For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
The Mansion Tax hangs like the sword of Damocles over the roofs of those well below the £2m threshold.
And, second, it hits a lot of people with influence. And a lot of those were soft left-leaning New Labourites.
If you think this just affects Richmond, think again. Apparently Glenda's H&H seat could be in serious trouble. And that's a well-known celeb. Think of the other north, west and south-west London seats.
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
The Mansion Tax hangs like the sword of Damocles over the roofs of those well below the £2m threshold.
And, second, it hits a lot of people with influence. And a lot of those were soft left-leaning New Labourites.
If you think this just affects Richmond, think again. Apparently Glenda's H&H seat could be in serious trouble. And that's a well-known celeb. Think of the other north, west and south-west London seats.
If there really is an LD collapse, it will be interesting to see where their vote in IS&F goes
Labour (Emily Thornberry) 18,407 42.3% +2.4 Liberal Democrat (Bridget Fox) 14,838 34.1% -4.2 Conservative (Antonia Cox) 8,449 19.4% +4.6
People commenting on Kinnock/Sheffield down thread prompted me to go back and look at some of the old videos. How did he ever get from this startling oratory
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWLN7rIby9s
to this embarrassment
youtu.be/7TOgB3Smvro?t=1m29s
Yes, very strange ...... I remember turning to my loved ones as we listened to that Sheffield speech and I said to them "he's just blown it" Yet he now claims that prior to that fateful evening he already knew that Labour had lost the imminent General Election.
I still maintain the speech was just an additional nail in the coffin much like Ed has been doing recently. What I feel did for him and Labour was the threat to recall the Polaris fleet and unilaterally disarm at a time Russia was again a threat. No one likes having nuclear weapons but they like not having them when others do even more.
The mansion tax situation amongst others could play the same way as quite simply the "mansions" are just not mansions in most cases but family homes owned by asset rich , cash low voters. ( or Grannies of course?)
"Vote Labour in and get yourself out" ....... Great election slogan really
As I've been saying, it's the stupidest piece of political suicide since Foot's 1983 unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Outside some parts of London I'm not sure it is - for the overwhelming majority of the country its a "tax on someone else" - which people are usually quite happy with......
YouGov asked in October whether it was - net -(London) A good idea in principle: +41 (+21) Would work in practice: +8 (+6)
Has Labour officially replaced the "35% strategy" with the "33% strategy"?
LAB could win overall majority on 30% even with big Scots losses. Remember it's not the national vote shares that matter but what is happening in the key constituencies
As I've been saying, it's the stupidest piece of political suicide since Foot's 1983 unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Outside some parts of London I'm not sure it is - for the overwhelming majority of the country its a "tax on someone else" - which people are usually quite happy with......
YouGov asked in October whether it was - net -(London) A good idea in principle: +41 (+21) Would work in practice: +8 (+6)
The thing is most of Labour's vote is now in London, the WC Northern constituencies are going to come under intense pressure from UKIP, its in the metropolitan liberal and inner city bits of London that their seats are going to hold up best, both of which are going to get the mansion tax in the teeth. There are 700+ houses worth over £2m in Harringey for example. Hampstead and Killburn is on a knife edge and a lot of the Labour vote there are champagne socialists.
Thats an ugly statistic, not an ugly fact. It presupposes a lot of things, not least of which is that people tell the truth to pollsters
So the new hypothesis is that Labour voters fib differentially versus others?
Who knows, probably. If you poll catholics and anglicans about their use of contraception, who is likely bend the truth and who isn't. In all surveys people bend the truth according to their own prejudices, and what is a political affiliation except a clustering of people with like prejudices. Whether that makes a difference in this particular question, who can say.
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
"Labour leader told he is presiding over a laughing stock over his response to Emily Thornberry's tweet as senior party figures warn Mr Miliband is one of Westminster's growing number of out-of-touch MPs"
"Did May's European Parliament election results - described as a political "earthquake" by the French prime minister, Manuel Valls - convince the continent's leaders, both elected and unelected, to take a step back and try to tackle the EU's "democratic deficit"? If only. Despite turnout declining in every single set of European parliamentary elections since they were first introduced in 1979 - and despite the European Commission's polling suggesting that trust in EU institutions, at 31%, is at an all-time low - members of the EU elite march on towards "ever closer union", incompetently, indifferently, in denial."
"The Left across Europe has been seduced by the EU’s promise of workers’ rights – forgetting that you can’t enjoy those rights if you don’t have a job to begin with."
As I've been saying, it's the stupidest piece of political suicide since Foot's 1983 unilateral nuclear disarmament.
Outside some parts of London I'm not sure it is - for the overwhelming majority of the country its a "tax on someone else" - which people are usually quite happy with......
YouGov asked in October whether it was - net -(London) A good idea in principle: +41 (+21) Would work in practice: +8 (+6)
People never tell pollsters the truth about personal tax and spend. No-one wishes to come over as selfish. In the ballot box, no-one is watching, not even the Ruskies.
The ‘flag sneer’ row looks set to be dragged into a second week as Labour faced the prospect of a class war within its own ranks.
David Lammy, London mayoral hopeful and former universities minister, said politicians from “liberal, professional backgrounds” found it hard to identify with ordinary working people.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday he argued: “The Labour Party feels culturally adrift, not just from large parts of Britain, but from its own traditional working class base.
“Large parts of the country feel that Labour not only disagrees with them, they think we disapprove of them too.
I'm not a fan of Mehdi Hassan, but he's on the money here:
Let's start with the euro. What on earth were we thinking? How could anyone with the faintest grasp of economics have believed it was anything other than sheer insanity to yoke together diverse national economies such as Greece, Ireland, Germany and Finland under a single exchange rate and a single interest rate? And, lest we forget, without a US-style system of fiscal transfers or culture of labour mobility to compensate?
There were dissenting voices. Big-name US economists, from the Princeton University liberal Paul Krugman to the Harvard conservative Martin Feldstein, warned that the euro would be an "invitation to disaster" and an "economic liability". An internal EU report later summed up the view of US economists on the euro project as: "It can't happen, it's a bad idea, it won't last."
This isn't a left-wing thing or a right-wing thing. It's a good economics versus bad politics thing.
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Great cartoon Marf. Lovely evening meeting so many PBers again.
Do PBers have v early bedtimes? I got there about a quarter to nine and seem to have missed almost everyone
The word got round taht you were coming.
Posting seven messages on the trot on a Saturday night/Sunday Morning here at 3.45am with no one else about is hardly the sign of a great social life!... I don't think you are in a position to make that comment!
The F1 title decider is today, with Hamilton in the strongest position for the title, but starting second in the race. Will the Red Bulls be able to climb through the field from the back of the grid? Will Rosberg claim victory? Will Button be P45 after the race?
Another meme at variance with the data in today's YOUGOV: "London is anti-Ukip" - in fact Londoners propensity definitely not to vote for UKIP at 56 is bang in line with OA at 55 - only the Scots on 80, and with one UKIP MEP are out of line....
"I wondered how our neutered, bootlicking, pro-government media would manage to turn David Cameron’s devastating personal and political defeat in Rochester into a disaster for Red Ed.
Piles of money, tankers laden with snake-oil, five visits by the Prime Minister himself, even a frantic plea for Guardian readers’ votes, could not save the Tories from what I reckon was the worst defeat in their entire history, losing a seat to a party which really believes in what the Tories pretend to believe in.
Yet you’d think the main event was the sacking of a Labour nobody by another nobody for doing nothing"
The F1 title decider is today, with Hamilton in the strongest position for the title, but starting second in the race. Will the Red Bulls be able to climb through the field from the back of the grid? Will Rosberg claim victory? Will Button be P45 after the race?
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Newly lodged court documents, seen by the Observer, allege that Russian criminal syndicates working with the Kremlin planned to abduct London-based Bill Browder, who is mired in a wrangle with the Putin regime over the controversial death of a whistleblower.
"I wondered how our neutered, bootlicking, pro-government media would manage to turn David Cameron’s devastating personal and political defeat in Rochester into a disaster for Red Ed. ... Yet you’d think the main event was the sacking of a Labour nobody by another nobody for doing nothing"
For a nasty moment there I thought it was you coming out with that rubbish but you added the closing quotation mark and all was revealed: the Machiavellian Master of Malcontent himself: Peter Hitchens.
"I wondered how our neutered, bootlicking, pro-government media would manage to turn David Cameron’s devastating personal and political defeat in Rochester into a disaster for Red Ed.
Piles of money, tankers laden with snake-oil, five visits by the Prime Minister himself, even a frantic plea for Guardian readers’ votes, could not save the Tories from what I reckon was the worst defeat in their entire history, losing a seat to a party which really believes in what the Tories pretend to believe in.
Yet you’d think the main event was the sacking of a Labour nobody by another nobody for doing nothing"
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
A friend once panned me when I suggested that I may bet against England. Hypocrite did exactly that a couple of years later at which point I took great delight in caning him for it.
One of the entertaining things I find about betting on sporting contests is that I can go from supporting one side to the other and back again :-)
I agree it does look odd, but applying the same three base percentages, Baxter comes up with a similar figure of 37 for the LibDems.
An FPTP system with 2.5 parties is very different to one with four or more.
i) The relative gap between the parties nationally is now smaller. In 1979 the Libs with 13% won just 11 seats. That was because the Tories were on 45%, more than 30% ahead of them.
ii) It is possible for a party to win a seat with a low share of the vote. We saw that when the LDs clung on to Eastleigh, won on the lowest (by-election) share of the vote since 1918.
In other words, UKIP will be the saviour of the LibDems (and will also assist in their long-term objective of PR.)
12% would get the LibDems (or any other party) 78 seats if a PR system was in use. It's not, we have FPTP and the LibDems, unlike UKIP or even the Greens, have had many years for their votes to become clustered. So getting 37, 41 or some similar number is quite possible. The joys of FPTP.
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
"The chief executive of the German football league, Christian Seifert, called for a Europe-wide boycott of both World Cups. “As a serious organisation, we no longer feel represented by this Fifa,” he said."
Is this the beginning of the end for FIFA - all it would take is for other top European Football Associations to follow Germany's lead for Sepp Blatter and his merry bunch to be out on their ears.
Please God make it happen.
Get the Dutch, Italians, Spanish and Italians on board, speak to Latin America about a rival tournament and FIFA are dead. Bring it on!
"I wondered how our neutered, bootlicking, pro-government media would manage to turn David Cameron’s devastating personal and political defeat in Rochester into a disaster for Red Ed.
Piles of money, tankers laden with snake-oil, five visits by the Prime Minister himself, even a frantic plea for Guardian readers’ votes, could not save the Tories from what I reckon was the worst defeat in their entire history, losing a seat to a party which really believes in what the Tories pretend to believe in.
Yet you’d think the main event was the sacking of a Labour nobody by another nobody for doing nothing"
Also, from the same article in reference to Alan Turing's treatment
My Dad works in an East London school where he said the queue for Ritalin goes round the corridor... I agree that drugging "badly behaved" children will be something that we will look back on in horror
"We can all shudder at this stupid and wrong treatment. But it is easy to condemn the follies of the past. At the time, fashionable opinion believed Turing’s ‘chemical castration’ was a humane alternative to prison.
What similarly stupid things do we believe today? How about this? Despite growing medical doubts (a report this week said it had more to do with drug marketing than medicine), we dope huge numbers of children with pills very similar to illegal amphetamines.
This mass-doping is justified by the suspect ‘diagnosis’ of an alleged complaint called ‘ADHD’. If Alan Turing were a child now, I think it pretty likely that his ‘odd’ behaviour would lead him to be drugged in this way, killing his special talents.
It seems to me very probable that, as you read this, some potential genius is having his life blighted, forced by smiling adults to swallow pills to make him ‘normal. We can see this was wrong in 1953. Why can’t we see it is wrong now?"
If you tell me the time stamp, I'll have a look. I was more talking about when he said that non-Muslims "live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire".
It was outright bigotry. If any prominent non-Muslim writer had said that Muslims were like animals, there would have been a national outcry, and they would probably have been dropped from every major newspaper and any appearances on the BBC. But, once again, there's a complete double standard where Muslims are allowed to get away with stuff that non-Muslims would be hounded for.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
"Anup Pankhania had to cut the offer price for apartments he’s developing in London’s Bloomsbury district by as much as 500,000 pounds ($805,000) because of a luxury-home tax that doesn’t exist yet."
"A mansion tax “threatens to douse the growth at the top tiers of the market,” Marsh & Parsons Chief Executive Officer Peter Rollings said in an Oct. 23 statement. “In London especially, thousands of ordinary families would get swept up in its wake.”
"“We’ve put barriers in place to stop investors. We have taxes that change to stop investors,” Candy said at the conference. “We wouldn’t want to look back here in five years time and think ‘everyone’s gone to Dubai or Beijing or New York’.”"
The SNP held a rally in Glasgow's Hydro arena this afternoon which was packed out and apparently lasted for hours judging by journalist Tom Gordon's tweets all afternoon.
@mrobertson_1: People saying they've never seen anything like the #SNPtour today at the Hydro. I have. Neil Kinnock. Sheffield. Rally. Hubris. Defeat...
yes they really looked as if they were defeated, 70,000 new members and still joining in droves, on the ball as ever Scott. 12000 packed out with waiting list for tickets , RI got over 3000 and the Lib Dems managed about 100. Defeated right enough.
Mr. Bob, one of many things I like about F1 is the lack of pervasive tribal support, whether for teams or nations.
Besides, if I had 24/1 or 16/1 for Hamilton to get the title I'd want him to win [I did hedge, so I'm green either way, but I hope Rosberg wins, as I'd make a little more].
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
Also, from the same article in reference to Alan Turing's treatment
My Dad works in an East London school where he said the queue for Ritalin goes round the corridor... I agree that drugging "badly behaved" children will be something that we will look back on in horror
"We can all shudder at this stupid and wrong treatment. But it is easy to condemn the follies of the past. At the time, fashionable opinion believed Turing’s ‘chemical castration’ was a humane alternative to prison.
What similarly stupid things do we believe today? How about this? Despite growing medical doubts (a report this week said it had more to do with drug marketing than medicine), we dope huge numbers of children with pills very similar to illegal amphetamines.
This mass-doping is justified by the suspect ‘diagnosis’ of an alleged complaint called ‘ADHD’. If Alan Turing were a child now, I think it pretty likely that his ‘odd’ behaviour would lead him to be drugged in this way, killing his special talents.
It seems to me very probable that, as you read this, some potential genius is having his life blighted, forced by smiling adults to swallow pills to make him ‘normal. We can see this was wrong in 1953. Why can’t we see it is wrong now?"
You realise that ritalin allows kids to concentrate better, right? It makes kids more productive, not less. I agree there is widespread over diagnosis of ADHD, and also over prescription of ritalin in some places. But there is a role for it with some kids. Good parenting from birth should prevent most cases of ADHD by not providing too much distraction and overstimulation, but once a kid has got to nine or ten, and they're manic, you sometimes need pharmaceutical help. It allows their overstimulated brains to avoid distractions, knuckle down and do some work. Once they have formed those habits, you can then wean them off it. I've seen some of these students turn from tear-aways who would likely have ended up on the dole to be productive high-earning professionals. A lot of the people that go on anti-ritalin rants are people that have had no experience of it and don't know anybody well who's been involved with it.
A lot of your points are very fair, but there's another side to it and a black and white view of the whole issue is very mistaken. It all depends on the kid in question.
So Labour's proposed mansion tax is already adversely affecting high end estate agents and Bloomsbury property developers - and that spells electoral disaster for Labour?
As does, presumably, the proposal for taxing bankers' bonuses?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
The ‘flag sneer’ row looks set to be dragged into a second week as Labour faced the prospect of a class war within its own ranks.
David Lammy, London mayoral hopeful and former universities minister, said politicians from “liberal, professional backgrounds” found it hard to identify with ordinary working people.
Writing in the Mail on Sunday he argued: “The Labour Party feels culturally adrift, not just from large parts of Britain, but from its own traditional working class base.
“Large parts of the country feel that Labour not only disagrees with them, they think we disapprove of them too.
"I wondered how our neutered, bootlicking, pro-government media would manage to turn David Cameron’s devastating personal and political defeat in Rochester into a disaster for Red Ed.
Piles of money, tankers laden with snake-oil, five visits by the Prime Minister himself, even a frantic plea for Guardian readers’ votes, could not save the Tories from what I reckon was the worst defeat in their entire history, losing a seat to a party which really believes in what the Tories pretend to believe in.
Yet you’d think the main event was the sacking of a Labour nobody by another nobody for doing nothing"
Also, from the same article in reference to Alan Turing's treatment
My Dad works in an East London school where he said the queue for Ritalin goes round the corridor... I agree that drugging "badly behaved" children will be something that we will look back on in horror
"We can all shudder at this stupid and wrong treatment. But it is easy to condemn the follies of the past. At the time, fashionable opinion believed Turing’s ‘chemical castration’ was a humane alternative to prison.
What similarly stupid things do we believe today? How about this? Despite growing medical doubts (a report this week said it had more to do with drug marketing than medicine), we dope huge numbers of children with pills very similar to illegal amphetamines.
This mass-doping is justified by the suspect ‘diagnosis’ of an alleged complaint called ‘ADHD’. If Alan Turing were a child now, I think it pretty likely that his ‘odd’ behaviour would lead him to be drugged in this way, killing his special talents.
It seems to me very probable that, as you read this, some potential genius is having his life blighted, forced by smiling adults to swallow pills to make him ‘normal. We can see this was wrong in 1953. Why can’t we see it is wrong now?"
Tories seem in a hurry to hand another 10-15 seats to UKIP by kicking out the members that they feel are "flirting" with defection. That will be good, then when they fall short at the election they can come back to those same MPs cap in hand and ask for a coalition. Sometimes you couldn't make it up, both parties leaders in a race for the dunce cap.
p.s. Anyone who genuinely wants to understand the differential electoral dynamic in London should take into account the 'Generation Rent' factor. People who are currently finding that virtually all their disposable income is going on paying the rent are not likely to be put off voting Labour by the proposal for a mansion tax.
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
p.s. Anyone who genuinely wants to understand the differential electoral dynamic in London should take into account the 'Generation Rent' factor. People who are currently finding that virtually all their disposable income is going on paying the rent are not likely to be put off voting Labour by the proposal for a mansion tax.
Well not until their landlords pass on their extra costs as rent rises anyway.
For the Tories to gain a majority the party needs to be 6 points ahead of Labour in the polls.I'm beginning to thinkn that this will never happen because despite the monstering of Ed Miliband recently there is no boost for the Tories. Furthermore anyone who thinks that WWC are best represented by van, man and flag don't know much about the proud traditions of the working class, try Tolpuddle or Durham.
The Tories were more than 7% ahead of Labour in 2010 and still did not get a majority. The demographics have gone further against them since then. London and the other metropolitan towns and cities are gradually becoming Tory free zones.
This is simplistic on the poll to votes, and erroneous on metropolitans.
Labour on 30% does not necessarily produce the same net effect when they are performing less well relatively in Scotland. We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas.
Anyway, I expect the Conservatives to pull away next year and now think a 10% lead is the greater than 50/50.
"We also need to gauge the scene in London where the Mansion Tax appears to going down like a lead balloon in former New Labour areas."
Ah ! So Labour won't win Richmond after all !
The average house price in London is just over £500,000 !!!!!!
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Drinks all round when Bottler Owls gets clobbered by the Wealth Tax. As is only fair.
Tories seem in a hurry to hand another 10-15 seats to UKIP by kicking out the members that they feel are "flirting" with defection. That will be good, then when they fall short at the election they can come back to those same MPs cap in hand and ask for a coalition. Sometimes you couldn't make it up, both parties leaders in a race for the dunce cap.
Tone of the meeting, and especially of Cameron's advisers pretty much confirms his pro-EU credentials if anyone didn't have any doubt.
Jo Johnson argued that most of the country wasn't concreted over yet, so we can take a lot more immigrants? How out of touch are these people? Sounds like he's been led astray by his Guardianista wife...
Short term meaning "three years". That's plenty of time to work with a child to form habits and get them back on the right track.
No, Ritalin is a stimulant and increases neurotransmission, which improves concentration levels. Children with ADHD have differences in brain chemistry to normal kids, and it brings them back into line.
Short term meaning "three years". That's plenty of time to work with a child to form habits and get them back on the right track.
No, Ritalin is a stimulant and increases neurotransmission, which improves concentration levels. Children with ADHD have differences in brain chemistry to normal kids, and it brings them back into line.
Short term meaning "three years". That's plenty of time to work with a child to form habits and get them back on the right track.
Its a dopamin reuptake inhibitor, so a stimulant, its supposed to increase alertness and concentration. Not a big fan of putting kids on long term medication personally.
With no Leadership contest to fight, Sturgeon has been on a wee whistle stop tour of Scotland to speak in front of the SNP party faithful instead. Again like Gordon Brown and the Labour party in 2007, Sturgeon and the SNP might all have benefited more from a proper debate via a hard fought Leadership contest to make them more election ready. Especially if the only thing binding some parts of the SNP membership base right now is an actual desire to continue to fight for Independence, its time to remember that the SNP are supposed to be running Scotland right now. Not that you would realise that was their current full time paying gig over the last few weeks.
The SNP held a rally in Glasgow's Hydro arena this afternoon which was packed out and apparently lasted for hours judging by journalist Tom Gordon's tweets all afternoon.
@mrobertson_1: People saying they've never seen anything like the #SNPtour today at the Hydro. I have. Neil Kinnock. Sheffield. Rally. Hubris. Defeat...
Is she the new Queen of Scots visiting with her people?
I haven't really followed it but what is the purpose of the tour? No election, referendum's over, sounds ghastly.
On the contrary: I'd say the tour - just a few lectures, basically - is intended to make clear how Ms S and her colleagues propose to do exactly that, i.e. run Scotland. And it is doing that, despite the deflection and whining of SLAB whose policies have been variously trashed or stolen as appropriate (when they weren't already SNP policies). The SLAB election candidates seem to be adopting either SNP or Tory policies!
Which brings us to another point. I find it interesting that you (for instance: this is not intended as a personal point) should support a Labour MP so strongly for SLAB head when (a) he has a difficult transition to make electorally to become a MSP (but not impossible), and (b) you are a Tory anyway and the last thing the Tories need is Labour success in Scotland to give Mr Miliband the MPs he needs.
One might well wonder if you and others of your thinking are essentially refighting indyref rather than running Scotland - rather ironic when the chorus from the No coalition has been for the SNP to do the complete reverse.
Short term meaning "three years". That's plenty of time to work with a child to form habits and get them back on the right track.
I agree, in carefully selected cases and supported by other interventions, Ritalin can be of benefit.
But all too often the pill is used in place of other interventions. Look at the scale of the use of these drugs in the USA, and the increased diagnosis of psychoses:
Mr. Bob, one of many things I like about F1 is the lack of pervasive tribal support, whether for teams or nations.
Besides, if I had 24/1 or 16/1 for Hamilton to get the title I'd want him to win [I did hedge, so I'm green either way, but I hope Rosberg wins, as I'd make a little more].
Tell me about it. I'm a closet Alonso fan , next to Hamilton the best driver on the grid, in my opinion.
With no Leadership contest to fight, Sturgeon has been on a wee whistle stop tour of Scotland to speak in front of the SNP party faithful instead. Again like Gordon Brown and the Labour party in 2007, Sturgeon and the SNP might all have benefited more from a proper debate via a hard fought Leadership contest to make them more election ready. Especially if the only thing binding some parts of the SNP membership base right now is an actual desire to continue to fight for Independence, its time to remember that the SNP are supposed to be running Scotland right now. Not that you would realise that was their current full time paying gig over the last few weeks.
The SNP held a rally in Glasgow's Hydro arena this afternoon which was packed out and apparently lasted for hours judging by journalist Tom Gordon's tweets all afternoon.
@mrobertson_1: People saying they've never seen anything like the #SNPtour today at the Hydro. I have. Neil Kinnock. Sheffield. Rally. Hubris. Defeat...
Is she the new Queen of Scots visiting with her people?
I haven't really followed it but what is the purpose of the tour? No election, referendum's over, sounds ghastly.
On the contrary: I'd say the tour - just a few lectures, basically - is intended to make clear how Ms S and her colleagues propose to do exactly that, i.e. run Scotland. And it is doing that, despite the deflection and whining of SLAB whose policies have been variously trashed or stolen as appropriate (when they weren't already SNP policies). The SLAB election candidates seem to be adopting either SNP or Tory policies!
Which brings us to another point. I find it interesting that you (for instance: this is not intended as a personal point) should support a Labour MP so strongly for SLAB head when (a) he has a difficult transition to make electorally to become a MSP (but not impossible), and (b) you are a Tory anyway and the last thing the Tories need is Labour success in Scotland to give Mr Miliband the MPs he needs.
One might well wonder if you and others of your thinking are essentially refighting indyref rather than running Scotland - rather ironic when the chorus from the No coalition has been for the SNP to do the complete reverse.
Do they not have those new fangled telephonoscopes north of the border?
last time around (2010) I found a lot of the betting value to be gained was in individual constituencies - some of which with the LD strength at the time had the potential for some brilliant dutches if you just concentrated on the '2 most likely' parties in each constituency . Doesn't seem to be quite quite so clear cut yet with 6 months to go . hopefully constituency odds will begin to diverge the nearer we get to polling day and the more uncertain things appear and the more bookies try to gain a competitve advantage
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Drinks all round when Bottler Owls gets clobbered by the Wealth Tax. As is only fair.
I escape on the income and asset tests i am afraid.
With no Leadership contest to fight, Sturgeon has been on a wee whistle stop tour of Scotland to speak in front of the SNP party faithful instead. Again like Gordon Brown and the Labour party in 2007, Sturgeon and the SNP might all have benefited more from a proper debate via a hard fought Leadership contest to make them more election ready. Especially if the only thing binding some parts of the SNP membership base right now is an actual desire to continue to fight for Independence, its time to remember that the SNP are supposed to be running Scotland right now. Not that you would realise that was their current full time paying gig over the last few weeks.
The SNP held a rally in Glasgow's Hydro arena this afternoon which was packed out and apparently lasted for hours judging by journalist Tom Gordon's tweets all afternoon.
@mrobertson_1: People saying they've never seen anything like the #SNPtour today at the Hydro. I have. Neil Kinnock. Sheffield. Rally. Hubris. Defeat...
Is she the new Queen of Scots visiting with her people?
I haven't really followed it but what is the purpose of the tour? No election, referendum's over, sounds ghastly.
One might well wonder if you and others of your thinking are essentially refighting indyref rather than running Scotland - rather ironic when the chorus from the No coalition has been for the SNP to do the complete reverse.
You can feel the envy and vitriol dripping through Fitalaffs nasty post. raging that the Tories would not fill a phone box with their London operated sock puppets she rails and wails at 12,000 packing out halls to hear the SNP message. Nasty Nasty Tory and they wonder why people hate them.
Short term meaning "three years". That's plenty of time to work with a child to form habits and get them back on the right track.
Its a dopamin reuptake inhibitor, so a stimulant, its supposed to increase alertness and concentration. Not a big fan of putting kids on long term medication personally.
Improves the activity of the cerebral cortex (the cognitive function of the brain) which then serves to dampen down the limbic system (the part dealing in responses to stimuli) - meaning that the person can think before they react.
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Drinks all round when Bottler Owls gets clobbered by the Wealth Tax. As is only fair.
I escape on the income and asset tests i am afraid.
This must be the most boring thread seen in a long time. Drugs for kiddies, mansion tax, phewy! We are all marking time this Sunday waiting for the big news to break. What will it be? Who knows, but we await it nevertheless.
This must be the most boring thread seen in a long time. Drugs for kiddies, mansion tax, phewy! We are all marking time this Sunday waiting for the big news to break. What will it be? Who knows, but we await it nevertheless.
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Comments
And, second, it hits a lot of people with influence. And a lot of those were soft left-leaning New Labourites.
If you think this just affects Richmond, think again. Apparently Glenda's H&H seat could be in serious trouble. And that's a well-known celeb. Think of the other north, west and south-west London seats.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845737/The-Thornberry-Set-million-pound-homes-Ed-s-elite-live-cheek-jowl-leafy-north-London.html
Will definitely vote for this party (10 on 0-10 scale):
Lab: 57
UKIP: 47
Con: 40
Lib Dem: 26
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/6au4g3f66s/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-211114.pdf
Labour (Emily Thornberry) 18,407 42.3% +2.4
Liberal Democrat (Bridget Fox) 14,838 34.1% -4.2
Conservative (Antonia Cox) 8,449 19.4% +4.6
Hampstead and Kilburn looks very dicey.
I still maintain the speech was just an additional nail in the coffin much like Ed has been doing recently. What I feel did for him and Labour was the threat to recall the Polaris fleet and unilaterally disarm at a time Russia was again a threat. No one likes having nuclear weapons but they like not having them when others do even more.
The mansion tax situation amongst others could play the same way as quite simply the "mansions" are just not mansions in most cases but family homes owned by asset rich , cash low voters. ( or Grannies of course?)
"Vote Labour in and get yourself out" ....... Great election slogan really
( for anyone but Labour that is)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845668/SAS-quad-bike-squads-kill-8-jihadis-day-allies-prepare-wipe-map-Daring-raids-UK-Special-Forces-leave-200-enemy-dead-just-four-weeks.html
I'm guessing there won't be any video ref Marine A.
YouGov asked in October whether it was - net -(London)
A good idea in principle: +41 (+21)
Would work in practice: +8 (+6)
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/8xpy43vlqr/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-031014.pdf
Sun Politics@Sun_Politics·31 mins31 minutes ago
EXCL: Ukip score a hat-trick with Tory John Baron set to defect: http://bit.ly/1y3dbBq
Least surprising poll of the day
Sun Politics@Sun_Politics·27 mins27 minutes ago
EXCL: FlattenED: Sun readers’ poll steamrolls Labour leader’s hopes: http://bit.ly/1xl1thN
And with that, away, the rough and water calls - fore!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/22/uk-mercenaries-fighting-islamic-state-terrorist-syria
Comments are interesting.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11248239/Ed-Milibands-snob-row-troubles-grow-after-Thornberry-tweet.html
"Labour leader told he is presiding over a laughing stock over his response to Emily Thornberry's tweet as senior party figures warn Mr Miliband is one of Westminster's growing number of out-of-touch MPs"
So in the absence of other data, this suggests that current Labour voters are more likely to stick with their party than other partys' voters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/eu-referendum-democracy_b_6190712.html
"Did May's European Parliament election results - described as a political "earthquake" by the French prime minister, Manuel Valls - convince the continent's leaders, both elected and unelected, to take a step back and try to tackle the EU's "democratic deficit"? If only. Despite turnout declining in every single set of European parliamentary elections since they were first introduced in 1979 - and despite the European Commission's polling suggesting that trust in EU institutions, at 31%, is at an all-time low - members of the EU elite march on towards "ever closer union", incompetently, indifferently, in denial."
"The Left across Europe has been seduced by the EU’s promise of workers’ rights – forgetting that you can’t enjoy those rights if you don’t have a job to begin with."
London really matters to Labour: there are currently 44 London Labour MPs, 3 more than they have in Scotland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Labour_Party_Members_of_Parliament_in_London
I'm not a fan of Mehdi Hassan, but he's on the money here:
Let's start with the euro. What on earth were we thinking? How could anyone with the faintest grasp of economics have believed it was anything other than sheer insanity to yoke together diverse national economies such as Greece, Ireland, Germany and Finland under a single exchange rate and a single interest rate? And, lest we forget, without a US-style system of fiscal transfers or culture of labour mobility to compensate?
There were dissenting voices. Big-name US economists, from the Princeton University liberal Paul Krugman to the Harvard conservative Martin Feldstein, warned that the euro would be an "invitation to disaster" and an "economic liability". An internal EU report later summed up the view of US economists on the euro project as: "It can't happen, it's a bad idea, it won't last."
This isn't a left-wing thing or a right-wing thing. It's a good economics versus bad politics thing.
The F1 title decider is today, with Hamilton in the strongest position for the title, but starting second in the race. Will the Red Bulls be able to climb through the field from the back of the grid? Will Rosberg claim victory? Will Button be P45 after the race?
My pre-race piece is up here: http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/abu-dhabi-pre-race.html
He has a very sharp mind.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/frances-ex-president-sarkozy-loses-support-party-race-132758716--business.html#khJy5xJ
Piles of money, tankers laden with snake-oil, five visits by the Prime Minister himself, even a frantic plea for Guardian readers’ votes, could not save the Tories from what I reckon was the worst defeat in their entire history, losing a seat to a party which really believes in what the Tories pretend to believe in.
Yet you’d think the main event was the sacking of a Labour nobody by another nobody for doing nothing"
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
On the bright side milk reverses the ageing process and everybody lives to 105
and the Mansion tax is popular with newspaper editors!!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/22/anti-putin-campaigner-browder-magnitsky-documents
My wallet would prefer a Rosberg victory.
Semi-skimmed organic, lovely stuff unlike most of the undrinkable crap sold that's only good for tea and coffee.
A friend once panned me when I suggested that I may bet against England. Hypocrite did exactly that a couple of years later at which point I took great delight in caning him for it.
One of the entertaining things I find about betting on sporting contests is that I can go from supporting one side to the other and back again :-)
So getting 37, 41 or some similar number is quite possible. The joys of FPTP.
Is it the case that the Mansion tax costs will be covered for MPs by the expenses system meaning that effectively they will not be paying it?
Yes http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/527728/mansion-tax-MPs-expenses-Labour
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
My Dad works in an East London school where he said the queue for Ritalin goes round the corridor... I agree that drugging "badly behaved" children will be something that we will look back on in horror
"We can all shudder at this stupid and wrong treatment. But it is easy to condemn the follies of the past. At the time, fashionable opinion believed Turing’s ‘chemical castration’ was a humane alternative to prison.
What similarly stupid things do we believe today? How about this? Despite growing medical doubts (a report this week said it had more to do with drug marketing than medicine), we dope huge numbers of children with pills very similar to illegal amphetamines.
This mass-doping is justified by the suspect ‘diagnosis’ of an alleged complaint called ‘ADHD’. If Alan Turing were a child now, I think it pretty likely that his ‘odd’ behaviour would lead him to be drugged in this way, killing his special talents.
It seems to me very probable that, as you read this, some potential genius is having his life blighted, forced by smiling adults to swallow pills to make him ‘normal. We can see this was wrong in 1953. Why can’t we see it is wrong now?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4hpfqFt-0Q
It was outright bigotry. If any prominent non-Muslim writer had said that Muslims were like animals, there would have been a national outcry, and they would probably have been dropped from every major newspaper and any appearances on the BBC. But, once again, there's a complete double standard where Muslims are allowed to get away with stuff that non-Muslims would be hounded for.
"Anup Pankhania had to cut the offer price for apartments he’s developing in London’s Bloomsbury district by as much as 500,000 pounds ($805,000) because of a luxury-home tax that doesn’t exist yet."
"A mansion tax “threatens to douse the growth at the top tiers of the market,” Marsh & Parsons Chief Executive Officer Peter Rollings said in an Oct. 23 statement. “In London especially, thousands of ordinary families would get swept up in its wake.”
"“We’ve put barriers in place to stop investors. We have taxes that change to stop investors,” Candy said at the conference. “We wouldn’t want to look back here in five years time and think ‘everyone’s gone to Dubai or Beijing or New York’.”"
Labour never did understand globalisation
12000 packed out with waiting list for tickets , RI got over 3000 and the Lib Dems managed about 100. Defeated right enough.
Besides, if I had 24/1 or 16/1 for Hamilton to get the title I'd want him to win [I did hedge, so I'm green either way, but I hope Rosberg wins, as I'd make a little more].
Yes http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/527728/mansion-tax-MPs-expenses-Labour
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
If you're genuinely interested in exploring the issue of ADHD medication with an open mind, there's a very good discussion here:
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/threads/hyperactive-prescribing/
A lot of your points are very fair, but there's another side to it and a black and white view of the whole issue is very mistaken. It all depends on the kid in question.
As does, presumably, the proposal for taxing bankers' bonuses?
Wow - the usual Labour hypocrisy then. So Emily's 3m mansion gets off Scot free!
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845634/Web-firms-forced-reveal-terror-suspects-computer-trails.html
Since what she is proposing is easily sidestepped by using a VPN, what is she really trying to achieve ?
I really do rather like him. He isn't scared of being a straight shooter. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4275747.ece
Ritalin has only short term benefits.
While a walk in the park has similar benefits and no sideffects:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/a-dose-of-nature-for-attention-problems/?_r=0
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845754/Britain-Shut-door-Meltdown-No10-summit-Tory-slapped-declaring-no-immigrants.html
Tone of the meeting, and especially of Cameron's advisers pretty much confirms his pro-EU credentials if anyone didn't have any doubt.
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
None. Zero. fook all £2m garages then.
The flip side of that argument is that anyone with a home valued at not much above £2m will soon see it's value decrease, that may also sharpen the pencil of a few more champagne Socialists.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Drinks all round when Bottler Owls gets clobbered by the Wealth Tax. As is only fair.
Which brings us to another point. I find it interesting that you (for instance: this is not intended as a personal point) should support a Labour MP so strongly for SLAB head when (a) he has a difficult transition to make electorally to become a MSP (but not impossible), and (b) you are a Tory anyway and the last thing the Tories need is Labour success in Scotland to give Mr Miliband the MPs he needs.
One might well wonder if you and others of your thinking are essentially refighting indyref rather than running Scotland - rather ironic when the chorus from the No coalition has been for the SNP to do the complete reverse.
But all too often the pill is used in place of other interventions. Look at the scale of the use of these drugs in the USA, and the increased diagnosis of psychoses:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/medicating/drugs/stats.html
These kids are not on it short term.
Indeed. It will cause havoc at that end of the market. It's staggering stupidity.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Drinks all round when Bottler Owls gets clobbered by the Wealth Tax. As is only fair.
I escape on the income and asset tests i am afraid.
Are you covered by the planned trolling law?
Marr points out she has been holding the graph on net migration upside down!!
Last 12 months...
http://www.mediafire.com/view/8yyma1ni3z34set/YouGov polls 12 months to 23 November 2014.jpg#
Since the 2010 General election...
http://www.mediafire.com/view/3iq1l4i0nc6qodh/YouGov Polls since 2010 GE as of 23 November 2014.jpg#
Alcohol (a depressant) does the opposite.
It is already causing problems in selling houses above 1.5 million, I'm told. Which is a hell of a lot more voters than are in 2m houses....
Interesting. As you say, and if it's touching the 1.5m houses won't those on 1m be anxious? The answer's yes given the way house prices have historically risen.
Milliband's Labour have abandoned the platform which got Blair elected, and they have now peed off proud British working class too: it's quite an achievement.
My son in law works for a high end estate agent and you are spot on.
How many £2m garages has he sold?
Should EdM ever turn his attention to your multi-million pound NHS bureaucrat's pension, the smug smile will rapidly disappear from your gloating face.
Drinks all round when Bottler Owls gets clobbered by the Wealth Tax. As is only fair.
I escape on the income and asset tests i am afraid.
Are you covered by the planned trolling law?
There's a lovely taxable 'pension pot'.
It's only fair.
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/university-lecturers-plan-marking-strike-over-pension-changes-that-could-cost-thousands-9821689.html
People earning £70,000 a year complaining about funding their own pensions and expecting white-van-man to pay for it with taxes.
It's all part of the same narrative of Labour as the party of public sector privilege that UKIP are aiming to tap into, and will.