The upcoming China vs Japan game will have some major fallout.
England's inevitable victory would see a real boost across England and see the Tories win a landslide.
Hell, our C side nearly defeated the All Blacks in New Zealand last week.
The other issue is that at this stage in the cycle we should be posting budget surpluses.
Otherwise yes he has done a very good job. Lousy political strategist, great chancellor.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/10895149/George-Osborne-wouldnt-like-to-admit-it-but-the-Tories-are-really-milking-the-rich.html
I think ultimately if a government loses or appears to lose control of it's economic policy it loses ground. There are always other factors bubbling away but it's the one thing you really don't want going against you. So whilst the 1970 World Cup is an amusing explanation, like "the sun wot won it" in 1992 the truth is less sexy.
I don't expect to play as poorly as last week.
This is not the mark of genius, it is the mark of someone trying to duck the incoming.
Labour will struggle to win a majority at the next assembly election and UKIP will win its first seats in Cardiff Bay, a new opinion poll indicates.
The survey, commissioned by BBC Wales, put Labour on 36% in the assembly constituency vote, Plaid Cymru on 24%, the Conservatives at 19%, UKIP on 13% and the Liberal Democrats on 5%.
Analysis suggests Labour would win 28 seats - down two - and Plaid Cymru 14. It gives the Conservatives 11 seats, UKIP five and the Lib Dems just two. The Liberal Democrats currently have five AMs.
The analysis was conducted by Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre.
On the top-up regional list, 38% said they would vote Labour, 22% Plaid Cymru, 21% Conservative, 10% UKIP and 4% Liberal Democrats.
The poll indicates a decline in support for Labour, who were scoring consistently above 40% support in Welsh opinion polls last year.
UKIP finished second in last month's Euro poll in Wales, coming within 0.6% of beating Labour.
Prof Roger Scully, of the Welsh Governance Centre, said: "Labour are still in the lead but their vote share for both general and assembly elections has been sliding in Wales for about the last 18 months.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-27811064
In his correspondence with the Electoral Commission, Farage has confirmed he did not have to pay rent on the office for 14 years. This leaves him needing to explain where more than £160,000 of taxpayers' money from the European parliament has gone.
He has said the expenses are an allowance and therefore he does not need to account for the individual expenditure. He has said "How I spend that money is up to me" and that he was spending thousands of pounds on electricity because he is "running machines" and "banks of computers".
He said he had declared it as a benefit in kind there every year since 2001.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/12/nigel-farage-europe-expenses-ukip
Mr. Abroad, hard to imagine a UK political figure called Randy Bumgardner too.
Although we do have an Ed Balls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27822204
"You named me Randy, why didn't you name me "Likes to shag" instead"
What he is, above all, is a pragmatist. The truth he understands and Labour doesn't is that the Laffer curve works. Tax takes can be maximised by lowering rates as well as raising them - if so doing boosts economic activity. You need dynamic models of an economy not static ones to make sensible fiscal decisions (ie factor in how behaviour will respond to tax regimes - as Hollande has spectacularly failed to do in France). Grow the size of the cake not the size of the slice you take from it.
It poses a deep ideological quandary to Ed n Ed - do they want to maximise tax take or tax rates, and why? So far Ed Microband is very much at the static model/maximise rates/shrink the cake end of the spectrum. He is an intellectual pygmy so this is to be expected. Balls I'm not so sure about - he may come up with a surprisingly sensible view - but one that would put him on a collision course with his boss.
I shall play my part to try and stamp on Balls in 2015.
Mr. Jim, I enjoyed this misleading-to-the-point-of-deceit line from Clegg:
"Liberal Democrats want more teachers and schools to enjoy freedom from Whitehall diktats”.
He said that as proposing an enforced core curriculum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War
Seymour Cocks does have a Bart pranksterish ring about it.
Betting postDipping my toe back into tennis waters.
Backed Dolgopolov against Dimitrov at 3, and Lopez against Berdych also at 3 (latter with Ladbrokes).
I think both are 50/50 (they have 1:1 and 4:4 records respectively).
Surprised there has not been more discussion about YouGov, which shows the trend of higher Labour scores continuing. Be interesting to have a thread on this at some stage, looking at the reasons behind it.
Text from Camilla: "Getting into the World Cup spirit... Got a Brazilian!" Tell one she's talking about a new servant. #WorldCup
You just had 2 with a 2pt lead...
We appear to have a whimsical thread for Fri 13th, complete with comp for silliest names..!
must be all the sunshine?
But whatever gets you through the night.
That game between England and Brazil also featured the greatest tackle in football history;
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cMTL9Dm-nYo
Bobby Moore, what a player.
How cool is that?
From memory, it showed that in US elections sporting victories boosted the incumbent by a few percent - not much, but enough to swing a close election.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, of course. It's conceivable that various feel-good factors boost both the incumbent vote and the local sports teams: people playing better because their supporters are surging with optimism.
However, for betting purposes we don't need to know the ultimate causes. Knowing the correlation is enough. England taking the world cup would be worth a couple of points in the polls to the Conservatives, though the glow would probably wear off before the election. The result of football matches in marginal seats the week before the election will be more significant.
A minor uplift in Labour's support since the Euros.
We are only talking about ~2pts but I'm not trolling when I point out that, were the trend similar and to the Tories, there would be endless analysis of it on here. PfP is a Tory poster with an interest in betting - he has also wondered why no analysis of what seems to be a clear trend.
I would wait until we get some ICM, Ipsos-Mori and ComRes (both formats) until we can draw a conclusion.
Giles - "We'll get our memory back, and it'll all be right as rain."
Spike - "Oh, listen to Mary Poppins. He's got his crust all stiff and upper with that nancy-boy accent. You Englishmen are always so... bloody hell... sodding, blimey, shagging, knickers, bollocks... oh, god. I'm English!"
Giles - "Welcome to the nancy tribe."
Spike - "Randy Giles? Why not just call me Horny Giles or Desperate for a Shag Giles? I knew there was a reason I hated you."
The trend with the polling since the Euros is pretty clear, as UKPR have noted.
If it was to the Tories we'd spend all day on here discussing it.
As it is, much of the space of the site has been taken by the PB Tory football-haters making clunking great factual errors about the People's Game.
ICM has a 1,000 plus strong sample size and it is the gold standard of UK polling.
Raw VI Euro-filtered Weighted Yougov
CON 29.3 31.5 31.8
LAB 37.9 36.8 36.4
LD 6.8 5.9 7.4
UKIP 16.0 17.8 14.4
CON 30.6 32.9 33
LAB 39.0 37.8 37.2
LD 6.4 5.5 7.6
UKIP 14.6 16.4 12.8
Top figures are Yougov 1st June -> 6th June
Bottom are Yougov 8th - 13th June
If you are a Conservative you can take comfort in the fact that if people say they will vote Conservative - they will, if you are a Labour well alot of people SAY they will vote Labour, whether they get out of bed come election day is another matter entirely.
UKIP supporters certainly seem motivated judging by Populus certainty to vote.
I don't know where the positives are for the Lib Dems - I suppose they have ICM to cling onto.
The middle column is my attempt to discern the Westminster VI from how bias Yougov's final sample was for the Euros.
You are wrong about "Tory football-haters" - they do not hate football, just have better things or interests to do. I expect that there are people of all political shades who are not either obsessed with or focused on the Football World Cup.
Personally modern professional football played by people with huge egos just leaves me cold and I prefer to do other things - like interacting with my community.
Spike : "Oh, poor Watcher. Did your life pass before your eyes? Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost got shagged, cup of tea?"
Also, even if it had, Juncker certainly doesn't have democratic legitimacy in the UK. Even at their worst, the Tories got a sixth of the vote in Scotland. The EPP got, what, 0.2% in the UK? It would be completely illegitimate for someone to get in on that basis and make decisions that affect this country. The response in Scotland was that the Scots got granted a huge load of autonomy. But the EU refuses to give that to us.
Or in PB Tories minds 2,2 and six outliers.
Also Q1 2014 construction growth was revised up from 0.6% to 1.5% (there was some disbelief of the low figures when they were first announced so looks like that was vindicated) meaning Q1 2014 GDP overall will probably be revised up from 0.8% to 0.9%.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/construction/output-in-the-construction-industry/april-2014/stb-construction-april-2014.html
labourlist.org/2014/06/why-miliband-posing-with-the-sun-makes-no-sense/
" I can’t understand for the life of me what Ed Miliband or anyone else thought he would get out of posing with The Sun today (and this is far from the first time he’s posed for one of their inauthentic photo ops). This is the paper which is at the forefront of the Murdoch empire which Miliband sought to take on. This is a paper which has mocked, attacked and traduced him on a regular basis. To paraphrase Tony Benn, Miliband’s relationship with The Sun, and several other titles, can be summed up as follows:
“If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: ‘Miliband grabs child’.” ......
If this is part of a strategy to speak to the working class voters that Labour has lost – and many of them may be Sun readers – it’s a flawed one. Voters quite like to see politicians stand up for what they believe in, rather than play along with the political and media games of the Westminster village."
Another one of those ifs and buts threads.
How are the SISI doing this morning?
Below is Mark Styne's take on the American failure
http://www.steynonline.com/6417/harmless-as-an-enemy-treacherous-as-a-friend
A problem with this site right now is that Labour is under-represented amongst posters & particularly posts. There are no shortage of UKIP posts & voters, and the proportion of Lib Dems relative to the general population is I think very high.
Skimming through this thread - and apologies if I have your political allegiances wrong but the only posters I can identify as Labour supporters are: ; Bobafett; Rochdale Pioneers; Smameron with Southam Observer very lukewarm about Labour; Bigjohnowls?
Of all the above only yourself and Southam are the heavy 2000+ posters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-27828845
I wonder who leaked this?
Edited extra bit: in entirely unrelated news, an Xbox ad has been turning consoles on. Turns out Kinect remains a stupid idea: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27827545
Like Financier I'm not terribly interested in it though I'll watch a game or two if I have time, and noticed that the waste bin at the entrance to my block of flats is piled high with discarded Sun special World Cup copies. How excited are most people?
The exchanges on the daily polls aren't really taking us far. What we can reasonably say is that there's a smaller Labour lead that's arguably slightly harder than it was (there was a short period when the main parties looked tied), and UKIP is off the boil but not collapsing. Some of the Tory posters are shifting to "well, we might be behind but our turnout will be higher, Labour voters are lazy" - that's IMO an overinterpretation of Newark. Certainty to vote is very similar for the main parties in every poll, and basically anyone moderately interested in a marginal will get mobilised next May.
Keep in mind the starting point: a Tory lead of 36 to 29, and a Parliament so narrowly hung that it took days to work out who the Government would be. I have friends in marginal Labour seats who report almost no Tory activity despite the supposed 40-40 strategy: the actual Tory strategy seems to be to get more LibDem seats than Labour and hold all their own. Both parts of that look optimistic at the moment.
Wrong - the ICM phone poll real sample is often much lower because of refusers.
I don't know why people don't want to even discuss Labour's rising score - the trend is clear and if it was to the Tories we'd hear about nowt else.
PB has discussed previously about the impact of VAT increase on the poor - or lower paid and I would disagree with your premis.
VAT is not zero-rated on public transport, children's clothes, rent and on most foods - unless your diet is composed of Crisps, Chocolate covered biscuits, Take-aways and Cola.
That has been more than counter-balanced by the increase of tax free earnings from £6,475 to £10,000.
Indeed, and great. But a period of silence would be welcome from those who thought Italy finished fourth last WC and that England beat Germany 3-0 quite recently.
(He also mentioned he used to get regular letters from people saying, they hated his fake English accent, and he should listen more to Spike, who has a natural English accent)
Guess which pollster turned out to be the most accurate.
I'll give you a clue, it was the one with the smaller sample size.