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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The wait for another full IndyRef poll goes on – there’s no
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The wait for another full IndyRef poll goes on – there’s not been one for nearly a fortnight
Over the past few days I’ve been repeatedly asked when the next full IndyRef poll will be published and unfortunately I have no idea. The last full poll was by YouGov when fieldwork finished on August 15th – that’s 13 days ago.
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7:43AM edited 7:43AM
Interesting article in the Times today underlining the fact that social mobility is going backwards in the UK. As someone who believes that talented people in this country are denied the chance to fulfill their potential due to "the system", which political party should I support?
" Interesting article in the Times today underlining the fact that social mobility is going backwards in the UK. As someone who believes that talented people in this country are denied the chance to fulfill their potential due to "the system", which political party should I support?"
It is partially linked to declining state education standards and also the decline (removal of) grammar schools which provided a lot of social mobility.
Today, employers require not only a high standard of education and knowledge, but deep thinkers as well as aspirational people who are confident of presenting themselves and their employer before clients of all types. Often state education does not nurture all these qualities.
So Malcolm is right, the rest of us are wrong, the currency issue is a minor technical detail or a complete red herring and the result will be YES 103% / NO -3%.
What we can conclude from his decision, is that the price of party loyalty is set at £85k.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28962144
Funnily enough, none of these factors increases social mobility.
Which leads on to turn-out. If defeat for YES looks to be a foregone conclusion by polling day, I wonder how many YES supporters will stay home. It seems that YES has always banked on the least likely to vote coming out for them on the day. Only a perverse minority vote for a lost cause - many won't make the effort to be associated with failure. Without the Big Mo, it may prove to be a forlorn hope that these normal Can't Be Arsed supporters will change their habits of a lifetime. (For example, turnout in 2010 across all Glasgow seats ranged from 49% to 61%, mostly in the low 50%'s. A CBA Party stronghold.)
If so, the NO winning margin might be bigger than current polling suggests.
Yes: 50%
No: 50%
Yes to win by a handful of votes.
Although this particular example does look to have been a grenade with the pin pulled out. You would have thought Labour would have more nous than to put him forward as their standard bearer.
Even the homeless are registering to vote and guess what they don't feel Better Together.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/archie-macpherson-upstages-gordon-brown-4118503
Say No,thanks to the stomach-turning SNP lies.
Hope versus Despair...........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbWnBX6BY5A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yjWWrPQ3Zg
Mr. G, or complacency versus caution. The Romans were very confident before the Battle of Arausio.
The problem with democracy is that it is possible to do so too often, thereby creating the "missed bus? there'll be another one alone in a minute" syndrome amongst mandarins and Managing Directors.
If only people operated the way libertarian free-marketeers wish them to (perfect information, head always rules heart) the "invisible hand" would do away with the need for any group of individuals to hold power. For it is the exercise of power which is the true problem, not least because it cloaks itself in (supposedly unwarranted & unwarrantable) privilege.
Scotland: A Homeland for the Homeless
But...we've been together for 300 years and this decision is a bit more historic. There is, of course, no reason why ultimately Scotland cannot be independent and successful. So perhaps the polls are wrong and the Scots are thinking longer term - and fancy running their own show.
Sure, if it's YES there'll be chaos. Financial services will flee south and there'll be terrible and immediate budget / cashflow / banking dramas. Currency, borrowing, deficits, EU membership - all look to become 'interesting' overnight. There might even be some profound 'caveat emptor' / 'WTF have we done to ourselves' gnashing and wailing for a few years.
But...Scotland would become independent (and really independent if it chooses to have its own currency and stay out of the EU). Financial indpendence might force financial common sense and a return to the Scotland of Adam Smith. The journey through lefty bankruptopia and into 'sound money' would only last for as long as the Scots take to realise a country can only borrow what it can repay.
So...hmmmm....perhaps Malc is right. Take the hit, suffer the short term profound readjustment of attitudes and expectations - but emerge free and sovereign on the other side.
(Just don't think for a minute that the free / sovereign / successful bit can be reached without travelling through the twilight zone on the way there).
A councillor who promoted Wright's election talked about learning lessons and ensuring that the past was not repeated, but was careful to omit saying anything about the people who were responsible for the past.
We will rid our country of the parasites and run our own affairs.
If YES outlined a scenario as you have given - 5 to 15 years of pain for a better future (and who can forecast global events in 15 years time) - do you think that that would be a vote winner?
David Cameron will deliver a clear message to the leader of the Scottish independence campaign Alex Salmond today, warning there will not be a currency union under any circumstances if Scots vote Yes in the 18 September referendum. It comes despite Salmond’s claim that the Yes campaign has the edge and that Scotland would keep the pound no matter what.
http://www.cityam.com/1409188409/cameron-scots-cannot-pilfer-pound
A lot of the time, it may be cock-up as much as conspiracy. A lot of older solicitors, for instance, would have qualified by articles with the council, and evening classes. Now, law is an all-graduate affair, along with most other professions.
Employers need creative thinkers! So schools concentrate on that rather than oppressively correcting spelling or grammar. Then it turns out employers didn't really mean it (or their HR departments did not get the memo) and so the best jobs go to the people who speak grammatically in nice accents.
Personal statements on university applications. Again, sounds fine and fair and progressive but favours the children of the rich and well-connected who are more likely to have done interesting and relevant things.
I am not for gloom and doom.
Also, someone should point out to Salmond the alphabet goes ABCD. Not ABBB. Three plan Bs is almost as worthless as none.
*sighs*
If Yes wins and my bank doesn't move south of the border I'll have to change my accounts. Bah.
You should read Gregory Clark's The son also rises.
This is an area that needs looking into but the question is why do we discriminate against people for the racial and sexual orientation, and what is the cost to society of affirmative action?
Punters beware!
Public life would still be dominated by the upper middle classes regardless of where they were educated.
People who live on welfare are acting rationally under the old system - but it was corrosive to their social and psychological well-being. Making sure that they are incentivised to get back into the mainstream is hugely important.
And the old education system has been a disaster for a generation of kids. There is so much wasted talent in the UK that it just horrifies me.
No.
And threatening to renege on debts to a club, you have just opted to leave, if you don't get your own way is not a great start to a new relationship....
There have in fact been two polls among pensioners/over 50s published in the last few days, but I understand why you may not wish to dwell on them.....
That seems to me to be the only basis for making a choice: do you think the benefits of being one partner in a stronger unit outweigh the benefits of the ability to select precisely the option that you want to.
Labour are making an interesting announcement on this today:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28952647
As ever, the devil will be in the details. But technical universities seem an obvious route forwards.
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I took an interest in part of this when I was in Parliament, exploring the idea of having some courses whose content was strongly influenced by employers. The deal would be:
1. An employer X who consistently finds it hard to get the right sort of British graduates would explain what they needed to university Y.
2. Y would develop a course designed to meet X's needs while retaining sufficient breadth to avoid the student being tied to X (e.g. if it was Microsoft, the course couldn't be just tied to MS software).
3. X would pay some of the fees and offer a 1-year contract to any graduate with a 2-1 result or better.
What would be in it for the student is a guaranteed job offer - no compulsion to take it, but nice to know it's there. X would pay some money but solve his recuitment problem. And the university would attract more students.
The companies I talked to were very interested, as were students. But there was strong resistance from academics, who felt it was a slippery slope towards making universities a tool of industry instead of a tool of knowledge.
Perhaps technical universities as proposed would look on it more positively?
Have you considered talking to someone about that?
People who live on welfare are acting rationally under the old system - but it was corrosive to their social and psychological well-being. Making sure that they are incentivised to get back into the mainstream is hugely important.
Why is this not equally true of pensioners? Neoclassical economics doesn't take account of people's age.
Social mobility not collapsed.
http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-by-edwin-s-rubenstein-193
Cost of affirmative action.
Sensible people can filter the obvious posturing by both sides and realise what is happening. It will all change when reality hits, then they actually have to do something. Then lies and half truths will not cut it.
If people want, as individuals, to work part or full time to supplement their income that is entirely up to them.
But where there are pensioners who, for whatever reason, are not participating in society then it is important to try to engage with them. And there are some very good, very innovative organisations that do this.
If you are currently a 45% tax payer in Scotland, you can expect a world of pain - as you and the 100,000 others are required to plug the financial gap. Anyone who stays must really love Scotland....
Or perhaps you think the reason Thatcher didn't abolish the welfare system was because she was some kind of closet leftie.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/herald-times-group-celebrates-double-success.1409145320
The PM can't speak to everyone directly
The student, possibly yes.
In Jurassic and Cretaceous times, dinosaurs ruled the world. There was no meritocracy, no space for a nimbler, more intelligent species to develop.
What was needed was a cataclysm.
That is why the generation after the Second World War was the most socially mobile we have ever known.
All organized systems need cataclysms to wipe out the top layer so that those below can grow and develop. This prevents evolutionary cul-de-sacs and dead-ends.
Political parties all try to cement their stranglehold on power, and are the opposite of what is needed.
Standard English was thumped into you. But by the 1980s, publishers wanted literature to reflect the demotic speech of ordinary folk.
"They realised there was a market for work in which we talked about ourselves in our own terms," says Liz Lochhead, one of Scotland's most celebrated poets and playwrights.
"And then with the first failed referendum [on devolution in 1979] there really was, afterwards, a sort of sense of depression, which then expressed itself in a sense of let's get on with it, and... a revival of Scottish identity."
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-28882770
Thought I'd pop by to see what the prospects are for Indy ref - I can't believe after all this time, it's almost finally over! Yippee!
This Rotherham business is appalling - and thanks to those who took the time to read/quote chunks of the report here. Most useful and informed as always. I see that the Guardian deleted over 2000 comments under a related story yesterday afternoon. Good to see some things don't change :^ )
Incidentally (and relevantly to the topic) you ought to be supporting Yes - the fragmentation of the party system in Scotland is fascinating to behold even as it stands so far.
One of Britain’s largest business groups has been forced to radically scale back its annual dinner in Scotland after the electoral watchdog ruled it is a Unionist campaign event in the independence referendum.
... Relations with the nationalists reached a nadir earlier this year when the organisation, which represents around 1,200 businesses in Scotland, decided to register with the commission as a supporter of the Better Together campaign.
This would have allowed it to spend more than £10,000 during the referendum campaign, but it withdrew its registration documents after a series of publicly-funded organisations, including several universities, resigned their membership of the business group.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11059963/CBI-Scotland-scales-back-annual-dinner-after-watchdog-rules-it-pro-UK-campaign-event.html
Instead we got "It'll be almost exactly the same, except we'll call all the shots and spend more"
That will not go down in history alongside "Give me Liberty or give me death", "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" or "Quit India"!
28/08/2014 07:56
Reminded: Rotherham Council took 3 East European children from Ukip foster parents because Ukip agst ‘active promotion of multiculturalism’.
Note to newspaper owners: if you want to sell more papers in Scotland, there is one very straightforward route to go, back Yes.
At present we have a student with us completing his Masters who originates from Chennai - we will have to decide in October whether to sponsor him with immigration or not. He came from Sheffield Uni very raw and not really employable and with no initiative. After taking a lot of our expensive time, he has improved but at present the jury is out as his English is just passable and he could not be client facing for that reason, but as we want to open branch in Mumbai, then we may need to think again.
However, we only employ people who are good enough, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, race or creed.
NickP.
At one time major UK industrial companies used to sponsor students, with long vacs or even a gap year spent working with them. Now we have a lot fewer industrial majors in the UK, but I believe these sponsorships were quite successful and only sent students to unis whose course standards met their approval.
The problem is that too many Techs were converted to unis, we need some of them to convert back to techs to support the local population who could still live at home and so reduce the costs of post-school education.
This also reminds me of the weans getting the tawse for speaking Scots in McIlvanney's fine novel Docherty.
I have no idea if the problem in the UK was the academics or the business model.
I really knew the Scotsman had gone too far when (1) it airbrushed that infamous swastika on a photo made very well known by being used on the cover of Tom Devine's modern history of Scotland, and still more (2) when it splashed, as its frontpage story, a poll that was so bad it wasn;t even a voodoo one but just a marketing exercise by a financial services company - you will recall it, it was the one which claimed that 16 and 17 year olds were overwhelmingly no.
Of course a certain poster of this parish promptly recommended that Scotsman story to all of us, despite the fact it took about 4 minutes on the net to debunk it.
I have to say it's a very powerful argument and one that would weigh very heavily if I had the vote. I would consider it a disaster if the rest of the UK left the EU and it would be a top priority to prevent it happening
Defender Cosmin Moti takes over in goal when keeper sent off saves two penalties and scores his own in shootout to send his team through
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/28/champions-league-defender-saves-penalties-goal?CMP=twt_gu
Isn't the referendum about the Scottish people having the freedom to elect a government of their choice and to live with the consequences ?
Arguing against SNP policy is totally missing the point.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-carmichael-to-quit-if-yes-1-3523006
Good to 'see' you and trust all is well.
Report can be downloaded from: http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/1407/independent_inquiry_cse_in_rotherham
And I notice you are resorting to "more Scottish than thou" - a clear sign of nerves...
Mr. Roger, those most loudly claiming leaving the EU would be a disaster said much the same about a failure to join the euro, which turned out to be a failure in the same sense as one fails to thrust one's knackers between a lion's jaws.
It will be interesting to see what the new Scottish Labour party looks like after independence.
A bit like the BBC in another context.