Comparison with the first ever ELBOW back on 17th August:
Lab -2.7% Con -1.8% UKIP +3.0% LD -1.4%
Lab lead -0.9% (ie. was 3.0%, now 2.1%)
Take-home:
* Whither Crossover? * Cons take a significant hit, their lowest ELBOW since 19th October * Lab hardly shift at all * UKIP take around half of the Con decrease to stop their three-week decline * LDs recover slightly from their worst-ever ELBOW last week
I wonder if the 1980-2000 period will be remembered as being the peak of a liberal society. Illiberal attitudes and governance are making a serious comeback.
Perhaps, perhaps not.
On an individual level, it's surely easier to be "different" from "normal" today that it was in the 80s or 90s. And with things like the internet and its associated services, it's also easier to lead an atomised lifestyle separate from wider society today than it was then.
I do agree that it would be preferable for governments to more formally get the hell out of people's private lives, but the degree to which anything they mandate centrally can actually change our lives is diminishing compared to past decades.
I would suggest that this increased personal freedom is a function of globalisation - we can access services and industries worldwide instead of being limited by what our national government mandates or provides, with any blocks they put in place being fairly easily bypassed - and one of the key benefits it brings.
If they do this, depending on the exact site, they really should consider widening the A41 to 3 lanes. Or lay a separate new road coming off the J9 M40 roundabout to divert Bicester Village traffic away from the A41 & Bicester (town). It's already challenging enough to get in and out of Bicester at peak times of day and on weekends. I have no objections to the extra homes themselves - it's actually quite a good location for them in many respects - but the road layout will need serious thought.
To @Tykejohnno questioning whether this could affect it's returning a Tory MP, it's one of their safest seats, with an absolute majority last time round. I doubt it matters. BTW, you mention Tony Baldry; he's retiring, Victoria Prentis is the Tory candidate IIRC.
Depending on the exact site, it might have implications for the constituency just south of Bicester (OxWAb) which has been a much tighter contest historically.
I wonder if 13 thousand new homes and thousands of more people coming to a area near you will affect tory mp Tony baldry vote ?
Increase his majority by 13,000 ?
What,the next GE in 6 months.
Well I assume those houses aren't going to be built in 6 months, LOL.
You got it ;-) proberly going to be a lot of angry people in Bicester with these plans and with a GE not to far away ;-)
I don't get what the big deal is though, given how quick the population is rising we're going to need a hell of a lot more homes than that!!
Well I don't but if you live in a nice friendly town (never been to Bicester myself ;-) ) with great countryside surrounds and you suddenly choosen to become a city,alot of things would frighten you.
Yeah, I agree you'd be a bit miffed if you are a resident, but it's for the greater good (heh). Still, it'd be a long way from being a city.
I wonder if 13 thousand new homes and thousands of more people coming to a area near you will affect tory mp Tony baldry vote ?
Increase his majority by 13,000 ?
What,the next GE in 6 months.
Well I assume those houses aren't going to be built in 6 months, LOL.
You got it ;-) proberly going to be a lot of angry people in Bicester with these plans and with a GE not to far away ;-)
I don't get what the big deal is though, given how quick the population is rising we're going to need a hell of a lot more homes than that!!
Well I don't but if you live in a nice friendly town (never been to Bicester myself ;-) ) with great countryside surrounds and you suddenly choosen to become a city,alot of things would frighten you.
Yeah, I agree you'd be a bit miffed if you are a resident, but it's for the greater good (heh). Still, it'd be a long way from being a city.
I wonder if 13 thousand new homes and thousands of more people coming to a area near you will affect tory mp Tony baldry vote ?
Increase his majority by 13,000 ?
What,the next GE in 6 months.
Well I assume those houses aren't going to be built in 6 months, LOL.
You got it ;-) proberly going to be a lot of angry people in Bicester with these plans and with a GE not to far away ;-)
I don't get what the big deal is though, given how quick the population is rising we're going to need a hell of a lot more homes than that!!
Well I don't but if you live in a nice friendly town (never been to Bicester myself ;-) ) with great countryside surrounds and you suddenly choosen to become a city,alot of things would frighten you.
Yeah, I agree you'd be a bit miffed if you are a resident, but it's for the greater good (heh). Still, it'd be a long way from being a city.
13 thousand just the start ?
Well, yeah. Unless they are going to build 13,000 a year, it's a long way off!
I wonder if 13 thousand new homes and thousands of more people coming to a area near you will affect tory mp Tony baldry vote ?
Increase his majority by 13,000 ?
What,the next GE in 6 months.
Well I assume those houses aren't going to be built in 6 months, LOL.
You got it ;-) proberly going to be a lot of angry people in Bicester with these plans and with a GE not to far away ;-)
Bicester has been a designated growth point for decades. Have you seen all the new housing developments around Bicester? This garden city sounds better than that stuff. What else to do with the surplus MoD land? Motorway access. New railway station. New rail line, quicker access to London and elswhere. Good place to live good for house prices.
More than a dozen activists previously loyal to the Eurosceptic party have resigned over perceived efforts by Mr Farage and his allies to remove long-serving Ukip members from standing as MPs and MEPs in winnable seats.
I shall definitely buy a copy tmrw, I wonder who is being shunted out? All the winnable seats seem to have big name (relative to UKIP) already in, and those that are vacant obviously aren't relevant as there is no disgruntled incumbent
The article names Kip Waistell (South Hereford) and Douglas Denny (Portsmouth)
Ah.... I fancied Hereford & S Herefordshire at a nice price, 33/1 I believe
More than a dozen activists previously loyal to the Eurosceptic party have resigned over perceived efforts by Mr Farage and his allies to remove long-serving Ukip members from standing as MPs and MEPs in winnable seats.
I shall definitely buy a copy tmrw, I wonder who is being shunted out? All the winnable seats seem to have big name (relative to UKIP) already in, and those that are vacant obviously aren't relevant as there is no disgruntled incumbent
The article names Kip Waistell (South Hereford) and Douglas Denny (Portsmouth)
Ah.... I fancied Hereford & S Herefordshire at a nice price, 33/1 I believe
As for deficit reduction The govt has done well in cutting its spending and has been beating its spending targets year after year. Thats one reason why it can spend more on NHS. The International Monetary Fund say the cyclically-adjusted deficit has come down from 10.3% of gross domestic product in 2009 to 4.1% this year. The govt have extended its reduction plan because of the Euro crisis. Was that wrong? For those who complain about the deficit then they must say what bthey would do. I suppose we could all clamour to have tax thresholds raised and petrol tax put up. Come on - hands up.
Tomorrow is now Wednesday but anyway...
A structural deficit of 4.1% of GDP is not good. In fact it is terrible. Much, much better than this government inherited but still terrible.
Osborne has had a tricky hand and played it well but the deck is just not in his favour. Real incomes have fallen over the Parliament. This is not Osborne's fault or necessarily a bad thing, in fact an argument can be made that the astonishing growth in employment would not have occurred without it, but it has devastated tax revenues.
What is truly worrying, and demonstrates the complete economic incompetence of Labour, is that this reduction in real earnings has not had much effect on the trade deficit. In recent times this is probably because our economy is growing faster than most of our trading partners but the fact remains we are spending way too much on even our current incomes. The fact our trade deficit has not improved despite the reduction in the fiscal deficit and reductions in real earnings indicates how far from recovered we really are.
I really do hope they do look at the road infrastructure carefully though. The A41 is terrible on peak shopping days. I actively avoid the whole Bicester area on weekends. I didn't have to go there myself last Friday, but I understand from friends of friends that the traffic into Bicester Village was appalling due to Black Friday bargain hunters. It was genuinely gridlocked i.e. literally stationary traffic for hours all down the A41 due to all the out-of-towners after their designer Christmas presents.
The sales discounts weren't even that great IMO (not compared the great firesales of 2008 when they flogged off their excess merchandise from their London stores at crazy prices. I remember getting Purple Label suits from Ralph Lauren for about £100 quid each at the time (full retail price, several thousand plus).
I wonder if 13 thousand new homes and thousands of more people coming to a area near you will affect tory mp Tony baldry vote ?
Increase his majority by 13,000 ?
What,the next GE in 6 months.
Well I assume those houses aren't going to be built in 6 months, LOL.
You got it ;-) proberly going to be a lot of angry people in Bicester with these plans and with a GE not to far away ;-)
I don't get what the big deal is though, given how quick the population is rising we're going to need a hell of a lot more homes than that!!
Well I don't but if you live in a nice friendly town (never been to Bicester myself ;-) ) with great countryside surrounds and you suddenly choosen to become a city,alot of things would frighten you.
Yeah, I agree you'd be a bit miffed if you are a resident, but it's for the greater good (heh). Still, it'd be a long way from being a city.
13 thousand just the start ?
Well, yeah. Unless they are going to build 13,000 a year, it's a long way off!
I'm sure they once said the same about Milton Keynes, with a current population of 260,000 and still growing by 2%, i.e. 5,000 per annum.
Has Osborne totally given up on any idea of balancing the books, is it just spin, or has he been told actually the UK is sitting on a massive goldmine and good times are ahead?
I wonder if 13 thousand new homes and thousands of more people coming to a area near you will affect tory mp Tony baldry vote ?
Increase his majority by 13,000 ?
What,the next GE in 6 months.
Well I assume those houses aren't going to be built in 6 months, LOL.
You got it ;-) proberly going to be a lot of angry people in Bicester with these plans and with a GE not to far away ;-)
I don't get what the big deal is though, given how quick the population is rising we're going to need a hell of a lot more homes than that!!
Well I don't but if you live in a nice friendly town (never been to Bicester myself ;-) ) with great countryside surrounds and you suddenly choosen to become a city,alot of things would frighten you.
Yeah, I agree you'd be a bit miffed if you are a resident, but it's for the greater good (heh). Still, it'd be a long way from being a city.
13 thousand just the start ?
Well, yeah. Unless they are going to build 13,000 a year, it's a long way off!
I'm sure they once said the same about Milton Keynes, with a current population of 260,000 and still growing by 2%, i.e. 5,000 per annum.
Same with most new towns I think, Swindon has grown about 20+% in the last 10 years as well. 200,000ish to 260,000ish ( Yes, yes I know about GWR and how it has been around since the 1690's, but still effectively a newtown).
Herman Van Rompuy will be entitled to more than £500,000 for doing nothing at the taxpayer’s expense over the next three years, after finishing his term as president of Europe. After standing down on Monday, the former president of the European Council will be paid £133,723 a year, 55 per cent of his basic salary, until December 2017 - to ease him back into life outside the world of Brussels officialdom.
The Telegraph has established that Mr Van Rompuy will also receive a one off payment of £21,000 and, aged 67, he will be able draw a lifetime EU pension worth £52,000 a year, taking his earnings to £578,000 over the next three years.
The "transitional allowance" does not require Mr Van Rompuy to do any work at all and the cash will be paid under reduced rates of EU "community" tax, which are far lower than taxation in his native country of Belgium.
Has Osborne totally given up on any idea of balancing the books, is it just spin, or has he been told actually the UK is sitting on a massive goldmine and good times are ahead?
Public works projects to suck in immigrant labourdrive down unemployment before the election. Labour chancellors in the 70s would understand.
Clegg has some front trying this line. One of the main reason tax receipts are down is because of the raising of the basic tax threshold, which applies to all earners. I am in two minds about the idea myself, I generally support tax cuts, but I dont like taking people out of paying tax completely, a person that doesn't pay tax has no interest in a government being run economically, personally I would prefer a much long low rate of taxation at the start- rather like the 10% that McBruin scrapped.
So what tax rises is he proposing that will actually raise money then ? Labour's ideas are a joke 50% top rate looks good for the politics of envy but loses money, 5% cut in minister salaries is pocket change, cutting the WFP for top rate tax payers is a rounding error, do the Liberal have something more realistic ?
Has George completely taken leave of his senses ? What the point of footling around with trimming a billion from spending here and taxing an extra billion there, and then putting us on the hook for £30bn of funny money ?
The Chancellor is putting British taxpayers' money behind Juncker's reckless scheme to insure the eurozone against future financial crises. Why won't he allow Parliament to debate this?
He points out that someone has to stand behind Jean-Claude Juncker's new InvestEU, and that a major part of the backing comes from Britain. Supposing that Mr Juncker's fund goes bust, we will be liable for up to total of €38 billion euros (£30.2 billion).
In a scathing article in today's Financial Times, Wolfgang Munchau compares it to "a synthetic collateralised debt obligation – a horridly complicated instrument where the underlying assets were not real. It was an attempt to get from nothing to something."
Has George completely taken leave of his senses ? What the point of footling around with trimming a billion from spending here and taxing an extra billion there, and then putting us on the hook for £30bn of funny money ?
The Chancellor is putting British taxpayers' money behind Juncker's reckless scheme to insure the eurozone against future financial crises. Why won't he allow Parliament to debate this?
He points out that someone has to stand behind Jean-Claude Juncker's new InvestEU, and that a major part of the backing comes from Britain. Supposing that Mr Juncker's fund goes bust, we will be liable for up to total of €38 billion euros (£30.2 billion).
In a scathing article in today's Financial Times, Wolfgang Munchau compares it to "a synthetic collateralised debt obligation – a horridly complicated instrument where the underlying assets were not real. It was an attempt to get from nothing to something."
You seem to think George had senses in the first place.
Comments
Lab 33.5% (+0.1)
Con 31.4% (-1.5)
UKIP 16.1% (+0.7)
LD 7.4% (+0.3)
Lab lead 2.1% (+1.7)
Comparison with the first ever ELBOW back on 17th August:
Lab -2.7%
Con -1.8%
UKIP +3.0%
LD -1.4%
Lab lead -0.9% (ie. was 3.0%, now 2.1%)
Take-home:
* Whither Crossover?
* Cons take a significant hit, their lowest ELBOW since 19th October
* Lab hardly shift at all
* UKIP take around half of the Con decrease to stop their three-week decline
* LDs recover slightly from their worst-ever ELBOW last week
On an individual level, it's surely easier to be "different" from "normal" today that it was in the 80s or 90s. And with things like the internet and its associated services, it's also easier to lead an atomised lifestyle separate from wider society today than it was then.
I do agree that it would be preferable for governments to more formally get the hell out of people's private lives, but the degree to which anything they mandate centrally can actually change our lives is diminishing compared to past decades.
I would suggest that this increased personal freedom is a function of globalisation - we can access services and industries worldwide instead of being limited by what our national government mandates or provides, with any blocks they put in place being fairly easily bypassed - and one of the key benefits it brings. If they do this, depending on the exact site, they really should consider widening the A41 to 3 lanes. Or lay a separate new road coming off the J9 M40 roundabout to divert Bicester Village traffic away from the A41 & Bicester (town). It's already challenging enough to get in and out of Bicester at peak times of day and on weekends. I have no objections to the extra homes themselves - it's actually quite a good location for them in many respects - but the road layout will need serious thought.
To @Tykejohnno questioning whether this could affect it's returning a Tory MP, it's one of their safest seats, with an absolute majority last time round. I doubt it matters. BTW, you mention Tony Baldry; he's retiring, Victoria Prentis is the Tory candidate IIRC.
Depending on the exact site, it might have implications for the constituency just south of Bicester (OxWAb) which has been a much tighter contest historically.
This garden city sounds better than that stuff. What else to do with the surplus MoD land?
Motorway access. New railway station. New rail line, quicker access to London and elswhere. Good place to live good for house prices.
Ah.... I fancied Hereford & S Herefordshire at a nice price, 33/1 I believe
Yes 33/1 w Lads
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/hereford-and-south-herefordshire/winning-party
Worth a bet esp if they are taking it seriously
A structural deficit of 4.1% of GDP is not good. In fact it is terrible. Much, much better than this government inherited but still terrible.
Osborne has had a tricky hand and played it well but the deck is just not in his favour. Real incomes have fallen over the Parliament. This is not Osborne's fault or necessarily a bad thing, in fact an argument can be made that the astonishing growth in employment would not have occurred without it, but it has devastated tax revenues.
What is truly worrying, and demonstrates the complete economic incompetence of Labour, is that this reduction in real earnings has not had much effect on the trade deficit. In recent times this is probably because our economy is growing faster than most of our trading partners but the fact remains we are spending way too much on even our current incomes. The fact our trade deficit has not improved despite the reduction in the fiscal deficit and reductions in real earnings indicates how far from recovered we really are.
I really do hope they do look at the road infrastructure carefully though. The A41 is terrible on peak shopping days. I actively avoid the whole Bicester area on weekends. I didn't have to go there myself last Friday, but I understand from friends of friends that the traffic into Bicester Village was appalling due to Black Friday bargain hunters. It was genuinely gridlocked i.e. literally stationary traffic for hours all down the A41 due to all the out-of-towners after their designer Christmas presents.
The sales discounts weren't even that great IMO (not compared the great firesales of 2008 when they flogged off their excess merchandise from their London stores at crazy prices. I remember getting Purple Label suits from Ralph Lauren for about £100 quid each at the time (full retail price, several thousand plus).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30282701
Another day, another load of money being spent.
Has Osborne totally given up on any idea of balancing the books, is it just spin, or has he been told actually the UK is sitting on a massive goldmine and good times are ahead?
After standing down on Monday, the former president of the European Council will be paid £133,723 a year, 55 per cent of his basic salary, until December 2017 - to ease him back into life outside the world of Brussels officialdom.
The Telegraph has established that Mr Van Rompuy will also receive a one off payment of £21,000 and, aged 67, he will be able draw a lifetime EU pension worth £52,000 a year, taking his earnings to £578,000 over the next three years.
The "transitional allowance" does not require Mr Van Rompuy to do any work at all and the cash will be paid under reduced rates of EU "community" tax, which are far lower than taxation in his native country of Belgium.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11266362/Herman-Van-Rompuy-will-be-paid-over-500000-by-the-EU-to-do-nothing.html
Its alright for some. I especially like the EU community tax rate, its like mates rates on paying your taxes.
Clegg has some front trying this line. One of the main reason tax receipts are down is because of the raising of the basic tax threshold, which applies to all earners. I am in two minds about the idea myself, I generally support tax cuts, but I dont like taking people out of paying tax completely, a person that doesn't pay tax has no interest in a government being run economically, personally I would prefer a much long low rate of taxation at the start- rather like the 10% that McBruin scrapped.
So what tax rises is he proposing that will actually raise money then ? Labour's ideas are a joke 50% top rate looks good for the politics of envy but loses money, 5% cut in minister salaries is pocket change, cutting the WFP for top rate tax payers is a rounding error, do the Liberal have something more realistic ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11264954/George-Osbornes-secret-plan-to-bail-out-the-eurozone.html
You seem to think George had senses in the first place.