Gosh, a five per cent swing in the marginals, at a time when Labour are leading in the main polling by 3% having lost by 7% last time. It's almost as if the marginals aren't that different [when taken in aggregate] after all.
Note that the biggest swings are in London. I noted the other day here:
that you could back Labour at 10/11 in Ealing Central & Acton. The odds are now 4/5 on Labour in this seat, but with only a 4% swing required and neighbouring Brentford & Isleworth showing an 8% swing to Labour at present, this still looks like value to me.
Gosh, a five per cent swing in the marginals, at a time when Labour are leading in the main polling by 3% having lost by 7% last time. It's almost as if the marginals aren't that different [when taken in aggregate] after all.
Yes, that is the key point. You also need to be careful looking at the difference in swing in various seats - it might just be statistical noise or the difficulty of getting the correct weightings at the constituency level. My take on this is to ignore differences of constituency swings in Lord A's polls unless they are substantial.
Every single poll of whatever kind seems to be pointing towards another hung parliament.
I agree with that. The Tories do not feel like they have the momentum of support and Labour are still paying the price for their economic mismanagement. The fact that the economy is improving seems to be propping the Tories up a bit but not pushing them into the lead.
Ashcroft has Corby down as a Tory-held marginal, but it's Labour isn't it? Putting that to one side, looking at the results, you can see Labour has lost a hell of a lot of votes since the by-election. On that basis, the Ashcroft results in the seat may be the most illuminating of all.
Absolutely right. And they are doing what all partisan people do when they take quotes out of context or conflate ideas and opinions with policies in order to discomfit their opponents. See Labour's Death Tax, for example.
Yes, but the difference is that this was a particularly nasty and morally bankrupt example. It was a disgraceful attack by Labour on the dignity of the most severely disabled people in order to score a cheap and dishionest smear. It is evidence that avoiding a Labour government is a moral as well as an economic imperative.
Absolutely right. And they are doing what all partisan people do when they take quotes out of context or conflate ideas and opinions with policies in order to discomfit their opponents. See Labour's Death Tax, for example.
Yes, but the difference is that this was a particularly nasty and morally bankrupt example. It was a disgraceful attack by Labour on the dignity of the most severely disabled people in order to score a cheap and dishionest smear. It is evidence that avoiding a Labour government is a moral as well as an economic imperative.
Indeed. As ever, it is OK when the Tories do it.
If calling a tax that is exclusively associated with death a death tax is the best you've got then I'd have to hazard a guess that you don't understand equivalence. Have you any actual, specific examples of aTory taking a quote out of context in this way?
if you do not understand why the cases are the same then I cannot help you, I'm afraid.
A "no" would have been quicker and more-honest/less-stupid. You can't really think that giving a new name to something to stir emotions (er bedroom tax anyone?) is in any way the same as pretending that a man in government believes that all disabled people are worthless, and you know that this is how it's being spun. You've done better than some of your colleagues on the left and admitted that Miliband has been dishonest, this though is making you look thick in a different way.
Or have you found an example of something actually the same?
It ask people what they think various number are on issues and compares them to reality. As an example people think that 31% of the population are immigrants when the figure is 13%, getting the teenage pregnancy rate completely wrong, etc.
However, by far the most interesting question wan't widely reported on. The poll asked people to rate services (Policing, Hospitals Council Services etc) and problems (Drugs, Crime, Immigration) both locally and nationally. In every single case respondents though that their local services were better than national services. In every single case respondents thought that problem areas were worse nationally than locally. We are talking at factors of 2-to-1 here.
It's an amazing demonstration of something or other.
Ashcroft has Corby down as a Tory-held marginal, but it's Labour isn't it? Putting that to one side, looking at the results, you can see Labour has lost a hell of a lot of votes since the by-election. On that basis, the Ashcroft results in the seat may be the most illuminating of all.
2010: Con 42%, Lab 39%, LD 14% 2012: Con 26.6%, Lab 48.4%, LD 5%, UKIP 14.3% 2014: Con 32%, Lab 36%, LD 6%, UKIP 24%
Absolutely right. And they are doing what all partisan people do when they take quotes out of context or conflate ideas and opinions with policies in order to discomfit their opponents. See Labour's Death Tax, for example.
Yes, but the difference is that this was a particularly nasty and morally bankrupt example. It was a disgraceful attack by Labour on the dignity of the most severely disabled people in order to score a cheap and dishionest smear. It is evidence that avoiding a Labour government is a moral as well as an economic imperative.
Absolutely right. And they are doing what all partisan people do when they take quotes out of context or conflate ideas and opinions with policies in order to discomfit their opponents. See Labour's Death Tax, for example.
Yes, but the difference is that this was a particularly nasty and morally bankrupt example. It was a disgraceful attack by Labour on the dignity of the most severely disabled people in order to score a cheap and dishionest smear. It is evidence that avoiding a Labour government is a moral as well as an economic imperative.
Indeed. As ever, it is OK when the Tories do it.
If calling a tax that is exclusively associated with death a death tax is the best you've got then I'd have to hazard a guess that you don't understand equivalence. Have you any actual, specific examples of aTory taking a quote out of context in this way?
if you do not understand why the cases are the same then I cannot help you, I'm afraid.
A "no" would have been quicker and more-honest/less-stupid. You can't really think that giving a new name to something to stir emotions (er bedroom tax anyone?) is in any way the same as pretending that a man in government believes that all disabled people are worthless, and you know that this is how it's being spun. You've done better than some of your colleagues on the left and admitted that Miliband has been dishonest, this though is making you look thick in a different way.
Or have you found an example of something actually the same?
Paddy Power actually let me have a decent bet on the Conservatives in Pudsey. It is fill your boots time at 9-4
I thought that Pudsey might be worth a tinkle at 9-4 back on June 30th and placed a £5 bet. I've extended that today for another £10.74 (PP Max) - 9-4 is an absolute steal.
Paddy Power actually let me have a decent bet on the Conservatives in Pudsey. It is fill your boots time at 9-4
I thought that Pudsey might be worth a tinkle at 9-4 back on June 30th and placed a £5 bet. I've extended that today for another £10.74 (PP Max) - 9-4 is an absolute steal.
Dumfries & Galloway: TCTC Hallam: LD Hold Inverness, Bairn & Strathspey - SNP Gain Pudsey: TCTC Reading West: TCTC Sherwood: Lab Gain Southampton Itchen: TCTC Thurrock: UKIP Gain Thanet South: UKIP Gain Torbay - Con Gain
UKIP Gains: Boston, Great Grimsby, Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Basildon & SE Thurrock, Rotherham, Rochester, Thanet South (+ 2 others)
Con to win national vote share, Lib-Lab coalition Gov't.
"Firstly, there's nothing honourable about someone being hounded out of office for a mis-speak. The verb is well-chosen: it's a pack blood sport engaged in for the entertainment of the participants, nothing more."
I'm sorry perhaps I should have put 'honourable' in parethesis. It was meant sarcastically.
However it feeds into a narative that exists about Tories and heartlessness so it got 'legs' rather like the case of Stephen Byers who was thought to be accident prone which was why that one ran and ran
Catching up with the previous thread about work and people with disabilities, Freud's comments have to be understood in light of his previous use of the term 'stock' when referring to people with disabilities in HoL debates, and his failure to grasp the effect the welfare reforms have had on hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities across the country. In my experience most people with disabilities who are aware of him certainly see him as an enemy.
There were many occasions during the various HoL debates where it was clear his grasp of the detail was poor, his empathy was lacking, and his understanding of actual poverty was non-existent. (It's not often I present something as an 'argument from authority' but having worked in the voluntary sector for fifteen years providing free legal advice to older people this is an area where I know what I am talking about - a quick search of the Disability News Service illustrates the regard with which Freud is held... http://disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=Freud).
Paddy Power actually let me have a decent bet on the Conservatives in Pudsey. It is fill your boots time at 9-4
I thought that Pudsey might be worth a tinkle at 9-4 back on June 30th and placed a £5 bet. I've extended that today for another £10.74 (PP Max) - 9-4 is an absolute steal.
Down to 7/4 now
Still probably value but you have to be fast in these markets !
Ashcroft has Corby down as a Tory-held marginal, but it's Labour isn't it? Putting that to one side, looking at the results, you can see Labour has lost a hell of a lot of votes since the by-election. On that basis, the Ashcroft results in the seat may be the most illuminating of all.
2010: Con 42%, Lab 39%, LD 14% 2012: Con 26.6%, Lab 48.4%, UKIP 14.3% 2014: Con 32%, Lab 36%, UKIP 24%
There you go.
That's UKIP definitely picking up a big chunk of Labour votes. Maybe the clearest direct evidence we have seen of it anywhere.
Gosh, a five per cent swing in the marginals, at a time when Labour are leading in the main polling by 3% having lost by 7% last time. It's almost as if the marginals aren't that different [when taken in aggregate] after all.
Note that the biggest swings are in London. I noted the other day here:
that you could back Labour at 10/11 in Ealing Central & Acton. The odds are now 4/5 on Labour in this seat, but with only a 4% swing required and neighbouring Brentford & Isleworth showing an 8% swing to Labour at present, this still looks like value to me.
The other thing to note is the Lib Dem performance. Worth reviewing the Lib Dem lost deposit numbers based on these?
Paddy Power actually let me have a decent bet on the Conservatives in Pudsey. It is fill your boots time at 9-4
I thought that Pudsey might be worth a tinkle at 9-4 back on June 30th and placed a £5 bet. I've extended that today for another £10.74 (PP Max) - 9-4 is an absolute steal.
Down to 7/4 now
Still probably value but you have to be fast in these markets !
I was, legged it to the Paddy Power Shop in Piccadilly Gardens.
Ha! And I didn't think you liked Fight Club. I rather like it - it's a bit flinchtastic, and I do admire Brad Pitt's ability to get his body fat in low single digits. That's hard to do. Tom Hanks managed it in Castaway too.
Being in the low single digits makes them ideal Lib Dem voters!
Maybe Yougov now specifically prompt for UKIP - which tends to increase the chance that someone will say they'll vote UKIP. I think previously UKIP were an invisible part of 'other'.
(and the first rule of mental health club is that you don't talk about mental health club)
@isam - Not at all. The problem isn't whether we want to put restrictions on EU immigration, it is whether it is going to be possible to do so. I'm sceptical (other than in respect of benefits, where I am sure good progress will be made), but it's worth a try. The main thing which has changed is that there seems to be a little bit of support amongst at least some of our EU friends on this now - the UK is not the only country encountering the problem.
In any case, you can't have it both ways. People bitch that 'politicians aren't listening', and then bitch when they do listen. Which do you want?
To your last point , fair enough but I would rather vote for someone who actually believes in it
If the country on the whole takes a turn toward liking immigration and the EU, I would be very disappointed in Farage if he started extolling their virtues just to keep ukip high in the polls... To me that is what Cameron has done...
Let's say I vote for Cameron, then in a years time the polls say, actually we like lots of uncontrolled immigration? I have no doubt Cameron will drop any idea of controlling it and leaved everyone who voted for him on a false prospectus disappointed
Again!
To be fair to Cameron, they planned in this government to restrict immigration. Clearly they have not been successful in hitting their target and there can be debate as to whether that was due to some of all of (a) a poor choice of target (b) relative economic outperformance (c) the Lib Dems (d) failure to design/implement appropriate controls or (e) something else.
Now they're saying "ok, we tried that, it didn't work. So we are going to look at EU immigration to try and achieve the same objective". That seems to be a pretty mature approach to government.
I’ve been looking at one of the LibDem’s odder gains, Christchurch in 1993. For several years it plodded along steadily with at least 20,000 Tory majorities on 70%+ turnovers. Then in the 1993 by-election there was a simil;ar LD majority on a similar turnout! However at the following GE (1997) the LD vote went down by 10.000 with a very similar increase in the Tory vote and since then it’s settled down to be a Tory seat again with a 15,000 or so majority.
Without lookingn too closely, I think Newbury followed a similar pattern as did Orpington, further back.
Is this what’s going to happen to UKIP? Or has the mould finally broken?
Oh, and the irony for people to be all of a sudden running around worrying about what to do about employment for people with disabilities when this government (and the last) closed all the Remploy factories is breathtaking (and all this with an employment rate for people with disabilities who go through the Work Programme at <1% last time I saw any statistics)...
I have noticed people starting to talk about UKIP. Even the beautician I use mentioned that "... that Nigel Farage seems to talk a lot of sense ..." which rather surprised me coming from a widow in her 50s. I made some non-committal comments to see where she was going and it seems that she is simply fed-up with the main parties and UKIP seems the most reasonable alternative to her.
Since she was shaping my eyebrows at the time I decided it was safest to agree with her, but it is the first time in years that she has ever discussed politics with me and it came out of nowhere.
I suspect that she is as good a sample as any, although I understand the dangers of a sample size of "one", but it perked my interest enough to keep my ears open for any more casual "UKIP interest" and it is definitely out there. People are half willing to listen because the Tories are corrupt, capitalist, baby-eaters and Labour are financial incomptents and the Lib Dems are treacherous turn-coats.
People are running out of parties to vote for.
I've noticed a definite change in "respectable" circles of people being prepared to hear UKIP out where they would have once just rolled their eyes.
Polling near 20% is one in five. Meaning that if you're in a room with 4 socialists, you're the kipper.
No it doesn't, it means that there are a lot of other people in the room (or you're at the BBC).
I'd prefer not to have to frack. But it may be the only way forward, at least for the while. Green energy - wind, wave, solar, tidal etc - cannot currently deliver the energy we need, yet alone at a price that makes us competitive.
Amen to that.
http://www.worldwatch.org/renewables-becoming-cost-competitive-fossil-fuels-us Of course oil is getting cheaper at the moment. Surely we need to factor in the political and financial risks of being dependant on Russia and the Middle East for some of our energy needs. Climate change will also cost us and cause us problems.
It's fine to say we must factor in the political and financial risks of fossil fuels. But if you do say that, then you must also factor in the political and financial risks of green energy.
Since we in the UK cannot generate enough non-nuclear green energy to meet demand in even the best circumstances using current tech, 100% green energy would mean dropping demand significantly. The political and financial risks of that are obvious.
Who said 100%? Straw Man alert.
So what figure were you thinking of?
As an aside, Miliband pledged 100% carbon-free electricity at his recent conference.
So he had time to talk about such nonsense but not about the economy or immigration. Did he explain how much it was going to cost? I doubt any of our pliant media bothered to ask him.
What, the fact that they're cutting a tax that they put up massively a few years ago, but not telling people that they put it up? I fail to see what's so wrong with that.. Or have the Tories deliberately tried to get a Labour person sacked and hated by misquoting them on the death tax and I missed it? Or is there a different meaning to equivalent that I don't know?
Gosh, a five per cent swing in the marginals, at a time when Labour are leading in the main polling by 3% having lost by 7% last time. It's almost as if the marginals aren't that different [when taken in aggregate] after all.
Note that the biggest swings are in London. I noted the other day here:
that you could back Labour at 10/11 in Ealing Central & Acton. The odds are now 4/5 on Labour in this seat, but with only a 4% swing required and neighbouring Brentford & Isleworth showing an 8% swing to Labour at present, this still looks like value to me.
The other thing to note is the Lib Dem performance. Worth reviewing the Lib Dem lost deposit numbers based on these?
All Lord Ashcroft's marginals polls show the Lib Dems retaining most of their deposits at present, even in Labour/Conservative marginals. Now of course they may be squeezed further, but this seems at odds with the theory that they're losing votes where they matter least (a theory I've always thought owed more to wishful thinking than to logic).
If the Lib Dems are getting more votes in hopeless seats, their chances in their good seats look correspondingly worse on the same national vote share. But that doesn't square with Lord Ashcroft's polls in the Lib Dem/Conservative and Lib Dem/Labour marginals either.
The only explanation that squares with all of Lord Ashcroft's polls to date is that the Lib Dems are doing disproportionately badly in safe Labour and safe Conservative seats. No one has yet given me an explanation why that should be so - I'd have thought that they'd be under most pressure in Labour/Conservative marginals, where others are actively chasing their votes.
Simon Bailey is a really good bloke, clever, sharp and I'm very pleased that he made CCons. I knew him in a previous incarnation when he was running CID and it was obvious he was going places.
More child sexual exploitation scandals like the one that happened in Rotherham will be uncovered in the coming months, a police chief has said.
Norfolk Chief Constable Simon Bailey told the Guardian that child sex crimes had "for too long been hidden".
He also said teachers and doctors should do more to spot signs of abuse.
At least 1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham from 1997 to 2013, mainly by gangs of men of Pakistani heritage.
Mr Bailey, the leading officer within the Association of Chief Police Officers concerned with the issue of child abuse, has warned that the scale of the problem nationwide could be larger than previously thought.
"We don't know for sure. But I think it's tens of thousands of victims [a year] of an appalling crime," Mr Bailey said.
If the Lib Dems are getting more votes in hopeless seats, their chances in their good seats look correspondingly worse on the same national vote share. But that doesn't square with Lord Ashcroft's polls in the Lib Dem/Conservative and Lib Dem/Labour marginals either.
Worth remembering that the better Lib Dem performance in the marginals they are competitive in shows up on his second question, about their specific constituency. On the standard vote intention question their polling in their own seats is horrendous.
This implies that the Lib Dems will outperform their current national poll share, because of the extra votes they will accrue in seats which they currently hold. I think that's how you fit the square peg in the round hole.
Golly, and I thought my older brother was a human pipe-cleaner as a teenager. He now weighs about 18st... not 6st. He's literally three times the man he was!
If the Lib Dems are getting more votes in hopeless seats, their chances in their good seats look correspondingly worse on the same national vote share. But that doesn't square with Lord Ashcroft's polls in the Lib Dem/Conservative and Lib Dem/Labour marginals either.
Worth remembering that the better Lib Dem performance in the marginals they are competitive in shows up on his second question, about their specific constituency. On the standard vote intention question their polling in their own seats is horrendous.
This implies that the Lib Dems will outperform their current national poll share, because of the extra votes they will accrue in seats which they currently hold. I think that's how you fit the square peg in the round hole.
In Lord A's latest CON-LD battleground polling overall shares were CON 32% LD% with swing to CON of just 2% since GE10.
Oh, and the irony for people to be all of a sudden running around worrying about what to do about employment for people with disabilities when this government (and the last) closed all the Remploy factories is breathtaking (and all this with an employment rate for people with disabilities who go through the Work Programme at <1% last time I saw any statistics)...</p>
Remploy re-found itself with the aim of getting people with disabilities into work. To quote their website.
"In 2012/13 we found more than 17,500 jobs in mainstream employment for disabled people and those facing complex barriers to work."
Comments
http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-cloud-of-unknowing-seats-with-no.html
that you could back Labour at 10/11 in Ealing Central & Acton. The odds are now 4/5 on Labour in this seat, but with only a 4% swing required and neighbouring Brentford & Isleworth showing an 8% swing to Labour at present, this still looks like value to me.
Or have you found an example of something actually the same?
https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3188/Perceptions-are-not-reality-the-top-10-we-get-wrong.aspx
It ask people what they think various number are on issues and compares them to reality. As an example people think that 31% of the population are immigrants when the figure is 13%, getting the teenage pregnancy rate completely wrong, etc.
However, by far the most interesting question wan't widely reported on. The poll asked people to rate services (Policing, Hospitals Council Services etc) and problems (Drugs, Crime, Immigration) both locally and nationally. In every single case respondents though that their local services were better than national services. In every single case respondents thought that problem areas were worse nationally than locally. We are talking at factors of 2-to-1 here.
It's an amazing demonstration of something or other.
2012: Con 26.6%, Lab 48.4%, LD 5%, UKIP 14.3%
2014: Con 32%, Lab 36%, LD 6%, UKIP 24%
CON 285 (+1)
LAB 297 (-1)
LIB 26 (-)
NAT 14 (-)
UKIP 10 (-)
(NI 18) (-)
Seats to watch:
Dumfries & Galloway: TCTC
Hallam: LD Hold
Inverness, Bairn & Strathspey - SNP Gain
Pudsey: TCTC
Reading West: TCTC
Sherwood: Lab Gain
Southampton Itchen: TCTC
Thurrock: UKIP Gain
Thanet South: UKIP Gain
Torbay - Con Gain
UKIP Gains: Boston, Great Grimsby, Clacton, Great Yarmouth, Basildon & SE Thurrock, Rotherham, Rochester, Thanet South (+ 2 others)
Con to win national vote share,
Lib-Lab coalition Gov't.
"Firstly, there's nothing honourable about someone being hounded out of office for a mis-speak. The verb is well-chosen: it's a pack blood sport engaged in for the entertainment of the participants, nothing more."
I'm sorry perhaps I should have put 'honourable' in parethesis. It was meant sarcastically.
However it feeds into a narative that exists about Tories and heartlessness so it got 'legs' rather like the case of Stephen Byers who was thought to be accident prone which was why that one ran and ran
There were many occasions during the various HoL debates where it was clear his grasp of the detail was poor, his empathy was lacking, and his understanding of actual poverty was non-existent. (It's not often I present something as an 'argument from authority' but having worked in the voluntary sector for fifteen years providing free legal advice to older people this is an area where I know what I am talking about - a quick search of the Disability News Service illustrates the regard with which Freud is held... http://disabilitynewsservice.com/?s=Freud).
That's UKIP definitely picking up a big chunk of Labour votes. Maybe the clearest direct evidence we have seen of it anywhere.
Being in the low single digits makes them ideal Lib Dem voters!
Now they're saying "ok, we tried that, it didn't work. So we are going to look at EU immigration to try and achieve the same objective". That seems to be a pretty mature approach to government.
However at the following GE (1997) the LD vote went down by 10.000 with a very similar increase in the Tory vote and since then it’s settled down to be a Tory seat again with a 15,000 or so majority.
Without lookingn too closely, I think Newbury followed a similar pattern as did Orpington, further back.
Is this what’s going to happen to UKIP? Or has the mould finally broken?
[Incidentally, I don't recommend doing this. Massive gag reflex ensues].
So he had time to talk about such nonsense but not about the economy or immigration. Did he explain how much it was going to cost? I doubt any of our pliant media bothered to ask him.
If the Lib Dems are getting more votes in hopeless seats, their chances in their good seats look correspondingly worse on the same national vote share. But that doesn't square with Lord Ashcroft's polls in the Lib Dem/Conservative and Lib Dem/Labour marginals either.
The only explanation that squares with all of Lord Ashcroft's polls to date is that the Lib Dems are doing disproportionately badly in safe Labour and safe Conservative seats. No one has yet given me an explanation why that should be so - I'd have thought that they'd be under most pressure in Labour/Conservative marginals, where others are actively chasing their votes.
He talks more truth than most ambitious coppers.
This implies that the Lib Dems will outperform their current national poll share, because of the extra votes they will accrue in seats which they currently hold. I think that's how you fit the square peg in the round hole.
"In 2012/13 we found more than 17,500 jobs in mainstream employment for disabled people and those facing complex barriers to work."