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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » What looks like being the final polling weekend of the year – rolling blog
We are almost there – the final polls of the 2014. Generally there’s a complete break over the holiday period and the polling schedule returns to normal in the New Year.
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I accept as a head of department you may work longer hours, but, unless an OFSTED inspection is coming up (yet another reason they should do unannounced visits in my opinion), I can't believe that many teachers work 12 hours at the weekend.
And 8% pay raises are still the national pay scales, agreed by government and the unions.
Probably Labour ahead. Tories with their private school kids are away enjoying holiday warmth
Seriously though this is such a pointless time to be polling.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30560399
Too late for a by election then?
No, he's an MEP, so slot filled automatically.
The survey will be a boost for Labour and its leader, Ed Miliband, who has endured a torrid time since the autumn conference season as the political parties prepare to enter a general election year.
It is the second poll in a week showing that the Tories have lost ground since chancellor George Osborne’s autumn statement earlier this month, in which he spelled out the need for several more years of deep cuts to public spending.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/20/labour-takes-seven-point-lead-farage-opinium-poll
The teachers unions seem to be far too weak on this. They really ought to take a book out of the rail unions and instruct their members not to do this work unless they are paid for it.
Another area the teachers unions should intervene IMHO is with pupil assaults. Expecting teachers to be in a room with known violent pupils is unreasonable and I would have thought breaches the HASAW regulations, unions should make clear that if a teacher refuses to work on the grounds of safety they will back them to the hilt.
Ultimately the general worklife of a teacher seems to depend on the headteacher, if the head is a good leader then it can be a nice job, if the head is weak or a bully, its awful. Schools are a bit like small companies in that way.
As I was saying ...
Phew. Miliband safe.
Lab 33.9%
Con 31.8%
UKIP 14.7%
LD 7.8%
Lab lead 2.1% - joint highest Lab lead since 12th Oct.
Given tonight's lead from Opinium and assuming YouGov don't come up with something totally contradictory, which I doubt they will, then Sporting will need to be very brave should they decide to stick with their most recent GE seats quote for the Tories (so far as I am aware) of 279 - 285.
More likely they'll take the soft option of keeping this market "suspended" (aka closed), which is rather unfortunate for those of us who have already invested and find ourselves unable to trade.
A big black mark for Sporting is due methinks ...... don't offer markets which you're not prepared to trade most of the time, apart from those short periods immediately prior to the release of polling figures.
The poll shows the low tory vote the same. If it means anything it shows Labour doing better at UKIP expense. This may be coincidence. Frankly even as a Tory (or perhaps because I am a tory) I hope not, since it will indicate that the 'WWC' are not the neanderthal morons that Farage and co think they are.
I.e. None at all
I don't know either the evidence that they are more heavily Tory than Labour voters, but I'd put a sizeable sum that they are, for reasons that really don't need to spelled out … do they?
Additionally, throw in other factors: office parties, hangovers, shopping, people spending too much, festivities, drunkenness, arguments, office closures, factories shutting, lack of routines etc. etc. etc. etc.
But perhaps the most compelling reason is than bank holidays and breaks ALWAYS seem to throw up odd polls. We have seen it time and time again. So experience says, just don't trust holiday polling.
15th January, or even beginning of February, is when I think we will come back on polling track.
and yet this Labour cheerleader is pleased - is he confused which party he's in?
Douglas Carswell MP@DouglasCarswell·12 mins12 minutes ago
“@georgeeaton: Labour seven points ahead in new Opinium poll .... swing away from Tories since the Autumn Statement.” <- more George please!
Perhaps this has already been through the PB wringer but checking the details of the Observer poll I came across their poll of the public's predictions of 2015. The man or woman on the Clapham omnibus says:
There will be another hung parliament after the general election – 38%
One or more countries leave the EU – 23%
UKIP will join either Labour or the Conservatives in a coalition government – 20%
David Cameron will be the Prime Minister after the general election – 17%
Prince Harry will get engaged – 16%
The 3rd one seems to have been ruled out before the ink on the poll was dry, but then again a week is a long time....
About a 90% chance of a Tory seat lead, but a Hung Parliament rises to around 84% chance.
Cameron must be having sleepless nights deciding whether to risk the leader debates...
I see tonight's YouGov poll takes us pretty well back to the recent averages which surprises me not a jot.
Guess we'll find out in January. Safe to say the coming 2-3 months will be crunch time.
UKIP ........................... 15%
LD + Greens + SNP .... 17%
voice 1 - I think Santa Claus is Jewish.
voice 2 - What makes you think that?
voice 1 - Who else would work Christmas?
It made for a good laugh waiting at the traffic lights.
Had lunch today at a restaurant with an 11 feet by 18 feet HD TV. It's an actual TV, not projection. It's apparently the largest HD TV in the southeast.
They show sports events and music dvds, and have a great sound system.
Totally irrespective of what or who these debates might help, I do not want them.
2, 1, 0, 5, 2
Average = 2
That's Lab's best week with YouGov for 9 weeks.
The Lab lead last week was 0.2 and also 0.2 the week before that.
I can see him as next leader, though suspect that his marmite politics may prevent him from being PM.
Tonight's poll in the Observer is a good poll, let's hope the recovery continues for the sake of our schools.
Ambulance crews are to be given more time to respond to incidents
Secret memo revealed targets may be increased from eight to 19 minutes
'Red 2' incidents, the second most serious, would be affected by change
Senior NHS doctors warned the scheme could risk patients' lives
Comes as the emergency services face widespread crisis this winter
I think I posted this interesting Staggers piece about him last year - probably fuller than his obits are likely to be. Quite an extraordinary life.
You are concerned about the schools.
Gove is concerned about the pupils
Lots of my friends left the country on or around 12th December when the private schools broke up, some of them are abroad for the whole holiday others for a week, back this weekend.
Dismiss it as much as you like.
If so, then 19 minutes for stroke victims is absolutely not a problem - the critical point is the drugs are administered with a 30 minutes window from the event
The Whatiffery is strong here.
And you're crap at blockquoting with links. Apart from that; meh.
You are of course right it is pupils who should be challenged and improved and of course educated. I do see Labour pandering more to unions systems the establishment and dogma rather than pupils. So the support for the polls by roserees is misplaced especially if she(?) sees the recovery as a green light to waste money.
And it is dogma by Gove that he was too fond of, which is a shame since it clouds all the sensible work he and the govt have done.
* This was years ago and there's much more stuff out there now, but even then there were quite a lot of Java applets out there for teaching demonstrations. But no, better to code it all from scratch himself... another chap at a school down the road did the same thing, retained copyright on his work, licensed it to other institutions, and eventually sold out for £££ to an edutech company. Sadly my ex-colleague never got the same reward. For a similar amount of thousands-of-man-hours, he produced a system that was "used" by a few dozen students per year. Worse, I got to see the detailed user statistics and most of the carefully crafted simulations were only interacted with by 2 or 3 students, the rest had just glanced at it and moved on...
What we do know is that every minute counts and delay causes morbidity and mortality.
Is this a sensible form of rationing? That is where the debate should lie.
Would anyone expect anything less?
Is it necessary to crank out those hours to be an effective teacher? An ex-colleague of mine used to arrive at work a little before 8 to get all her marking done. Breaks, free slots and lunch were spent doing lesson-planning and admin (she had a lower-middle management role for her sins). She avoided getting drawn in to any activity that didn't have £££ attached - no volunteering for some ad hoc committee, or running school sports or drama or music productions. She would be fastidious though about non-teaching duties that came attached to her management role: mentoring trainees, preparing strategy documents, calculating progress checks etc. If there were no after-school meetings then she'd stay for 30 minutes to sort out reprographics etc for the lessons she'd planned. Then she'd be off home, not much after 4, taking just her handbag with her - she flat-out refused to do any work at home, evenings or weekends. Pile of marking would be left on her desk for the next morning.
Her efficiency was fearsome and few of us - public or private sector - could aspire to it. To achieve it, she pretty much taught straight out of the textbook (and a library of trusted worksheets she'd assembled, though not written herself). But she was an "Outstanding" teacher, both in the (c) OFSTED kind of way and in results obtained (most likely because she was as no-nonsense with the kids as she was with her approach to work), so even when senior management put pressure on that she should be being more "creative" she had the status to ignore it.
I don't think all teachers can work like that. Some subject areas are particularly bad for this. Secondary drama, music and PE come to mind with all the extra-curricular entanglements they bring, and these days they need to spend time marking written work too - even in the PE department! Upper-middle management brings more responsibilities. Primary teachers are less able to "teach from the book". If someone suggests all teachers are working in stakhanovite conditions, it's simply not true. But I've known people who couldn't cope with workload and stress too - and suffered from it. One guy would, regular as clockwork, take a month or more off sick with stress when the coursework marking-glut came round. His colleagues were cynical about it, but the guy looked like a beaten shell of a man on his return. I do hope he quit the job because it wasn't doing him any favours.
If you read the Labour 2010 manifesto you will read that they said the NHS now had enough money and would now undertake a £20 billion efficiency programme.
health budget 2010 £ 116.9 billion
health budget 2015 £ 133.0 billion
... although the last is more likely to be £135 billion since only recently the govt announced an extra £2 billion for the NHS from economies elsewhere.
''Historically, international comparisons show that – in terms of national health care institutions – the NHS is the best in the world.''
http://www.bbc.com/news/education-27087942
That's 8am to 8pm with no work at weekends. And that's self-reported, so I suspect it's actually a little lower, and includes time in front of the TV doing marking casually.
Plus, of course, they get 13 weeks holiday a year. In my experience they probably work about 1-2 of those weeks. But it's still more than twice what most people get.
My sister-in-law, UK resident, this year had to wait over 6 weeks for gall bladder surgery, and didn't know when or where it was to be done, and eventually it was done - with only a couple of days notice - at a private hospital. She had no input as to time or location.
My daughter a couple of months later had to have the same surgery. It was done within 48 hours. She was able to choose where and when - admittedly as she had Obamacare the choices were limited, but as the patient she made the choices.
A couple of years ago I had to have an MRI. My doctor told me the office would make the appointment but it wasn't urgent and they'd tell me where and when. The appointment was the next day. I asked what would have happened if it had been urgent. The response was that in that case they would have sent me immediately for the MRI.
I have no doubt that the doctors and nurses in the NHS are every bit as skilled and dedicated as they are here, but the NHS is simply not set up to be responsive to patients. Here every doctor and hospital knows that patients have a choice and is ready to serve them - the NHS knows you have no choice and offers abysmal service and flexibility.
There is also a big difference in spending. The USA spends 18% of a higher per capita GDP on health, the UK a little over 8%. To a large extent you get what you pay for.
The NHS is a monolithic government outfit. In most other countries it isn't.
The percentage of GDP is a canard - it's all about how it's set up. Here the patient is the driver. In the UK it isn't.
I moved from Harrogate to a village outside and was told I'd have to change my doctor because of this. My doctor is my choice not some idiotic regulation requirement.
After all I'm the one paying for this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2882176/Weak-Miliband-blasted-giving-immigration-rebel-plum-job-threatened-walk-Shadow-Cabinet.html
Lord Ashcroft@LordAshcroft·2h2 hours ago
Populus online poll LAB 35% CON 34% LDEM 9% UKIP 13%
But the polls are all over the place. I suspect at this time of year it is a tough job for pollsters to get a proper sample given how busy people are
Oh hang on, that's the Friday Populus poll, Lord A just reposting it to show how all over the place these polls are....
Thankfully, she's now left teaching.
http://ukgeneralelection2015.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/list-of-oldest-living-former-mps.html
For the record, I will almost certainly not be voting either Labour or Conservative in 2015...
Healey (1952) replaces Freeman (1945) in that regard...
Audrey's point on that doesn't work, incidentally, unless she argues that not only are more Tories on holiday, but the ones who aren't on holiday are more likely than the others to switch to Labour. Each poll is based on a quota sample of former supporters of each party, so if they're looking for 500 2010 Tories they'll keep looking till they find them - it doesn't make any difference if more of this group (out of the millions for voted Tory) are away, the sampling works anyway.
It's the same issue as when people claim that it's significant that a Populus has more or fewer people representing one group and thus uprated or downrated - that's fine in polling terms unless the ones they find are uncharacteristic.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2882199/Farage-abused-power-save-Ukip-candidate-racism-storm-Email-reveals-overturned-ban-party-golden-boy.html
Tho I suspect most of the Red Kippers would be unfazed by 'poofters' or 'chinkie', unlike the Guardianistas who would be first to board the Outrage bus......