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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » SportingIndex cuts the UKIP spread again in effort to entic
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » SportingIndex cuts the UKIP spread again in effort to entice elusive purple buyers
I’m just on the train back from London after having a fascinating chat with the guy who runs the political spread markets at Sporting Index. This is the form of betting that I like the most because it is all about numbers and the more you are right the more money you make. Unfortunately the converse is also the case!
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This does not encourage me to invest too heavily on Sporting Index markets.
Patrick said:
Not sure that is absolutely true. Australia manages it. We need to move from 'we spend 700bn and need to find that much' on to 'we have 600bn to spend - what is the best way to spend it?'.
600bn a year is still a gargantuan sum of money. How about X% pay cuts for all earning over 25,000 in the public sector? How about vouchers for schools and disband the DoE? How about leaving the EU and saving 19bn? How about stopping all elective surgery in the NHS? Trim aid. Etc. Etc -> We need to re-imagine the role of the state in a very very competitive world where our economy must survive and can only sustainably offer up 600bn to spend. If you had a blank sheet of paper, no history and someone said 'here's 600bn - design an equitable state that works' we could do it.
I said:
The proportion of GDP that is spent by the State is dependent on a variety of factors of which the most important are the demographic profile and productivity of the population. Comparisons with Australia are not really that useful.
I agree that the UK economy cannot sustain £700bn of public spending. It won't be able to until it is at least 30% bigger than it is now which is going to take some time. But it is meaningless to point out that £600bn is a lot of money. It is a sum that has to be measured against the needs of the people and the obligations of the State.
So over £50bn of it goes in debt interest and that figure is only heading one way for some time to come. Even when we get to balance it is very likely that rolling over debt will involve borrowing at higher rates than we pay now increasing the burden.
We have had a ludicrously generous public sector pension scheme (specifically for those earning better than average wage) for a couple of generations now. Combine that with the massive increase in headcount under the last government, particularly of those in managerial positions, and another significant chunk of that money is spent.
We have an increasing number of retired old people. I am hoping to be one myself one day but there is no question this absorbs a lot of resources. We have a frightening number of poorly educated citizens who are never going to be worth employing at a living wage. We either let them rot or we subsidise their employment. It is not their fault that the middle classes showed so little interest in working class education after all and so determinedly removed all the ladders behind themselves.
Add all this up and cuts are not easy. If they were Osborne would have done them. Some cuts are necessary but I think some tax increases are too. We cannot go on like this living beyond our means and on our children's credit.
The term "cutting the spread" implies that the size of the spread, in this case 2, has been cut. This isn't the case. The price has moved down but the spread, the difference between the buy and sell level, is the same size.
That the spread is 2 for UKIP (mid point 9.5) and also 2 for LD (mid point 30) implies one is far too big/small
I can see now that should UKIP fail to get 10 seats, they will be seen to have failed to reach the SPIN quote, which will be declared the measuring stick, and called a failure.. the truth is the quote has probably been too high from the off
Then again, I only worked as a spread betting dealer for 12 years so probably not worth taking any notice
Mike, PBers have spoken, we want that one!
Or being generous, the few dozen Farage has mentioned.
(And many others who tell pollsters that we dont need more auterity.)
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/alex-salmond-specials
I don't see how you can say the top end of UKIP is 30 and the LDs 40
You are saying anything less than 24?
For clarification, public sector pensions come in various shapes and sizes. There are Funded Schemes such as the LPGS (for Council workers) which rely on employer and employee contributions (the latte rhave risen sharply in recent times and higher wage earners faced another hike in April this year) and Unfunded Schemes such as those for the Armed Forces and firefighters.
The "cost" of the scheme depends as much on how long someone has been in as how much they earn. There are currently individuals approaching 60 who have worked for the same Council since they were 16 so with over 40 years in the scheme they will be fine. Some in the Private Sector have a problem with this but if we are living in a society based on the Thatcherite ideals of freedom and responsibility, shouldn't be encouraging more individuals to start saving for a pension as early as possible ?
The alternative is to encourage people to spend their money and hope the State picks up the tab later on which sounds supremely foolish.
Your final paragraph speaks volumes and is the conclusion I reached a while back. The deficit cannot be eliminated by cuts alone - taxes will have to rise and some might have to rise sharply. The problem is the terms of modern political debate do not allow for the faintest suggestion of income tax rises so it all has to be on "stealth" taxes. Perhaps the time has come for parties to be honest and say income tax rises will have to rise as well as spending having to be cut but no one will.
FPTP screws the third party.
Look at 1983, the Alliance polled 25%, and had several incumbents and only won 23 seats.
But giving the Sykes and Farage hyping, others will say 4 is a disappointment.
Success = Performance minus anticipation.
But I don't buy for a minute that the general public take notice of the spin & expectations management in the way political anoraks think they might. Whenever a UKIP achievement it is played down on here, my mates, who aren't into politics one bit mention it as if its the first moon landing
They don't say "hmm they didn't live up to the opinion polls" etc that's for sure
Don't see it.
sub-10% IMO. Lucky to break 5%, perhaps 5-7% if all goes well.
10 seats and a Con majority
3 seats and a Lab majority
Suspect the latter as a "prelude to a landslide in 2020" (chortle).
Fits in nicely with the recently floated Kipper plan to renationalise the railways, and reinstate the spare room subsidy, amongst other leftward leaning things.
The General Public who care - when it reads that UKIP have won 2, 4 7 or 10 seats - will think of the last GE - when they won nothing - and think it's a victory for UKIP...
The General Public who don't care will ignore it..
So on that basis, about 50% say it's a win, 10% think it's disappointing - and 40% could not give a damn...
Announcing the party’s first election pledge, the Labour leader said: “We will build a strong economic foundation and balance the books. We will cut the deficit every year while securing the future of the NHS. And none of our manifesto commitments will require additional borrowing.” He also said that the party’s department-by-department, zero-based review had found £500m in efficiency savings.
£500m? Was that a joke?
It is just under 2 days of borrowing. I mean, really. Its just embarrassing.
Last General Election Labour and Conservative combined vote % was I think 67%..... the Mori chart latest shows 66%.
Don't understand.
Dayle Taylor, 20, was selected by party officials to fight Labour’s Kate Hollern and Conservative Bob Eastwood in the town when MP Jack Straw retires."
http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/11655308.Student_set_to_represent_Ukip_in_Blackburn_at_next_year___s_General_Election/
Any politician who fails to acknowledge that cutting the deficit requires tax increases is being fundamentally dishonest.
There is plenty of scope for debate and disagreement about how much, when, where, and at whose expense. But there is no question whatever that in some way shape or form we have to suffer expenditure cuts and tax increases.
The idea that we can do one without the other is bunkum, and would almost certainly be unworkable in practice.
As for the spreads, a SELL of Conservative seats still looks tempting. The LD number is about right - perhaps a small SELL there as well. Labour looks about right as well.
As for UKIP, I'm not even sure they'll manage four. Carswell will be fine in Clacton albeit with a reduced majority but Reckless isn't safe and none of the others can be absolutely relied on. It's not enough to make me a seller of UKIP seats either but I certainly wouldn't BUY on those numbers.
I will back LD 40+ seats and you can have UKIP 30+
EVEN money, if neither or both are reached Bets void?
I was fully expecting Neil to bite my ears for my oversimplistic generalisation on public sector pensions. He usually does!
The reluctance of politicians to tell the truth about our situation makes so much of our politics artificial. My starting point this morning is that the party which currently comes closest to the truth is the Lib Dems and Danny Alexander in particular. Not that it is going to do him or them any good.
It is depressing that Ed can come out with something like a zero based cost review, proudly announce £500m of savings and not just be laughed at.
The other great thing about this particular market is that it is traded continuously and by all accounts very heavily throughout election night - meaning anyone able to beat the herd in identifying a trend can profit very nicely, although as OGH correctly points out this is a very high risk form of betting so great care is required.
All I was saying is that variance is more important than the midpoint in determining the size of the spread. qv. Chelsea Points 87-88.5; Burnley Points 29.5-31
On top of that, a spread of 2 seats is far from generous, but I can't blame SpIn for that given that the only likely interest at this stage is from sharps.
Maybe there are further savings to be made, but the councillors I've spoken to are already pushing costs down as much as they possibly can, and they certainly don't think there's any easy stuff left, let alone further savings beyond what is implied in the coalition's plans. It's not as though Labour has exactly a stellar record on squeezing down costs.
If you have to buy UKIP at 10.5 the risk is clearly far higher than the reward given the high point being talked about is around 15 seats and the typical estimate is 5-10.
But I do not trust Labour to be serious about cutting the deficit and getting the finances in order because, fundamentally, I don't believe that they think this important. Nor do I believe that Labour will be fair in how they impose tax increases or cuts. The party which doubled the rate of the tax for the poorest is not one to talk about fairness.
The Lib Dems are probably the most honest of all three on this and a fat lot of good it will do them, alas.
If there were any value in that price, Alex would have lumped on himself. He's a shrewd and serious punter.
I agree but the LDs surely have a bigger variance?
The long and the short of it is that I think the UKIP spread is too wide, and should be smaller than that of the Lib Dems, even if it were 1.5 rather than 2
That said, its always better to have a big spread then cut it than vice versa, as you look a complete scaredy cat if you do the latter
But my original point, that "cutting the spread" to describe the price change in the header is a misleading term, still stands!
A theatre has been forced to apologise after sending more than 100 'disgusting' porn DVDs to children as young as 10 after a duplication blunder.
Families were expecting to receive recordings of summer school performances from the Edinburgh Playhouse, but a collection of hardcore movies called The Bondage Mistress were sent instead.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2869830/Theatre-sent-100-absolutely-disgusting-porn-DVDs-children-duplication-blunder.html
'Sharps' are punters whose business the bookies would sooner do without.
But I agree that real cuts will also have to come. Which is why there should be a proper debate about what the state should stop doing altogether or do much less of. And why it is insane to ring fence any area of government.
It is not obvious to me why foreign aid should be sancrosanct when firemen and policemen in this country are not.
But that wasn't really my point. My point was that in a speech about the deficit Ed thought it was helpful to go on about savings of £500m, as I say just under 2 days of the year's worth of borrowings. He gets away with it because so few in our media have any concept what a billion is and find £100bn a sum so vast as to be simply unimaginable.
Even leaving aside the real consequences of his policy (ANY further cuts when public services and poor people are already struggling enough), it's a daft political strategy. As I said last night, he's essentially endorsing Tory policies while opposing the inevitable consequences of those policies. If he wants to reap the rewards of the 60-80% of the public who want no more austerity, he has to oppose the policies properly, not try to split the difference and end up with an incoherent mess that pleases noone.
I can see why EVEL is such a pressing matter of the utmost urgency.
If they do it's not by much. As a party on the decline their downside is limited whereas UKIP's upside is unknown. There are plenty of punters still taking 33-40/1 on UKIP most seats which would imply at least 200!
If the arithmetic was different, the voting would be different.
Must try harder.
Talking of which, bwin are 7/5 Farage to win a seat
Feel good by stealing from your children! Its bizarre.
And we don't know what "events" the government may have planned, nor the approach of the manifestos, nor the status of the debates etc. etc.
All we get is poll after poll, which is great for taking the temperature but doesn't tell you whether or not the soufflé will actually rise.
I don't trust any of them, Cycle.
In practice I suspect it will make little overall difference which Party is in power since the Chancellor will have so little room for manoeuvre. Osborne has shown his competence in the current constrained circumstances. Although I dislike Balls (mainly for his part in the Blair/Brown wars) I would expect him to be similarly competent. The differences would tend to be at the margins and dictated by 'expedience' as it appears from their different vantage points.
I agree about the LDs and am interested in how this will work out at the GE. For all the many criticisms to which they have been subjected, I think they were correct to support the Conservatives in coalition and have played an important role in moderating Government policy at times. It may, as you say, not do them much good but maybe Mike S is right and they will at least hold on to a decent block of seats.
I'm not a supporter, but it's the least they deserve.
So Ed's efficiency savings are 1% of the gap between actually eliminating the deficit and steering the economy back towards a safer level of debt in the long term. A financial director of even a small company would be expected to do better than this.
Lab 33.4%
Con 32.7%
UKIP 15.3%
LD 7.4%
Lab lead 0.7%
Could there be cross-over by Sunday?
Sporting are in effect running a 120% book due to the Monopoly on this market. More competitive fixed odds markets are running to the traditional 110% book.
On that basis, odds of 6/1 on offer from Hills are patently rubbish.
But in reality, no politicians from any party are going to be willing to tackle that, they suck up to the public-sector fat cats only slightly less than they suck up to the big-business fat cats. Austerity will continue to be concentrated on nasty welfare cuts and cuts for the poorest councils, and the only way to avoid that is to not have this level of cuts at all (one thing I agree with the PBTories on is how absurd the spectacle at the next election will be of the two Eds contrasting their "nice fluffy cuts" with the Tories' evil dastardly cuts).