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
A two Point Spread with an average make up of ten is 20%. The corner markets in soccer has an average make up of ten but only a half point spread (5%). Sporting are taking the proverbial. Any gambling with any concept of value wouldn't touch it with a ten foot barge pole.
If they thought the expected outcome was outside 8.5-10.5 then they would. You're more likely to find value in a special like this than you are in betting corners on a Premier League match, despite the less attractive spread.
I would agree in other cases but not in this. Political Markets are largely efficient markets. All relevant information is publicly available.
I'd have thought the last US Presidental election would have put paid to any notion that the political betting markets are efficient.
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.
My understanding is that many of the departmental reviews have yet to be published. £500m is presumably the running total of efficiencies identified to date (eg scrapping PCC elections)? The harsh truth is that there isnt that much fat left to cut. No efficiency exercise is going to identify much more than a few billion. The cuts that will happen are going to be real ones.
I am sceptical of claims that there is not much fat left.
And I am sceptical of people who claim that there can be painless cuts.
I don't claim this. But I am having to cut resources in my own team so I know what's involved in either doing the same differently and, with luck, more efficiently or doing less. Intelligent management tries to do the former as much as possible.
It's hyperbole to claim, as some do, that every cut will bring the end of civilization as we know it. My own council, for instance, still hands out a free newspaper to every household. The cost is probably miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Nonetheless were it cut it would be ridiculous to claim that the council tax payers not getting a dozen pages of stories about local activities were suffering pain.
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.
My understanding is that many of the departmental reviews have yet to be published. £500m is presumably the running total of efficiencies identified to date (eg scrapping PCC elections)? The harsh truth is that there isnt that much fat left to cut. No efficiency exercise is going to identify much more than a few billion. The cuts that will happen are going to be real ones.
I am sceptical of claims that there is not much fat left.
And I am sceptical of people who claim that there can be painless cuts.
Depends where the pain is directed. 56yo retired public sector workers living in Provence on a final salary pension ? boo hoo.
I'd have no problem at all with the people at the top of the public sector getting their wages and pensions squeezed. My friend has for the past few years had either a pay freeze or a 1% pay rise, while her bosses are constantly rewarding themselves with huge increases.
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).
I quite agree that when cuts are being made the people at the top should look at themselves first. If only....
If you went to a typical poor northern town (where council budgets have been cut by 10-15%, while some southern councils have got increases), you wouldn't think the cuts had been "easy".
Totally agree. And they would be rightly insulted if some prat from north London came around to lecture them about wasting money too.
There is a lot of interesting work going on within and across Local Authorities driven by the need to produce savings.
First is the move away from reliance on Central Government grant for the bulk of income. The idea that counties like Kent, Surrey and Hampshire could take the Stamp Duty tax paid on housing purchases in their areas and spend it locally is gaining a lot of traction and would further reduce dependency on central Government grant.
Second is the more well-known collaboration of services across Councils. This is odd because it occurs in one of two ways - either in terms of function where one function joins forces with one Council and another with another Council so you get a patchwork of merged functions or the virtual merger of two Councils at back office and even customer-facing level so although the Authororities retain separate civic identities they are (in terms of what goes on behind the scenes) one Council.
Technology has enabled much of this and the investment in technology in the local authority sector is a useful counterpoint to the private sector where it seems to be cheaper to hire more bodies than make serious capital investment for future growth.
Oddly enough, this supports a devolution agenda in terms of providing more resources for the locality but the actual operating becomes more centralised (joined Call Centres, waste sites etc) which, as long as it provides good customer service, is all the resident should need.
Matthew Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · 5m5 minutes ago Would be a good leader (Net ratings among Conservative identifiers): Boris +19% May +8% Osborne -1% Javid -16% Hunt -29% YouGov/@timesredbox
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
The measuring stick is the 100 seats that UKIP are going for as per Paul Sykes.
Or being generous, the few dozen Farage has mentioned.
So what would you consider a failure by UKIP in terms of seats won?
You are saying anything less than 24?
I think if UKIP win more than 4 they should be delighted.
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.
A failure by UKIP is if labour do not win.
What would Kippers prefer ?
10 seats and a Con majority 3 seats and a Lab majority
Suspect the latter as a "prelude to a landslide in 2020" (chortle).
Given that many Kippers don't think there is much difference between the two parties I suspect they will go for whichever gets them the most seats
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
A two Point Spread with an average make up of ten is 20%. The corner markets in soccer has an average make up of ten but only a half point spread (5%). Sporting are taking the proverbial. Any gambling with any concept of value wouldn't touch it with a ten foot barge pole.
If they thought the expected outcome was outside 8.5-10.5 then they would. You're more likely to find value in a special like this than you are in betting corners on a Premier League match, despite the less attractive spread.
I would agree in other cases but not in this. Political Markets are largely efficient markets. All relevant information is publicly available.
I leadership, and whether or not they're secretly hoping that their party loses the election.
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.
Inside Information requires efficient interpretation. I would say its safe to say that all them possibilities are baked into the cake.
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.
Sorry, LW, but I have to side with TP on this one.
I've been betting semi-professionally on politics and horseracing for about ten years. Profits split about 50/50 between the two, but the turnover on racing is massive by comparison with politics, and the margins very much lower. The horseracing markets are very much more efficient than politics.
If it were possible, I would bet on nothing but politics but unfortunately there just aren't enough markets with reasonable liquidity.
Matthew Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · 5m5 minutes ago Would be a good leader (Net ratings among Conservative identifiers): Boris +19% May +8% Osborne -1% Javid -16% Hunt -29% YouGov/@timesredbox
Matthew Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · 3m3 minutes ago And could they win back Kippers? 'Wd be good leader'. Net rating among Ukip voters: Boris -8 May -22 Javid -44 Osborne -50 YouGov/Red Box
Worth taking a very close look at Rob's excellent polling graph (see link) - in particular at the last couple of months.
For those not familiar each blob on the average line is the average of all polls in a 15 day period (7 days each side of the central date).
Now look carefully at the Greens - they are up in every one of the last four 15 day periods - ie that is consistent ongoing growth over the last 60 days - from 4.45% to 6.13%.
Changes over last 60 days:
Lab -1.56 Con -0.29 LD -0.62 UKIP +0.32 Green +1.68
Also worth noting that UKIP had a Clacton bounce but not a distinct Rochester bounce. However they have now settled higher than they were pre Clacton.
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
If you went to a typical poor northern town (where council budgets have been cut by 10-15%, while some southern councils have got increases), you wouldn't think the cuts had been "easy".
Totally agree. And they would be rightly insulted if some prat from north London came around to lecture them about wasting money too.
There is a lot of interesting work going on within and across Local Authorities driven by the need to produce savings.
First is the move away from reliance on Central Government grant for the bulk of income. The idea that counties like Kent, Surrey and Hampshire could take the Stamp Duty tax paid on housing purchases in their areas and spend it locally is gaining a lot of traction and would further reduce dependency on central Government grant.
Second is the more well-known collaboration of services across Councils. This is odd because it occurs in one of two ways - either in terms of function where one function joins forces with one Council and another with another Council so you get a patchwork of merged functions or the virtual merger of two Councils at back office and even customer-facing level so although the Authororities retain separate civic identities they are (in terms of what goes on behind the scenes) one Council.
Technology has enabled much of this and the investment in technology in the local authority sector is a useful counterpoint to the private sector where it seems to be cheaper to hire more bodies than make serious capital investment for future growth.
Oddly enough, this supports a devolution agenda in terms of providing more resources for the locality but the actual operating becomes more centralised (joined Call Centres, waste sites etc) which, as long as it provides good customer service, is all the resident should need.
The first duty of politicians is surely to get the best services for the least public money. If they focussed on that we would spend a lot less time arguing about the privatisation of the health service (by having minor functions provided more efficiently), we would be incredibly frustrated at the glacial pace of Universal Credit rollout, we would look in disbelief at the inefficiency of in work benefits for anyone not on a completely consistent wage, we would not tolerate a situation such as exists in my wife's college where there are now more managers than lecturers or what TwistedfireStopper has described on this site etc etc.
In most areas there is an almost inexhaustible demand for the service and it is met by implicit rationing. Why would a politician tolerate greater rationing than is necessary?
Worth taking a very close look at Rob's excellent polling graph (see link) - in particular at the last couple of months.
For those not familiar each blob on the average line is the average of all polls in a 15 day period (7 days each side of the central date).
Now look carefully at the Greens - they are up in every one of the last four 15 day periods - ie that is consistent ongoing growth over the last 60 days - from 4.45% to 6.13%.
Changes over last 60 days:
Lab -1.56 Con -0.29 LD -0.62 UKIP +0.32 Green +1.68
Also worth noting that UKIP had a Clacton bounce but not a distinct Rochester bounce. However they have now settled higher than they were pre Clacton.
There's nothing in Ed Miliband's speech today that's going to reverse that Labour -> Green shift. It may be the final straw for some. On the Guardian website, the anti-austerity comments seem to be getting about a third as many recommends as the pro-Miliband comments.
The low spread for UKIP is out of line with their performance in the 2013 and 2014 council elections, where they either topped the poll or came close in dozens of constituences. The dearth of constituency level polling is not highlighting cases where UKIP can win in a first past the post election on a relatively low share if they are taking votes off both Labour and the Tories.
We don't have much information on how UKIP are doing in UKIP friendly safe Tory seats.Are some Tory MPs right to be a bit nervous about UKIP despite holding healthy majorities? I'm not sure if Ashcroft will research it as it could encourage tactical voting against the Tories.
There are council by-elections in two Aylesbury wards today. I think UKIP did quite well in Aylesbury in the 2013 local elections.
Worth taking a very close look at Rob's excellent polling graph (see link) - in particular at the last couple of months.
For those not familiar each blob on the average line is the average of all polls in a 15 day period (7 days each side of the central date).
Now look carefully at the Greens - they are up in every one of the last four 15 day periods - ie that is consistent ongoing growth over the last 60 days - from 4.45% to 6.13%.
Changes over last 60 days:
Lab -1.56 Con -0.29 LD -0.62 UKIP +0.32 Green +1.68
Also worth noting that UKIP had a Clacton bounce but not a distinct Rochester bounce. However they have now settled higher than they were pre Clacton.
There's nothing in Ed Miliband's speech today that's going to reverse that Labour -> Green shift. It may be the final straw for some. On the Guardian website, the anti-austerity comments seem to be getting about a third as many recommends as the pro-Miliband comments.
Yup, at this point they really should be firming up the poor "core Labour voters" are directly affected by cuts, and the middle-class lefties who are ideologically opposed to austerity. This approach does the exact opposite and will mean Labour voters continue to drift off to UKIP, the Greens and the SNP.
Meanwhile, people who DO think austerity is necessary are not going to be persuaded by something as shifty and equivocal as "we'll make big cuts but not tell you what they'll be til after the election". Basically, Ed has yet again tried to sit on the fence and has ended up pleasing no-one on either side.
"Only 24 hours earlier, the SNP had managed to pack out The Hydro in Glasgow with 12,000 screaming supporters (many of them new members) all of whom had paid to be there. That’s more SNP members paying to go to a single event at a single venue on a single day than Scottish Labour has in total. It’s almost impossible to overstate the enthusiasm gap between Labour activists and their SNP opponents. The Nationalists seem full of zeal to achieve their goal of splitting the country, whilst Labour activists appear largely resigned, tired and fearful. Oh – and there are about eight times as many SNP members as Labour members now.
So how many Labour members turned up to see the three candidates vying to be their new leader in Scotland’s biggest city? I was hopeful when I saw the venue announced. I presumed we’d be in a large auditotium. I was wrong. Instead, I was ushered towards a small side room with just over 100 seats. This was it. Yesterday the SNP had 12,000 people pay to attend a rally, and a day later in the same city, Labour could barely scrape triple figures, for free, for a leadership contest. That’s 1/120th of the size of the SNP gathering, or 1/40th of the size of the Radical Independence Coalition event held the same weekend.
Taken aback by how small the gathering was, I at least assumed the questions from those who attended would reflect the huge organisational chasm that now exists between the two parties. On the contrary, there was even a low-level amount of backslapping over getting this paltry number to attend."
"To be fair to the candidates, it’s clear that they all understand the severity and precarity of the party’s position – but the new leader will need to take swift and drastic action to halt the decline. As one senior Scottish Labour figure said to me recently “however bad you think it is, it’s worse”.
They’re not wrong – and that’s the scale of the challenge the next Scottish Labour leader will face."
Naively, journalists persisted in asking what precisely it was that he’d come to announce. Mr Miliband tolerated this intrusion calmly. “Look,” he said, in answer to a question about borrowing. “I want to be sort of clear about this…”
I Want to Be Sort Of Clear About This. He could make that the title of his memoirs.
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
"Only 24 hours earlier, the SNP had managed to pack out The Hydro in Glasgow with 12,000 screaming supporters (many of them new members) all of whom had paid to be there. That’s more SNP members paying to go to a single event at a single venue on a single day than Scottish Labour has in total. It’s almost impossible to overstate the enthusiasm gap between Labour activists and their SNP opponents. The Nationalists seem full of zeal to achieve their goal of splitting the country, whilst Labour activists appear largely resigned, tired and fearful. Oh – and there are about eight times as many SNP members as Labour members now.
So how many Labour members turned up to see the three candidates vying to be their new leader in Scotland’s biggest city? I was hopeful when I saw the venue announced. I presumed we’d be in a large auditotium. I was wrong. Instead, I was ushered towards a small side room with just over 100 seats. This was it. Yesterday the SNP had 12,000 people pay to attend a rally, and a day later in the same city, Labour could barely scrape triple figures, for free, for a leadership contest. That’s 1/120th of the size of the SNP gathering, or 1/40th of the size of the Radical Independence Coalition event held the same weekend.
Taken aback by how small the gathering was, I at least assumed the questions from those who attended would reflect the huge organisational chasm that now exists between the two parties. On the contrary, there was even a low-level amount of backslapping over getting this paltry number to attend."
"To be fair to the candidates, it’s clear that they all understand the severity and precarity of the party’s position – but the new leader will need to take swift and drastic action to halt the decline. As one senior Scottish Labour figure said to me recently “however bad you think it is, it’s worse”.
They’re not wrong – and that’s the scale of the challenge the next Scottish Labour leader will face."
The referendum result was a bad one for everyone. Scotland should be free as it's people desires ! They should not be scaremongered. Every country on earth survives, so will Scotland.
It could export hydro and wind electricity for a century to UK and Europe.
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Will be interesting to see what the public at large (those interested) make of Brand vs Farage tonight on QT
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
The first duty of politicians is surely to get the best services for the least public money. If they focussed on that we would spend a lot less time arguing about the privatisation of the health service (by having minor functions provided more efficiently), we would be incredibly frustrated at the glacial pace of Universal Credit rollout, we would look in disbelief at the inefficiency of in work benefits for anyone not on a completely consistent wage, we would not tolerate a situation such as exists in my wife's college where there are now more managers than lecturers or what TwistedfireStopper has described on this site etc etc.
In most areas there is an almost inexhaustible demand for the service and it is met by implicit rationing. Why would a politician tolerate greater rationing than is necessary?
I'm not entirely following your point. I think local political leaders of all parties (and none) are working very hard to drive out savings and reduce costs.
That's at the local level - is the same thing happening nationally ? Clearly not - initiatives from the centre just don't seem to have the same flexibility of implementation as locally-based ones which should come as no surprise.
I don't know what happens in the NHS or at FE Colleges and the like - it's not my area of work. As for the Fire & Rescue Service, that is a County responsibility but increasingly we are seeing all the "Bluelight" services collaborating in terms of coverage, storing of vehicles, accommodation etc.
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
I'm not sure about that. He has a very vocal set of supporters, but [anecdote] pretty much everyone in my office, from the 22yo Essex 'lad' to our geriatric regulatory expert think he's a self-satisfied bell-end (I paraphrase). Against that, you have 30%+ who are positive about UKIP (number guesstimated, may be more).
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
I'm not sure about that. He has a very vocal set of supporters, but [anecdote] pretty much everyone in my office, from the 22yo Essex 'lad' to our geriatric regulatory expert think he's a self-satisfied bell-end (I paraphrase). Against that, you have 30%+ who are positive about UKIP (number guesstimated, may be more).
I hope you are right.
He is same age as me/from same area, and almost everyone I know thinks he is a complete dickhead, but he seems v popular with media types.. UKIP are also popular here, but I wasn't sure South Essex was typical
I'm not entirely following your point. I think local political leaders of all parties (and none) are working very hard to drive out savings and reduce costs.
Many people have no idea what their council does or doesn;t spend its money on because their only point of contact with it is the bins.
I read, for instance, that councils spend 25% of everything they get on former employees pensions.
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
I'm not sure about that. He has a very vocal set of supporters, but [anecdote] pretty much everyone in my office, from the 22yo Essex 'lad' to our geriatric regulatory expert think he's a self-satisfied bell-end (I paraphrase). Against that, you have 30%+ who are positive about UKIP (number guesstimated, may be more).
I hope you are right.
He is same age as me/from same area, and almost everyone I know thinks he is a complete dickhead, but he seems v popular with media types.. UKIP are also popular here, but I wasn't sure South Essex was typical
My "little" brother (he's over 6ft!) is a big fan of him, he even got me watching the Trews on YouTube - but only for entertainment purposes in my case!
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
I'm not sure about that. He has a very vocal set of supporters, but [anecdote] pretty much everyone in my office, from the 22yo Essex 'lad' to our geriatric regulatory expert think he's a self-satisfied bell-end (I paraphrase). Against that, you have 30%+ who are positive about UKIP (number guesstimated, may be more).
I hope you are right.
He is same age as me/from same area, and almost everyone I know thinks he is a complete dickhead, but he seems v popular with media types.. UKIP are also popular here, but I wasn't sure South Essex was typical
It could be an interesting clash. Depends really on how much Brand knows about Farage's Establishment and City background.
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
Mr Fletcher @Daddiesmilk · 5h 5 hours ago - Hashtag is now #CameronOut due to Twitter trending algorithms! - Hashtags are temporary, the cause continues!
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
The notion that the tories hate their own country shows what depths you have to sink to to justify your prejudice. Everything else is contorted drivel as well. I am British and my identity has not collapsed. Inevitably when all the people with chips on their shoulders run out of excuses its 'the PR men' who get it. The SNP have managed to engage with the anti English which is one way to stir patritism that Samuel Johnson would recognise.
Sorry, LW, but I have to side with TP on this one.
I've been betting semi-professionally on politics and horseracing for about ten years. Profits split about 50/50 between the two, but the turnover on racing is massive by comparison with politics, and the margins very much lower. The horseracing markets are very much more efficient than politics.
If it were possible, I would bet on nothing but politics but unfortunately there just aren't enough markets with reasonable liquidity.
I don't know why you feel the need to state the first bit, it's like your trying to make out your talking with some superior authority (no offence intended). For balance I've been semi pro (I cringe using that term) for ten years betting on Rugby (both codes) and Darts along with been a Betfair PC payer for the last three years.
I agree that Horse Racing along with top flight Soccer are most efficient markets you can get. Maybe I view the Political Markets as more efficient as yourself because I'm on a net loss. I just don't see the overreactions like you do in a lot of Sporting Markets. Any line that's restricted to pennies by the layers I don't really call a market.
Mr Fletcher @Daddiesmilk · 5h 5 hours ago - Hashtag is now #CameronOut due to Twitter trending algorithms! - Hashtags are temporary, the cause continues!
Sorry, I find you too boring to respond to these days. Feel free to respond to my posts, but just to let you know I'm unlikely to be responding to more of yours.
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
In terms of the outcome of next May's General Election, this is arguably the most important post on PB.com this year. It certainly gets my vote, that's for sure. All those, *cough*, who have long and stridently argued that Labour has an inbuilt advantage of between 6% - 7.5% need to read this slowly and carefully again and again.
Mr Fletcher @Daddiesmilk · 5h 5 hours ago - Hashtag is now #CameronOut due to Twitter trending algorithms! - Hashtags are temporary, the cause continues!
Do they still think the hashtag is being censored?? Titters.
I did laugh out loud when I saw the original #CameronMustGo version of Bart's blackboard
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
I'm not sure about that. He has a very vocal set of supporters, but [anecdote] pretty much everyone in my office, from the 22yo Essex 'lad' to our geriatric regulatory expert think he's a self-satisfied bell-end (I paraphrase). Against that, you have 30%+ who are positive about UKIP (number guesstimated, may be more).
I hope you are right.
He is same age as me/from same area, and almost everyone I know thinks he is a complete dickhead, but he seems v popular with media types.. UKIP are also popular here, but I wasn't sure South Essex was typical
It could be an interesting clash. Depends really on how much Brand knows about Farage's Establishment and City background.
Most people from Essex wouldn't consider the City to be anything to do with being part of the Establishment
Will be interesting to see if Brand tries to play class war over Farage going to Private School though. I have far more in common with Brand than Farage in terms of upbringing, but would consider Farage far more in touch with people like me
Perhaps after all the 'Ed is crap' threads we should have an 'Ed is crap' thread?
But I mean EdB.
I really think that EdM made something of a coherent fist of policy today. He's worked out that there are realistic promises and unrealistic ones. I don't agree with most of what he says, but it's not totally insane.
Balls though - quite how an apparently well-qualified man can display an ignorance of biblical proportions in his specialist subject baffles me. I really can't ever recall him making a good economic argument.
How long before the endless stream of bad press for UKIP is reflected in their poll ratings?
There's been something of a 'get UKIP' campaign for a while, Fenman, here as well as in the MSM.
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
I'm not sure about that. He has a very vocal set of supporters, but [anecdote] pretty much everyone in my office, from the 22yo Essex 'lad' to our geriatric regulatory expert think he's a self-satisfied bell-end (I paraphrase). Against that, you have 30%+ who are positive about UKIP (number guesstimated, may be more).
I hope you are right.
He is same age as me/from same area, and almost everyone I know thinks he is a complete dickhead, but he seems v popular with media types.. UKIP are also popular here, but I wasn't sure South Essex was typical
It could be an interesting clash. Depends really on how much Brand knows about Farage's Establishment and City background.
Most people from Essex wouldn't consider the City to be anything to do with being part of the Establishment
Will be interesting to see if Brand tries to play class war over Farage going to Private School though. I have far more in common with Brand than Farage in terms of upbringing, but would consider Farage far more in touch with people like me
Brand is just an incoherent fool with the gift of charm. Farage,, well yes too, but he's less charming and less foolish.
It's almost a new Turing test - if you think Brand makes sense then you're not sentient. Pointing out quite why he's a blithering idiot is harder. He throws out so many spikes in any discussion that you find yourself wanting to see how others respond rather than paying any attention to what he's said (and vacuous nonsense isn't a seller anyway).
Many people have no idea what their council does or doesn't spend its money on because their only point of contact with it is the bins.
I read, for instance, that councils spend 25% of everything they get on former employees pensions.
Generally, most people don't read the Statement of Accounts but you'd better believe people are interested in how much is spent on filling in potholes, running schools and libraries and that's reflected in Freedom of Information Requests as an example.
So if a County like Surrey gets in £1.5 billion in funds, it spends £400m on staff pensions every year, does it ? I find that statement astonishing. A quick check of the Statement of Accounts for 2012-13 shows Surrey did pay £55m in Employer Pension Contributions and paid out £114 million in pensions and death in service benefits.
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
In terms of the outcome of next May's General Election, this is arguably the most important post on PB.com this year. It certainly gets my vote, that's for sure. All those, *cough*, who have long and stridently argued that Labour has an inbuilt advantage of between 6% - 7.5% need to read this slowly and carefully again and again.
Only because of the SNP. If Labour = SNP at 34%, we are almost back at the old equation. Though , I think SNP will be higher than 36%.
In terms of the outcome of next May's General Election, this is arguably the most important post on PB.com this year. It certainly gets my vote, that's for sure. All those, *cough*, who have long and stridently argued that Labour has an inbuilt advantage of between 6% - 7.5% need to read this slowly and carefully again and again.
Well Ed's relaunch No 64,972 didn't hasn't energised the main news. ITV news - " Ed Miliband made a big bog speech today and said absolutely nothing." .....Oh dear..
There was more about the economy in his conference speech..
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
In terms of the outcome of next May's General Election, this is arguably the most important post on PB.com this year. It certainly gets my vote, that's for sure. All those, *cough*, who have long and stridently argued that Labour has an inbuilt advantage of between 6% - 7.5% need to read this slowly and carefully again and again.
I am sorry and disagree with Kellner and the views expressed by number cruncher and yourself . It is pure wishful thinking from a view through blue tinted spectacles . To show a graph and interpret the dotted line portion as if it were fact is ludicrous .
As it was the daily mail I had a poke around to confirm
here is a quote from an foi request to falkirk council
"Mr Ovens,
The total income derived from Council Tax in 2008/09 was around £59 million. The total sum paid into pension schemes in 2008/09 was around £29 million. £29 million is 49.15% of £59 million.
All Council income (i.e. other than the £29 million paid to pension schemes) goes towards the provision of local services.
I hope this answers your query about pensions and the Council tax."
As it was the daily mail I had a poke around to confirm
here is a quote from an foi request to falkirk council
"Mr Ovens,
The total income derived from Council Tax in 2008/09 was around £59 million. The total sum paid into pension schemes in 2008/09 was around £29 million. £29 million is 49.15% of £59 million.
All Council income (i.e. other than the £29 million paid to pension schemes) goes towards the provision of local services.
I hope this answers your query about pensions and the Council tax."
As it was the daily mail I had a poke around to confirm
here is a quote from an foi request to falkirk council
"Mr Ovens,
The total income derived from Council Tax in 2008/09 was around £59 million. The total sum paid into pension schemes in 2008/09 was around £29 million. £29 million is 49.15% of £59 million.
All Council income (i.e. other than the £29 million paid to pension schemes) goes towards the provision of local services.
I hope this answers your query about pensions and the Council tax."
I assume that is for past and present employees?
That was not made clear, the lgpl is fully funded though I know my own council for example has a contribution rate of 18% of employees wages. There are however payments into fire and police pensions who's status I am unsure of
As it was the daily mail I had a poke around to confirm
here is a quote from an foi request to falkirk council
"Mr Ovens,
The total income derived from Council Tax in 2008/09 was around £59 million. The total sum paid into pension schemes in 2008/09 was around £29 million. £29 million is 49.15% of £59 million.
All Council income (i.e. other than the £29 million paid to pension schemes) goes towards the provision of local services.
I hope this answers your query about pensions and the Council tax."
Council Tax is only a small proportion of their funding, though.
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
The notion that the tories hate their own country shows what depths you have to sink to to justify your prejudice. Everything else is contorted drivel as well. I am British and my identity has not collapsed. Inevitably when all the people with chips on their shoulders run out of excuses its 'the PR men' who get it. The SNP have managed to engage with the anti English which is one way to stir patritism that Samuel Johnson would recognise.
If you think that is what is driving the SNP - where most of all there was considerable interest and sympathy in the problem of the English regions during indyref - then you are misunderstanding the situation. They may be anti-Tory, and anti-London rule, but those are quite different things.
The Tories can't be very fond of their own country if they have left it in a state where we have to have foreign anti-submarine aircraft in Scottish coastal waters to do the basic job they should never have let lapse - defence.
Mr. Pagan, that's shocking, and may do a lot, if it becomes common currency, to diminish public sympathy for 'cash-strapped' councils.
Are these the same cash strapped councils with substantial reserves, who choose to cut services rather than headcount, so beloved of The Daily Mail?
Feel free to dig out the info on that yourself I obviously missed that article. I knew however as it was a daily mail article it ought to be checked which is why I went off to see what I could dig up. Falkirk was first on the list of foi's which is why I looked at that one
Betting is becoming extremely hazardous. Many independents and small parties will be launching in January - parties like Mebyon Kernow - Independent Cornwall. I'd keep your main party powder dry. 2015 could be the year the system collapses in on itself. See previous post, in which OGH says he has no idea what will happen next, as main party support hits critical lows.
As it was the daily mail I had a poke around to confirm
here is a quote from an foi request to falkirk council
"Mr Ovens,
The total income derived from Council Tax in 2008/09 was around £59 million. The total sum paid into pension schemes in 2008/09 was around £29 million. £29 million is 49.15% of £59 million.
All Council income (i.e. other than the £29 million paid to pension schemes) goes towards the provision of local services.
I hope this answers your query about pensions and the Council tax."
Council Tax is only a small proportion of their funding, though.
While that is true 29 million is still a lot for 7000 employees. I believe the average employer contribution in the private sector is closer to 5% than the 18% enjoyed by the council employees at my locale
Mr. Carnyx, English regions? England's one land, as Scotland is.
I know you don't mean that badly, or to provoke, but talk of regions (especially in the devolution context) irks me. The English want and need a single Parliament, not to be sliced up by political pygmies.
Lets hope the tuth will out. Peston pointed this out to Miliband who merely said it would involve billions of cuts. The fact that this represented the scale of Labours failure was lost on him. Its quite pathetic that Miliband and Labour dress up sound economic management in the language of terror. Its equally pathetic that Miliband feels incapable of promising sound economic management.
Congratulations to the latest elected members of the House of Lords. The two crossbenchers elected are Lord Russell of Liverpool and the Duke of Somerset.
Mr. Carnyx, English regions? England's one land, as Scotland is.
I know you don't mean that badly, or to provoke, but talk of regions (especially in the devolution context) irks me. The English want and need a single Parliament, not to be sliced up by political pygmies.
No, not intended to upset at all - apologies if so. I was going to say provinces (again not pejoratively) but I got told off for that the last time I used it!
The low spread for UKIP is out of line with their performance in the 2013 and 2014 council elections, where they either topped the poll or came close in dozens of constituences. The dearth of constituency level polling is not highlighting cases where UKIP can win in a first past the post election on a relatively low share if they are taking votes off both Labour and the Tories.
We don't have much information on how UKIP are doing in UKIP friendly safe Tory seats.Are some Tory MPs right to be a bit nervous about UKIP despite holding healthy majorities? I'm not sure if Ashcroft will research it as it could encourage tactical voting against the Tories.
There are seats where UKIP have got the most votes at the most recent local elections despite the Tories polling over 50% at the 2010 GE; for example Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, and Thanet North in 2013 and Aldridge-Brownhills in 2014. There could be a lot of MPs in trouble who may have considered themselves safe.
New HoC Library report, sourced within. In particular,
“The impact of removing Scottish MPs from the records of historic Commons divisions is also estimated. Of approximately 3,600 divisions to occur between 26th June 2001 and 26 September 2014, 22 (0.6%) would have concluded differently had the votes of Scottish MPs not been counted.
The note also compares, for each division since 2001, the lobby in which the majority of MPs per constituent country of the UK have voted to the lobby in which the majority of UK MPs voted.
In the current Parliament the lobby in which the majority of English MPs have voted has coincided with that of the majority of UK MPs for 99% of divisions. The majority of Scottish MPs has coincided with the majority of UK MPs for 24% of divisions; that of Welsh MPs for 26% of divisions.”
To be sure, that is with the SNP using its selfdenying ordinance, but with many more SLAB MPs doing the complete opposite. Hmm.
Mr. Carnyx, English regions? England's one land, as Scotland is.
I know you don't mean that badly, or to provoke, but talk of regions (especially in the devolution context) irks me. The English want and need a single Parliament, not to be sliced up by political pygmies.
It will be sad if that happens, what we need is English Votes for English Laws in Westminster. But it is true that an English Parliament is what may come out of Scottish devolution. I really do not want to see another layer of polititians, 500+ of them. I fail to see the point. 500 more constituency boundaries to be drawn and redrawn. Another ugly Parliament building.
This makes me really sad about current "debate" in Britain. Putting aside the owner not handling the questions well, the agenda is clear how dare you charge £3 for a bowel of cereal, because the neighbourhood is poor.
This guy should be celebrated. He has got off his arse, found a fun niche, and done something about. Nobody is forcing anybody to go into this guys cafe, it isn't the only place to get breakfast and maybe hey people from outside the neighbourhood might venture there to visit and spend money in the local area, it clearly will create jobs, etc.
By the questioners logic, you better not set up a business in a poor area if you intend on making any money, because well I don't know...because poor areas should always remain poor, with no businesses and no job prospects?
Subway charge £3, ban them, McDonalds ban them...Only cafe's charging 99p for a meal are to be allowed.
This is obviously the wrong type of capitalism that Ed warns about.
Mr. Flightpath, if England got a Parliament, Westminster would be gutted from most areas (excepting Defence, Foreign and some Home and Treasury functions). There would be no need for 650 Westminster MPs anymore.
I agree with you on new buildings. Modern architecture usually, though not always, looks rubbish.
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
The notion that the tories hate their own country shows what depths you have to sink to to justify your prejudice. Everything else is contorted drivel as well. I am British and my identity has not collapsed. Inevitably when all the people with chips on their shoulders run out of excuses its 'the PR men' who get it. The SNP have managed to engage with the anti English which is one way to stir patritism that Samuel Johnson would recognise.
... The Tories can't be very fond of their own country if they have left it in a state where we have to have foreign anti-submarine aircraft in Scottish coastal waters to do the basic job they should never have let lapse - defence.
A pretty absurd comment, given we are part of a massive multi nation defence treaty. We have not let defense 'lapse'. We are for instance building 2 giant aircraft carriers and helping to develope an advance jet fighter to fly off them. mega billions and funding already the replacement for Trident.
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
In terms of the outcome of next May's General Election, this is arguably the most important post on PB.com this year. It certainly gets my vote, that's for sure. All those, *cough*, who have long and stridently argued that Labour has an inbuilt advantage of between 6% - 7.5% need to read this slowly and carefully again and again.
The skew could have at least as much resonance as swingback.
Subway charge £3, ban them, McDonalds ban them...Only cafe's charging 99p for a meal are to be allowed.
This is obviously the wrong type of capitalism that Ed warns about.
I don't see how it's any different from pubs or coffee shops. There are all sorts of retailers which take cheap foods and drinks and whack a large margin on top to pay for the store and staff.
The low spread for UKIP is out of line with their performance in the 2013 and 2014 council elections, where they either topped the poll or came close in dozens of constituences. The dearth of constituency level polling is not highlighting cases where UKIP can win in a first past the post election on a relatively low share if they are taking votes off both Labour and the Tories.
We don't have much information on how UKIP are doing in UKIP friendly safe Tory seats.Are some Tory MPs right to be a bit nervous about UKIP despite holding healthy majorities? I'm not sure if Ashcroft will research it as it could encourage tactical voting against the Tories.
There are seats where UKIP have got the most votes at the most recent local elections despite the Tories polling over 50% at the 2010 GE; for example Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, and Thanet North in 2013 and Aldridge-Brownhills in 2014. There could be a lot of MPs in trouble who may have considered themselves safe.
The BES report yesterday said something along the lines of UKIP would have trouble to get more than a dozen seats.
The woman at the centre of UKIP-Gate just gets better and better....
"emerged today that she was only a ‘cover supervisor’ at a comprehensive school in east London - and not a teacher. In fact Ms Bolter had not worked at any school in the borough since Spring 2013, a spokesman for Barking and Dagenham council told the Telegraph.
It also emerged today that she did not ‘defect’ from Labour – and was in fact thrown out for failing to pay her membership fees."
At this rate she will be on next years apprentice, as that lot are always found out to be a load of lying fantasists, whose CVs never stand up to any sort of proper inspection.
Subway charge £3, ban them, McDonalds ban them...Only cafe's charging 99p for a meal are to be allowed.
This is obviously the wrong type of capitalism that Ed warns about.
I don't see how it's any different from pubs or coffee shops. There are all sorts of retailers which take cheap foods and drinks and whack a large margin on top to pay for the store and staff.
And if you increase the minimum wage the the prices have to go up even more.
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
The notion that the tories hate their own country shows what depths you have to sink to to justify your prejudice. Everything else is contorted drivel as well. I am British and my identity has not collapsed. Inevitably when all the people with chips on their shoulders run out of excuses its 'the PR men' who get it. The SNP have managed to engage with the anti English which is one way to stir patritism that Samuel Johnson would recognise.
... The Tories can't be very fond of their own country if they have left it in a state where we have to have foreign anti-submarine aircraft in Scottish coastal waters to do the basic job they should never have let lapse - defence.
A pretty absurd comment, given we are part of a massive multi nation defence treaty. We have not let defense 'lapse'. We are for instance building 2 giant aircraft carriers and helping to develope an advance jet fighter to fly off them. mega billions and funding already the replacement for Trident.
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
The notion that the tories hate their own country shows what depths you have to sink to to justify your prejudice. Everything else is contorted drivel as well. I am British and my identity has not collapsed. Inevitably when all the people with chips on their shoulders run out of excuses its 'the PR men' who get it. The SNP have managed to engage with the anti English which is one way to stir patritism that Samuel Johnson would recognise.
... The Tories can't be very fond of their own country if they have left it in a state where we have to have foreign anti-submarine aircraft in Scottish coastal waters to do the basic job they should never have let lapse - defence.
A pretty absurd comment, given we are part of a massive multi nation defence treaty. We have not let defense 'lapse'. We are for instance building 2 giant aircraft carriers and helping to develope an advance jet fighter to fly off them. mega billions and funding already the replacement for Trident.
What a waste of money.
% of GDP defence spending.
UK 2.3 Swiss 0.8 New Zealand 1.1
The Empire ended a long time ago.
Whereas debt interest was about 3%. Puts it in perspective.
Comments
Daily Mail U.K. @DailyMailUK · 11m11 minutes ago
Picture claiming to be of Jihadi John appears on Twitter http://dailym.ai/1zUlRsZ
It's hyperbole to claim, as some do, that every cut will bring the end of civilization as we know it. My own council, for instance, still hands out a free newspaper to every household. The cost is probably miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Nonetheless were it cut it would be ridiculous to claim that the council tax payers not getting a dozen pages of stories about local activities were suffering pain.
I heard him speak on racing many times and he's very knowledgeable.
First is the move away from reliance on Central Government grant for the bulk of income. The idea that counties like Kent, Surrey and Hampshire could take the Stamp Duty tax paid on housing purchases in their areas and spend it locally is gaining a lot of traction and would further reduce dependency on central Government grant.
Second is the more well-known collaboration of services across Councils. This is odd because it occurs in one of two ways - either in terms of function where one function joins forces with one Council and another with another Council so you get a patchwork of merged functions or the virtual merger of two Councils at back office and even customer-facing level so although the Authororities retain separate civic identities they are (in terms of what goes on behind the scenes) one Council.
Technology has enabled much of this and the investment in technology in the local authority sector is a useful counterpoint to the private sector where it seems to be cheaper to hire more bodies than make serious capital investment for future growth.
Oddly enough, this supports a devolution agenda in terms of providing more resources for the locality but the actual operating becomes more centralised (joined Call Centres, waste sites etc) which, as long as it provides good customer service, is all the resident should need.
Would be a good leader (Net ratings among Conservative identifiers):
Boris +19%
May +8%
Osborne -1%
Javid -16%
Hunt -29%
YouGov/@timesredbox
I've been betting semi-professionally on politics and horseracing for about ten years. Profits split about 50/50 between the two, but the turnover on racing is massive by comparison with politics, and the margins very much lower. The horseracing markets are very much more efficient than politics.
If it were possible, I would bet on nothing but politics but unfortunately there just aren't enough markets with reasonable liquidity.
@LJWatling: "I'm not sure it is a job for a woman" - says Labour's Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) of the fisheries minister post.
And could they win back Kippers? 'Wd be good leader'. Net rating among Ukip voters:
Boris -8
May -22
Javid -44
Osborne -50
YouGov/Red Box
For those not familiar each blob on the average line is the average of all polls in a 15 day period (7 days each side of the central date).
Now look carefully at the Greens - they are up in every one of the last four 15 day periods - ie that is consistent ongoing growth over the last 60 days - from 4.45% to 6.13%.
Changes over last 60 days:
Lab -1.56
Con -0.29
LD -0.62
UKIP +0.32
Green +1.68
Also worth noting that UKIP had a Clacton bounce but not a distinct Rochester bounce. However they have now settled higher than they were pre Clacton.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v1-aXNoGwZSLOIWziLoqq9rbN3MHg6qezWKbjsAkunw/edit?pli=1#gid=1268197642
Their ratings have held up pretty well and the 'bad press' may well prove counterproductive, as the Party seems to feed on an anti-establishment theme. Maybe a spell out of the news would do them more harm. For the moment, I don't expect them to drop or rise significantly in the polls.
Mid-teens seems to be where they are at and where they will stay for a bit - subject to 'events', of course.
In most areas there is an almost inexhaustible demand for the service and it is met by implicit rationing. Why would a politician tolerate greater rationing than is necessary?
Patrick O'Flynn retweeted
Nigel Farage@Nigel_Farage·Dec 10
61% of Britons reckon the UK spends too much on overseas aid. Here's a UKIP membership form: http://join.ukip.org/JoinOnline.aspx?type=1 …
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/2015guide/aylesbury/
https://twitter.com/UKIPAylesbury
Moderately interesting piece was on Channel4 News a wee bit ago and I've just seen there is an accompanying website article.
http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/scottish-labour-leadership-contest-general-election/29853
If that is actually representative of what is happening on the ground I'm liking my money I've spread around Glasgow on SNP wins.
Overseas aid per se isn;t the problem. Its what the main parties are asking the electorate to do at the same time.
ie take cuts to their services.
A token cut to overseas aid would probably have put this issue to bed. Their stupidity on this point is simply breathtaking.
Meanwhile, people who DO think austerity is necessary are not going to be persuaded by something as shifty and equivocal as "we'll make big cuts but not tell you what they'll be til after the election". Basically, Ed has yet again tried to sit on the fence and has ended up pleasing no-one on either side.
http://labourlist.org/2014/12/scottish-labours-next-leader-faces-a-huge-challenge-is-the-party-ready/
"Only 24 hours earlier, the SNP had managed to pack out The Hydro in Glasgow with 12,000 screaming supporters (many of them new members) all of whom had paid to be there. That’s more SNP members paying to go to a single event at a single venue on a single day than Scottish Labour has in total. It’s almost impossible to overstate the enthusiasm gap between Labour activists and their SNP opponents. The Nationalists seem full of zeal to achieve their goal of splitting the country, whilst Labour activists appear largely resigned, tired and fearful. Oh – and there are about eight times as many SNP members as Labour members now.
So how many Labour members turned up to see the three candidates vying to be their new leader in Scotland’s biggest city? I was hopeful when I saw the venue announced. I presumed we’d be in a large auditotium. I was wrong. Instead, I was ushered towards a small side room with just over 100 seats. This was it. Yesterday the SNP had 12,000 people pay to attend a rally, and a day later in the same city, Labour could barely scrape triple figures, for free, for a leadership contest. That’s 1/120th of the size of the SNP gathering, or 1/40th of the size of the Radical Independence Coalition event held the same weekend.
Taken aback by how small the gathering was, I at least assumed the questions from those who attended would reflect the huge organisational chasm that now exists between the two parties. On the contrary, there was even a low-level amount of backslapping over getting this paltry number to attend."
"To be fair to the candidates, it’s clear that they all understand the severity and precarity of the party’s position – but the new leader will need to take swift and drastic action to halt the decline. As one senior Scottish Labour figure said to me recently “however bad you think it is, it’s worse”.
They’re not wrong – and that’s the scale of the challenge the next Scottish Labour leader will face."
I've gone over Peter Kellner's piece from last week, where he read the last rights to UNS, and in particular, the article's seat illustration, showing the Conservatives and Labour on equal seats, despite the Tories getting fewer votes. That provoked lots of debate, much of it centred around the Conservatives' incumbency bonus (or lack thereof) among the class of 2010. So I've conduct a similar analysis with a few modifications to estimate what I refer to as the skew, aka the "electoral bias" - the difference in popular vote share between Labour and the Conservatives at which the two largest parties have equal seats. To summarise:
- The controversial 2% swing adjustment is entirely justified. If you compare Ashcroft marginals polling with Ashcroft national polling done at the same time, the swing from CON to LAB in the marginals is the same or only very slightly smaller than that across GB as a whole. But, crucially, it is quite a lot smaller than the swing across England and Wales. You can argue whether it's down to incumbency or something else, but the distinction only matters in a tiny number of seats.
- This, combined with Labour's likely Scottish losses, suggest that the skew has pretty much disappeared - the party with the most votes will probably have the most seats unless things are extremely close.
- As things stand (including LIB on 7%), LAB would now need a popular vote lead of about 7.5 points for a majority, not the 1 point or so that they would need based on UNS. CON would also need about a 7.5 point lead to win, more than the 6 points suggested by UNS (due to losses to UKIP and asymmetric swings in contests with the Lib Dems). Hence the strengthening expectations of a hung parliament.
- I've also looked at the history of the skew. It was nearly 8 points in 2001, due to massive differential turnout and the incumbency bonus for the 1997 Labour intake, but was pretty much zero in the 1980s.
http://www.ncpolitics.uk/2014/12/the-skew-aka-electoral-bias-which-party.html
It could export hydro and wind electricity for a century to UK and Europe.
Brand somehow manages to convince some people he is not part of the establishment, despite being about as typical of it as you can get, in a useful idiot way.. and I have little doubt he is more popular than UKIP/Farage
That's at the local level - is the same thing happening nationally ? Clearly not - initiatives from the centre just don't seem to have the same flexibility of implementation as locally-based ones which should come as no surprise.
I don't know what happens in the NHS or at FE Colleges and the like - it's not my area of work. As for the Fire & Rescue Service, that is a County responsibility but increasingly we are seeing all the "Bluelight" services collaborating in terms of coverage, storing of vehicles, accommodation etc.
He is same age as me/from same area, and almost everyone I know thinks he is a complete dickhead, but he seems v popular with media types.. UKIP are also popular here, but I wasn't sure South Essex was typical
Many people have no idea what their council does or doesn;t spend its money on because their only point of contact with it is the bins.
I read, for instance, that councils spend 25% of everything they get on former employees pensions.
Ho, ho, ho...
The SNP have shown that people are perfectly willing to engage in politics in the right circumstances. Our mainstream politicians have laboured under this misimpression that it's not their fault they're unpopular: it's just the public raging at globalisation etc. Well, actually, people are pretty keen on politics when they're offered a party that gives them a patriotic vision, that speaks to regular people as equals, and that doesn't just bend to the mainstream media. All three of our main parties have failed to do that, and have instead tried to appeal to a small circle in the media, and filled their operations with advertising executives and PR men. The whole collapse of British identity has happened because the entire political elite has avoided expressing a vision of that identity that appeals to the regular man on the street. As Orwell said, the left in England are people that have long disliked their own country, but what's truly embarrassing is that the Tories have bowed to that consensus. Hence the rise of UKIP.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8b1d1c90-8116-11e4-b956-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Lc3UPGGH
- Hashtag is now #CameronOut due to Twitter trending algorithms!
- Hashtags are temporary, the cause continues!
https://twitter.com/Daddiesmilk/status/543031544060067840
The SNP have managed to engage with the anti English which is one way to stir patritism that Samuel Johnson would recognise.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11286233/EU-judge-gives-Jean-Claude-Juncker-the-key-task-of-defeating-Euroscepticism.html
So much for an impartial judiciary...
I agree that Horse Racing along with top flight Soccer are most efficient markets you can get. Maybe I view the Political Markets as more efficient as yourself because I'm on a net loss. I just don't see the overreactions like you do in a lot of Sporting Markets. Any line that's restricted to pennies by the layers I don't really call a market.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-30080914
Sorry, I find you too boring to respond to these days. Feel free to respond to my posts, but just to let you know I'm unlikely to be responding to more of yours.
The cause continues?
Very profound.
It certainly gets my vote, that's for sure. All those, *cough*, who have long and stridently argued that Labour has an inbuilt advantage of between 6% - 7.5% need to read this slowly and carefully again and again.
Will be interesting to see if Brand tries to play class war over Farage going to Private School though. I have far more in common with Brand than Farage in terms of upbringing, but would consider Farage far more in touch with people like me
But I mean EdB.
I really think that EdM made something of a coherent fist of policy today. He's worked out that there are realistic promises and unrealistic ones. I don't agree with most of what he says, but it's not totally insane.
Balls though - quite how an apparently well-qualified man can display an ignorance of biblical proportions in his specialist subject baffles me. I really can't ever recall him making a good economic argument.
It's almost a new Turing test - if you think Brand makes sense then you're not sentient. Pointing out quite why he's a blithering idiot is harder. He throws out so many spikes in any discussion that you find yourself wanting to see how others respond rather than paying any attention to what he's said (and vacuous nonsense isn't a seller anyway).
So if a County like Surrey gets in £1.5 billion in funds, it spends £400m on staff pensions every year, does it ? I find that statement astonishing. A quick check of the Statement of Accounts for 2012-13 shows Surrey did pay £55m in Employer Pension Contributions and paid out £114 million in pensions and death in service benefits.
There was more about the economy in his conference speech..
Oh ? Errr... Perhaps not
The man is a total dud..
article reporting on the study here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2512940/Quarter-council-tax-goes-funding-town-hall-pensions--5-7bn-handed-past-year-goes-paying-retirement-incomes.html
EDIT: it was 8-10, so the quote is up from the opening price.
Jeez
As it was the daily mail I had a poke around to confirm
here is a quote from an foi request to falkirk council
"Mr Ovens,
The total income derived from Council Tax in 2008/09 was around £59 million. The total sum paid into pension schemes in 2008/09 was around £29 million. £29 million is 49.15% of £59 million.
All Council income (i.e. other than the £29 million paid to pension schemes) goes towards the provision of local services.
I hope this answers your query about pensions and the Council tax."
“I want to be sort of clear about this…”
"Mutley type laugh"
The Tories can't be very fond of their own country if they have left it in a state where we have to have foreign anti-submarine aircraft in Scottish coastal waters to do the basic job they should never have let lapse - defence.
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/council_taxpensions
I know you don't mean that badly, or to provoke, but talk of regions (especially in the devolution context) irks me. The English want and need a single Parliament, not to be sliced up by political pygmies.
Its quite pathetic that Miliband and Labour dress up sound economic management in the language of terror. Its equally pathetic that Miliband feels incapable of promising sound economic management.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-information-office/2014/Lords-notice-hereditary-peers-by-election-Dec-2014-result-allenby-cobbold.pdf
Ha, I almost included a line about it 'not being as bad as provinces'.
New HoC Library report, sourced within. In particular,
“The impact of removing Scottish MPs from the records of historic Commons divisions is also estimated. Of approximately 3,600 divisions to occur between 26th June 2001 and 26 September 2014, 22 (0.6%) would have concluded differently had the votes of Scottish MPs not been counted.
The note also compares, for each division since 2001, the lobby in which the majority of MPs per constituent country of the UK have voted to the lobby in which the majority of UK MPs voted.
In the current Parliament the lobby in which the majority of English MPs have voted has coincided with that of the majority of UK MPs for 99% of divisions. The majority of Scottish MPs has coincided with the majority of UK MPs for 24% of divisions; that of Welsh MPs for 26% of divisions.”
To be sure, that is with the SNP using its selfdenying ordinance, but with many more SLAB MPs doing the complete opposite. Hmm.
I really do not want to see another layer of polititians, 500+ of them. I fail to see the point. 500 more constituency boundaries to be drawn and redrawn. Another ugly Parliament building.
This makes me really sad about current "debate" in Britain. Putting aside the owner not handling the questions well, the agenda is clear how dare you charge £3 for a bowel of cereal, because the neighbourhood is poor.
This guy should be celebrated. He has got off his arse, found a fun niche, and done something about. Nobody is forcing anybody to go into this guys cafe, it isn't the only place to get breakfast and maybe hey people from outside the neighbourhood might venture there to visit and spend money in the local area, it clearly will create jobs, etc.
By the questioners logic, you better not set up a business in a poor area if you intend on making any money, because well I don't know...because poor areas should always remain poor, with no businesses and no job prospects?
Subway charge £3, ban them, McDonalds ban them...Only cafe's charging 99p for a meal are to be allowed.
This is obviously the wrong type of capitalism that Ed warns about.
I agree with you on new buildings. Modern architecture usually, though not always, looks rubbish.
We have not let defense 'lapse'. We are for instance building 2 giant aircraft carriers and helping to develope an advance jet fighter to fly off them. mega billions and funding already the replacement for Trident.
Frankly 7 players should be taken off and never wear the shirt again. They are beyond mark reckless.
"emerged today that she was only a ‘cover supervisor’ at a comprehensive school in east London - and not a teacher. In fact Ms Bolter had not worked at any school in the borough since Spring 2013, a spokesman for Barking and Dagenham council told the Telegraph.
It also emerged today that she did not ‘defect’ from Labour – and was in fact thrown out for failing to pay her membership fees."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2870480/Ukip-sex-scandal-accuser-facing-questions-teaching-claims-emerges-never-went-Oxford-EXPELLED-Labour.html
At this rate she will be on next years apprentice, as that lot are always found out to be a load of lying fantasists, whose CVs never stand up to any sort of proper inspection.
We've got the perfect manager for this team.
% of GDP defence spending.
UK 2.3
Swiss 0.8
New Zealand 1.1
The Empire ended a long time ago.