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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » My special plea to those in the media responsible for commissioning opinion polls
Just about every day at the moment I find myself having to Tweet or write on PB that general elections are not decided by national party vote shares but by first past the post elections in 650 separate constituencies.
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Shall we talk horse racing?
"Fresh doubts have been raised over the future of Honda’s British plant after it scraped a profit of just £1m on sales of £2bn.
The Swindon factory, which opened in 1992, sold 133,600 vehicles in the year to the end of March, down 20% on a year earlier. Honda of the UK Manufacturing saw revenues sink from £2.5bn last time.
Despite the sound overall health of Britain’s automotive industry, Honda has been whittling away at Swindon’s workforce and production in recent years. In March it announced the shutdown of one of the two production lines, with the loss of 500 jobs."
Good quality cars, shame about the outdated designs.
re 2010 LD VI
Of the five results published this moNth, the LD retention has been greater than or equal to its loss to Labour. for three of these polls. in November thIs happened on only 5 of the 21 polls. However LD retention continues to decline.
This YG poll is atypical in that in the London sample has 19% voting for UKIP and the Scotland sample has SNP on 38 with Labour on 29.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/autumn-statement/11276052/To-innovate-and-grow-Britain-needs-to-make-more-babies.html
With my court jester's hat on might I query just who all these (quite legal and legitimate) polls are for? Are they for punters? Will the polls influence the actual vote? If so then that's an interesting new(ish) aspect to our democracy.
pretty simplistic. almost as simplistic as imagining that printing lots of money will make japan competitive
2)Why can't the old keep working longer?
3) In a world with a rising population, why can't we instead import young workers? We might give it a nice Latinate name. Maybe, "immigration"?
Japan can solve its demographic problem by letting in the people young who would like to move there and fix it. Whether or not you think they're right to resist this, which they do for social and cultural reasons not economic ones, there comes a point where the choice is whether they want to pay people's pensions or not, and at that point, they'll open up in a hurry. You don't need Black Ships when you have arithmetic.
It's possible that ultimately the rest of the world will end up following the same trends the developed world did at which point the problem will no longer just solve itself with migration, but that's a long way away, and may reverse itself in the mean time, if robotics doesn't make it moot.
2)Why can't the old keep working longer?
3) In a world with a rising population, why can't we instead import young workers? We might give it a nice Latinate name. Maybe, "immigration"?
Because some public-sector parasites want to retire at the age of 54; whilst others return from low tax regimes and buy extra years of Westminster pension rights. Me: I expect to work until I am 75...! :-)
Is that all.
I recommend 54
75's a perfectly good age to be working.
Japan can solve its demographic problem by letting in the people young who would like to move there and fix it. Whether or not you think they're right to resist this, which they do for social and cultural reasons not economic ones, there comes a point where the choice is whether they want to pay people's pensions or not, and at that point, they'll open up in a hurry. You don't need Black Ships when you have arithmetic.
It's possible that ultimately the rest of the world will end up following the same trends the developed world did at which point the problem will no longer just solve itself with migration, but that's a long way away, and may reverse itself in the mean time, if robotics doesn't make it moot.
Speaking as someone who married an African immigrant (who, like me is planning to vote UKIP) with enough children for a small football team. I can't help but agree. If half our children also vote UKIP and they themselves have three or four children, half of whom vote UKIP then my one UKIP vote is turned into about six UKIP votes in thirty years.
Meanwhile liberals who have one child (half of which (statistically) votes Liberal) which themsevles have one child, half of which votes Liberal) reduce the liberal vote by 87.5% in thirty years.
Not difficult to see where this is going. Labour have historically benefitted from this phenomenon too, but less so now since their obsession with gay rights has seen several high profile cases of people from ethnic minorities sacked from jobs like marriage regristrars.
Meanwhile liberals who have one child (half of which (statistically) votes Liberal) which themsevles have one child, half of which votes Liberal) reduce the liberal vote by 87.5% in thirty years.
Not difficult to see where this is going. Labour have historically benefitted from this phenomenon too, but less so now since their obsession with gay rights has seen several high profile cases of people from ethnic minorities sacked from jobs like marriage regristrars.
Ethnic minority registrars are there to uphold the law of the land not their religious beliefs.
Remember the Hippocratic advice to health workers ; "First, do no harm".
Be grateful that the Fat Owl is retired and doing no more harm.
Be grateful that the Fat Owl is retired and doing no more harm.
Is Ed still promising owls for all after the general election?
Will t'wit a t'woo spending be ring fenced or is this just another bird brained scheme from Labour ?
A rubbish argument. From your ARSE, perhaps?
By your criterion, Catholic nurses should be required to participate in abortions as they are employed to provide "healthcare".
The law had been changed after she got the job, but made no provision for people's right of conscience.
The problem is that no notice has been taken of the right of people not to be complicit in immoral acts.
The speed at which the Democrats have fallen away in Louisiana has been startling.
https://www.gov.uk/rules-motorcyclists-83-to-88
"On all journeys, the rider and pillion passenger on a motorcycle, scooter or moped MUST wear a protective helmet. This does not apply to a follower of the Sikh religion while wearing a turban."
By your criterion, Catholic nurses should be required to participate in abortions as they are employed to provide "healthcare".
The law had been changed after she got the job, but made no provision for people's right of conscience.
The problem is that no notice has been taken of the right of people not to be complicit in immoral acts.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
As long as he is paying enough tax to support those that go early , make sure they can sit on a nice beach and drink his good health
Ruth Davidson was enthusiastically talking up the tories yesterday (that is her job after all) pointing out that they came out of the referendum much stronger than they went into it with more members, more activists, more funders and more candidates as a new generation were introduced to active politics and rather liked it. The Conservative party was also by far the most united in its views on independence, even more than the SNP. (It all rather chimed with an observation during the campaign that BT was a training scheme explaining to Scottish tories how you actually fight elections).
But, to be honest, even although she is determined to bury the panda joke once and for all, that is not where the main action is. The collapse of Lib Dem support seems to be even more catastrophic in Scotland than it is in England and at least 8 Lib Dem seats are seriously in play. Labour has somewhere between 5 and 25 seats in play and the breadth of that range shows how right OGH is with his plea for proper Scottish polling.
My guess would be that the SNP surge will abate somewhat by May and that they will be squeezed, as they have been before, by a media focussed on who is going to be PM in which they are bit players. But I would still be pretty surprised if the SNP did not pick up about a dozen more seats than the 6 they have at the moment. I expect the Lib Dems to lose 7 or 8 seats and the tories to pick up 2 additional seats coming frustratingly close in a number of others. If I am right then the Labour cohort will not be diminished much with some Lib Dem pick ups offsetting losses to the SNP.
But it certainly won't be boring.
Registrars are required to marry people who are legally entitled to marry. The process is the same for whoever comes before them, and it simply leads to extra costs if they pick and choose. Are they to be allowed to refuse to marry two 18 year olds because it's too young to be getting married (possibly true) or a young glamour model to a octogenarian billionaire because she's a gold-digger and he's a perv (possibly also true)?
This is a concept that presumably Kippers support.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Thats a stupid answer @antifrank. Most people cannot afford to lose a job on conscience and are forced to submit to immoral laws. Shakespeare was so right when he wrote. "conscience doth make cowards of us all". The only answer is to vote UKIP in for a massive change in the game.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Anitifrank
its not all black and white I am afraid. My late wife refused to do abortions, but of course those who would have pilloried her for that haven't seen a developed foetus being aborted.. or for that matter had to do it themselves.
But once again we see the authoritarian kippers telling me who I may or may not marry.
Be grateful that the Fat Owl is retired and doing no more harm.
Is Trolling an offence yet?
it can't be, you haven't been put on the naughty step
We do not live in a theocracy but in a modern liberal democracy, a fact that some find difficult to cope with.
I'm not sure about "enough" there Malcolm, but I do support reasonable freedom of choice.
Mr. Antifrank, do you think kosher and halal slaughter should be banned, and likewise circumcision? Or that Sikhs should be made to wear helmets when they're currently exempted?
Mr. W, are you sure? The media very obligingly covered up Mohammed when reporting the Jesus and Mo nonsense.
This is where Labour could take a leaf out of the Alec Salmond playbook. They should start campaigning to collect money for these food banks under their banner. Turn it into a major national campaign. It doesn't need any political comment or any overt criticism of the Tories. It's a cause that everyone would get behind and it would remind potential Labour voters what their party stand for.
Are you aware of the concept of "threat"?
In any case, it was a public employer and therefore should not discriminate against its religious citizens; it should accommodate them.
"Andrew White, an Anglican priest known as the “Vicar of Baghdad,” has seen violence and persecution against Christians unprecedented in recent decades.
In the video embedded below, he recounts the story of Iraqi Christian children who were told by ISIS militants to convert to Islam or be killed. Their response? “No, We Love Yeshua (Jesus).” [and were killed by decapitation as Canon white explains in the video]
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/11/isis-to-children-convert-say-the-words-children-to-isis-no-we-love-jesus/
There's a YouGov finding today which should give all of us food for thought. Asking about the deficit, just 20% favour prioritising reduction mainly by cuts, just 19% favour prioritising it mainly by tax rises, a substantial 36% (including 18% of Conservatives, the only group to give it priority - another 17% of Tories want tax rises) don't favour prioritising it at all, 10% disagree with all three views, and 15% don't know.
What's interesting about this is that it doesn't fit any of the main party narratives. None are especially explicit, but broadly the Tory position is "accelerate by cuts", Labour's position is "exclude investment but otherwise crack on with reduction", and the LibDem position is not clear to me, but certainly not "don't worry about the deficit". The Greens are explicitly against cuts and I wonder whether their increasing poll rating and UKIP's rise as "general consensus-breakers" is partly to do with that. Certainly the objective of persuading people that there's an urgent problem has not been achieved - or it was temporarily achieved and then forgotten. People see there's a bigger debt level than ever and the roof isn't falling in, so they go "Oh, well". (I am not expressing an opinion here, just observing trends.)
Other interesting findings: a majority OPPOSE road improvements (47-40) as "the wrong priority" - a surprise IMO. Most people like the mansion tax (63%) and the stamp duty changes (77%). Most people aren't impressed by Osborne giving more money to the NHS. Free schools are opposed by 2-1. People would like to cut student fees even if it meant universities were poorer, unless unis could somehow guarantee a good job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Anitifrank
its not all black and white I am afraid. My late wife refused to do abortions, but of course those who would have pilloried her for that haven't seen a developed foetus being aborted.. or for that matter had to do it themselves.
I suppose the difficulty arises when the law is changed, after someone has been employed. Merely telling people to resign if they don't like the change in the law doesn't seem entirely reasonable to me.
Three wise men required to solve that one ?!?
http://ccc.de/en/updates/2014/ccc-censored-in-uk
First they came for the pornographers, and I was silent because I wasn't into double penetration action...
The law should be changed to reflect this, as it was for Sikhs.
This is what I despise; people being all I favour of immigration changing the country, but somehow thinking it won't affect them.
We almost all have to do things in our job we disagree with. If we disagree strongly enough, we can leave. I appreciate it isn't costless, but there are jobs out there.
If an employer is forcing an employee to carry out duties they strongly object to on moral grounds when the employee's beliefs could easily and cheaply be accommodated, that's one thing. It's plainly unnecessary and ludicrous to reallocate a nurse who strongly objects to abortion from, say, a geriatric ward to a role involving assisting in abortions.
But it just piles costs on the business (or taxpayer as the case may be) if there is a general right to refuse to do things on moral grounds. For marriage registration, you essentially need to duplicate the employee if that employee refuses to register a proportion of marriages.
I would be interested if those arguing for the employee in that situation would take the same view of a feminist WH Smith employee who routinely refused to serve customers buying Nuts magazine (you may assume the magazine was not sold when they took the job)? Or a Muslim corner-shop employee who refuses to sell booze and fags when they start being stocked?
In the case of a racist law passed requiring deportation... if I were a civil servant in a job where I was required to implement it, I'd resign and campaign strongly for the removal of that law. I wouldn't seek to sue my employer for requiring me to do my duties of employment.
I don't dismiss gay rights, I dismiss the idea that gays should be able to have their cake and have someone else bake it, refusing to abstain from sex in order to retain their jobs. If they are unable to restrain themselves, they should find alternative employment, although they have been trained in an occupation where the State is the only employer.
(*) Obviously I mean the upside for people interested in online freedom, not for the people who are doing the censoring. If they used surveillance and censorship sparingly governments might actually be able to accomplish some of their law enforcement goals, but once organizations have a technology they're incapable of reining themselves in, so they end up creating the equivalent to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Meanwhile...
@RobbieGibb: Research by #bbcsp shows drop in numbers registering to vote following introduction of new system of individual voter registration (1/3)
I suppose the difficulty arises when the law is changed, after someone has been employed. Merely telling people to resign if they don't like the change in the law doesn't seem entirely reasonable to me.
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There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
So Eck is to stand in Gordon. It will be interesting to see whether the good voters of East Aberdeenshire decide that the LibDem or the Tory is the candidate to stop Eck. An Ashcroft constituency poll might be interesting.
The real 'hand to hand combat' between Labour and the SNP is taking place in the Labour rotten burghs, those city and urban seats where Labour has put up total numpties for decades, often as a reward for decades of service as councillors or trade union officials. These are the seats where basically 50 years of unbroken representation by the Labour party has seen £billions squandered on half-baked schemes and the constituents remaining poor, deprived and ignored.
Read the first line of my response more closely.
http://times-deck.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/projects/39461a19e9eddfb385ea76b26521ea48.html
A lot of that is simply a pragmatic observation, I think - the Government's been in for nearly 5 years and they say we're still in difficulties. Ergo, they haven't solved the difficulties. A lot of people don't bother to dig deeper than that.
Yesterday's man.
"IF (big if) the UK wide polls start moving in favour of the Tories, might this persuade more Scots to vote Labour in order to shore up their national vote"
Quite the reverse. If it becomes clear that the Tories are going to win the GE, then Labour voters will switch in crushing numbers to the SNP as the best means of defending Scottish interests.
Already we see (per Margaret Curran, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland) yesterday that the Labour line will be the usual "vote Labour to keep the Tories out".
That will not be as effective this time for a number of reasons including:
* the increasing resonance of the term Red Tories which indicates the view that there is little to choose between Labour & Tory.
*The greater credibility of the SNP following the 2011 Holyrood triumph.
* the realisation that a hung parliament is the likeliest outcome and that an SNP bloc could hold the balance of power.
And, no, I still cannot predict how many seats the SNP will win under FPTP so I have settled for betting on Murphy to be "Scottish" Labour Leader (best bet was around evens), and Salmond to win a Westminster seat (best was 2/1). :-)
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
Try and make the interweb safe for 8 year olds and you'll both fail at that and succeed in making it a pain in the arse for everyone else.
I suppose the difficulty arises when the law is changed, after someone has been employed. Merely telling people to resign if they don't like the change in the law doesn't seem entirely reasonable to me.
...............................................................
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
Quite a number of places that have introduced gay marriage (eg South Africa, Holland, some US States) permit conscientious objection for Registrars.
Mind you, the right aren't helped when the state broadcaster describes a reduction in benefits as a 'tax'.
Bad news for labour??
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
The religious are entitled to their views up to the point they affect other people who don't share their beliefs. When they presume to tell other people who they can and can't marry, they can crawl back under their rock again.
I suppose the difficulty arises when the law is changed, after someone has been employed. Merely telling people to resign if they don't like the change in the law doesn't seem entirely reasonable to me.
...............................................................
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
Is there no end to some people's narcissism.
Ladbrokes Politics @LadPolitics 29 mins29 minutes ago
Latest odds for Gordon on news that Salmond is standing for Westminster: 1/7 @AlexSalmond (SNP) 5/1 @Cajardine (LD) 33/1 @BradenDavy (Lab)
LD candidate bullish. Or bullshittish, depending on your view.
christine jardine @Cajardine · 13 hrs 13 hours ago
Surprise @theSNP didn't check public opinion before putting @AlexSalmond in firing line. Said NO once we'll say it again #bringiton
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
Quite a number of places that have introduced gay marriage (eg South Africa, Holland, some US States) permit conscientious objection for Registrars.
Indeed so Sean.
However our parliament has seen fit not to do so. I tend to the absolutist position here - the voters decide on parliament and parliament decides for the voters.
"...Strangely, the postmodern decoupling of religion and culture has made it possible to witness the expression of major religions in a textually ‘pure' form.
Fundamentalist Judaism, as practiced in the streets of Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, is marked by fastidious adherence to family purity, dietary laws, and ritual practice.
Fundamentalist Buddhism is centred on a sort of righteous self-abnegation, a cloistered monk's life.
Fundamentalist Christianity emphasises living in constant communion with God, evangelising, and missionary work.
As for fundamentalist Islam, it has been likened to Marxist-Leninism for its strict insistence on a revolutionary purification of the entire world, in the former's case according to a strict interpretation of sharia law."
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5838/full