I don't see why a Labour minority government would necessarily be unstable, even if it didn't have supply and confidence from any other party (which I expect in practice it could secure). Its policies are generally individually popular, so it could put them forward and dare other parties to vote them down.
In a hung Parliament, it's rarely in the interest of a majority to have an early election.
Hmm, it doesn't work like that. Firstly, even if they can get majorities on various measures which are individually popular, they are in combination incoherent without some unpopular measures for which they couldn't get a majority. This has disagreeable consequences which would require sudden, chaotic and highly unpopular U-turns, most notably in slashing public spending in a panic.
Those of us of a certain age have been there, and have seen the T-shirt. 1974 is now receding from the collective memory, which is why people are now contemplating minority government with equanimity. They are likely to have a rude awakening when the reality presents itself.
The SNP had a wafer-thin plurality in Scotland in 2007. Its administration was neither chaotic nor incoherent.
We might be in for quite a lot of excitement at times when Labour were facing down other parties and daring them to provoke a change of government or new election, but generally one or more of the minor parties (or possibly in some circumstances the Conservatives) would blink.
It's also worth remembering that the Holyrood voting system was deliberately gerrymandered by Labour, when they set it up, to 'ensure' that only minority or coalition governments would occur: the reason being to stop the SNP from ever winning a majority and calling an indyref.
The SNP had a wafer-thin plurality in Scotland in 2007. Its administration was neither chaotic nor incoherent.
We might be in for quite a lot of excitement at times when Labour were facing down other parties and daring them to provoke a change of government or new election, but generally one or more of the minor parties (or possibly in some circumstances the Conservatives) would blink.
The dynamics of Holyrood are completely different. It's not a model which is relevant to Westminster, not least because they haven't in the past had any significant economic freedom. So the problem of what to do about taxes and public spending, whilst keeping the confidence of the financial markets, didn't arise.
What makes this even worse is that, if the minority government depends on the SNP, then it is dependent on a party which actively benefits from failure at Westminster.
I begin to despair of this country. 1400 white girls raped by racist pedophiles in Rotherham.... silence. Inertia. Maybe an MBE for the "director of children's services".
But man posts vile and racist remarks on Facebook!!!?? A YEAR IN JAIL.
Sorry but weren't 5 men given lengthy jail sentences in 2010 with more criminal cases about to come to court ?
5 men jailed. 1400 girls raped. Do the maths. And what about all the other towns?
Also ample evidence of political cover up, council incompetence, police whitewash, municipal corruption, collusion between rapists, police and councillors etc. And?
Nothing. Nil. Zero.
Yet a bit of vile abuse on Facebook and you get slammed inside, pronto.
Sometimes governments act swiftly
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
David L It is a testimony to the political incompetence of Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem dopes that they had a referendum on a voting system in which scarcely anyone had the slightest interest.
To be fair to Clegg, it wasn’t his choice. It was the only option Cameron would let him have. I don’t know whether Clegg thought, or was led to believe, that Cameron would instruct his lot to soft pedal but they didn’t. It may be that Cameron couldn’t deliver what he’d suggested, of course. ... It’s also fair to say that Labour weren’t backwards in coming forwards with opposition, but they did have the excuse that Clegg had “let the Tories in”!
Leaving aside, of course, Mr Cole, that fact that support for AV was in the Labour manifesto. If Labour had played straight, the next general election ought to have been the first one under AV. What fun that would have been for us punters!
As a net oil importer UK plc should be a net gainer from this and there will undoubtedly be a positive effect on the BoP which will increase growth but the effect on Scotland will be quite severe. Aberdeen has been one of the best performing housing markets in the UK this year on a promised new wave of investment which will undoubtedly now be put on hold.
I may even be able to get an hotel room next time I have a case up there which will be a bonus. Aberdeen is about the only place I end up paying anything close to the "official" rate.
I'm sort of left puzzled why the Unionist parties aren't making more of this.
Salmond's vision of an oil economy, with big banks and using the Euro would be bankrupting Scots right now, an arc of austerity from Dumfries to Shetland
Assuming (a big if) the current depressed oil price lasts for another 16 months, then reducing the N Sea revenue from £6.8 billion (Indy white paper figure) to current estimate of £2.5 billion would increase the theoretical Scottish deficit to about 5.5% of GDP from the 2.4% in the white paper.
For comparison, the UK deficit for the for the four years 2009-13 was -7.6%, -6.7%, -5.7%, -5.8%.
Bankrupt? I don't think so.
One will put you down as 'Not very bright'. All thoses GERS must be confusing you.
Here is a tip: Read t'Economist. The GERS model is a [MODERATED]-ised version of the EIU model from the late 'Nineties....
Mr. Alistair, the police would have an easier time with finding perpetrators in Rotherham if they hadn't managed to lose all the clothing evidence one clever victim had collected and presented to them [for DNA analysis].
I begin to despair of this country. 1400 white girls raped by racist pedophiles in Rotherham.... silence. Inertia. Maybe an MBE for the "director of children's services".
But man posts vile and racist remarks on Facebook!!!?? A YEAR IN JAIL.
Sorry but weren't 5 men given lengthy jail sentences in 2010 with more criminal cases about to come to court ?
5 men jailed. 1400 girls raped. Do the maths. And what about all the other towns?
Also ample evidence of political cover up, council incompetence, police whitewash, municipal corruption, collusion between rapists, police and councillors etc. And?
Nothing. Nil. Zero.
Yet a bit of vile abuse on Facebook and you get slammed inside, pronto.
Sometimes governments act swiftly
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
Up until the late 80’s or thereabouts FPTP had a built in bias towards the Tories. That changed, I suspect because of depopulation of seats with large numbers of heavy industrial workers, and consequent boundary changes.
The modest pro-Tory bias lasted until 1964, largely due to Labour's monolithic mining seats won on huge turnouts, and a few undersized Tory suburban seats.
From 1966 to 1987 the bias was modest, favouring neither party much and with no clear direction.
The shattering of the mining industry in particular, combined with generally falling turnouts, plus the rise of third parties, largely at the expense of the Tories, generated a significant pro-Labour bias from 1992 onwards. It peaked in 2001 and has been falling since, although is still worth about 50 seats...
I therefore thought it would be interesting to produce an averaged chart of the YouGov polls, which spans 13 months, and therefore includes last year's festive season...
The first 20 data points of this chart represent the period 24 November - 20 December 2013 (which was the last YouGov poll for that year). Make of this what you will!
That's brilliant, thank you. By sticking to one pollster, we don't need to worry about house bias or methodological details, we can look at the overall trends very clearly. Here's my reading:
- Conservative vote share hardly changing over the 13 months
- Labour falling steadily, except for a slight uptick right at the end - we need to watch whether that persists.
- LibDems also falling steadily, which is not what one would have expected 13 months ago
- The Greens rising in what looks like almost a mirror image of the LibDem decline
- UKIP support volatile, with a marked increase a few months ago, but now flat at that higher level
Good overview. I don't especially trust the late Labour uptick as durable, but as I've said I think the core votes for both Labour (33ish) and Tories (31ish) have been reached, and it's illusory to expect either to drop much below their recent ranges in the short remaining time. In many cases we're talking about people who have voted Tory or Labour all their lives and associate with them like football fans, or the Red Liberals who are among the most politically-motivated people in Britain.
The UKIP vote is the one that's hardest to predict and I don't think any of us have a solid basis to predict what it'll do, but the default assumption is probably that it'll do what it says it'll do - vote UKIP.
David L It is a testimony to the political incompetence of Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem dopes that they had a referendum on a voting system in which scarcely anyone had the slightest interest.
To be fair to Clegg, it wasn’t his choice. It was the only option Cameron would let him have. I don’t know whether Clegg thought, or was led to believe, that Cameron would instruct his lot to soft pedal but they didn’t. It may be that Cameron couldn’t deliver what he’d suggested, of course. ... It’s also fair to say that Labour weren’t backwards in coming forwards with opposition, but they did have the excuse that Clegg had “let the Tories in”!
Leaving aside, of course, Mr Cole, that fact that support for AV was in the Labour manifesto. If Labour had played straight, the next general election ought to have been the first one under AV. What fun that would have been for us punters!
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
I begin to despair of this country. 1400 white girls raped by racist pedophiles in Rotherham.... silence. Inertia. Maybe an MBE for the "director of children's services".
But man posts vile and racist remarks on Facebook!!!?? A YEAR IN JAIL.
Sorry but weren't 5 men given lengthy jail sentences in 2010 with more criminal cases about to come to court ?
5 men jailed. 1400 girls raped. Do the maths. And what about all the other towns?
Also ample evidence of political cover up, council incompetence, police whitewash, municipal corruption, collusion between rapists, police and councillors etc. And?
Nothing. Nil. Zero.
Yet a bit of vile abuse on Facebook and you get slammed inside, pronto.
Sometimes governments act swiftly
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
Good overview. I don't especially trust the late Labour uptick as durable, but as I've said I think the core votes for both Labour (33ish) and Tories (31ish) have been reached, and it's illusory to expect either to drop much below their recent ranges in the short remaining time. In many cases we're talking about people who have voted Tory or Labour all their lives and associate with them like football fans, or the Red Liberals who are among the most politically-motivated people in Britain.
Indeed. So its going to come to to a nail biting finish where we wont find out until the election exactly how those 33%/31% spread across the constituencies. A 2% difference can easily be wasted as useless votes in safe seats. Might as well flip a coin ;-)
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Up until the late 80’s or thereabouts FPTP had a built in bias towards the Tories. That changed, I suspect because of depopulation of seats with large numbers of heavy industrial workers, and consequent boundary changes.
The modest pro-Tory bias lasted until 1964, largely due to Labour's monolithic mining seats won on huge turnouts, and a few undersized Tory suburban seats.
From 1966 to 1987 the bias was modest, favouring neither party much and with no clear direction.
The shattering of the mining industry in particular, combined with generally falling turnouts, plus the rise of third parties, largely at the expense of the Tories, generated a significant pro-Labour bias from 1992 onwards. It peaked in 2001 and has been falling since, although is still worth about 50 seats...
Thanks, Mr C. Mine was the impression of an interested observer; yours I know is much more informed. It’s good to have one’s impression confirmed.
I begin to despair of this country. 1400 white girls raped by racist pedophiles in Rotherham.... silence. Inertia. Maybe an MBE for the "director of children's services".
But man posts vile and racist remarks on Facebook!!!?? A YEAR IN JAIL.
Sorry but weren't 5 men given lengthy jail sentences in 2010 with more criminal cases about to come to court ?
5 men jailed. 1400 girls raped. Do the maths. And what about all the other towns?
Also ample evidence of political cover up, council incompetence, police whitewash, municipal corruption, collusion between rapists, police and councillors etc. And?
Nothing. Nil. Zero.
Yet a bit of vile abuse on Facebook and you get slammed inside, pronto.
Sometimes governments act swiftly
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
Jesus F Christ. This is potentially enormous. "Future minister in Blairt's government"??
So it involves ALL the main parties. No wonder there is terror in Westminster. Is this our version of the Belgian Dutroux pedo-scandal?
Grisly.
I know who that is, why do you think Blair slapped a D notice on Operation Ore.
What D Notice? Operation Ore was all over the papers for months and commentary continued for years. In any case such an investigation would not fall into a category that could be subject to such a notice and if anyone tried then I am sure the press would have reported the fact. So please could you give us some detail to back-up your allegation?
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Farage was, at the time, generally regarded as a fruitcake with no particular following.
I begin to despair of this country. 1400 white girls raped by racist pedophiles in Rotherham.... silence. Inertia. Maybe an MBE for the "director of children's services".
But man posts vile and racist remarks on Facebook!!!?? A YEAR IN JAIL.
Sorry but weren't 5 men given lengthy jail sentences in 2010 with more criminal cases about to come to court ?
5 men jailed. 1400 girls raped. Do the maths. And what about all the other towns?
Also ample evidence of political cover up, council incompetence, police whitewash, municipal corruption, collusion between rapists, police and councillors etc. And?
Nothing. Nil. Zero.
Yet a bit of vile abuse on Facebook and you get slammed inside, pronto.
Sometimes governments act swiftly
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
Jesus F Christ. This is potentially enormous. "Future minister in Blairt's government"??
So it involves ALL the main parties. No wonder there is terror in Westminster. Is this our version of the Belgian Dutroux pedo-scandal?
Grisly.
I know who that is, why do you think Blair slapped a D notice on Operation Ore.
What D Notice? Operation Ore was all over the papers for months and commentary continued for years. In any case such an investigation would not fall into a category that could be subject to such a notice and if anyone tried then I am sure the press would have reported the fact. So please could you give us some detail to back-up your allegation?
Good enough? This is common knowledge, surprised you were not aware:
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Farage was, at the time, generally regarded as a fruitcake with no particular following.
What Mr Indigo has not realised, it seems, is that the pro-AV Campaign was in practice being run by a Labour team - worse than that, it was Labour´s second team, since their best campaigners were away working on the Labourship leadership campaign. Labour have a very different way of running a campaign, and a very nasty way too - so it was incredibly difficult for Lib Dems to have all that much influence.
Also, if I remember correctly, Nick Clegg came into the front line of the Campaign only when Mr Cameron stopped being neutral - at the insistence of his backbenchers.
North Korea's intranet has nothing on our Security-Services. When Ore's truths come out not one of us will be proud. That said some may offer justifications.
A bit dramatic from Ed Conway but a neat torpedo to a key Tory campaign trope:
The death of a boast
How revisions to the official data undermined one of the Chancellor’s proudest claims
If you’ve been following politics or economics in the UK for the past year or so, you’ll probably recall hearing something like this from George Osborne: “the UK is the fastest growing of any major advanced economy in the world.”
Now, however, in a rather unfestive surprise for the Chancellor, the Office for National Statistics says that is no longer the case.
Because of that reduced [2.6% from 3%] annual growth rate, the UK is growing slower than Australia, at the same rate as Canada, and only a touch faster than the US.
What is very striking is the very considerable difference between Ipsos-MORI and the 3 other phone posters.
Quite why this should be is not easy to discern. The main difference between Ipsos MORI and the others is that the former does not have any form of past vote weightings – a subject that we have dwelt upon many times before. Also Ipsos-MORI shows only those certain to vote in its headline numbers.
The obvious big difference is in the Tory/UKIP shares. Ipsos-MORI's Lab/Lib shares are broadly in line with the others.
Hypothesis: Those currently giving UKIP as their chosen party are less likely to be certain to vote, and Tories more likely, thus explaining the difference in the MORI poll scores.
However, I did notice that the Tories do quite well in the "Go on, tell me who you will vote for, pretty pleeeeease?" question. See Table 12. Perhaps it's the results of this question that nudge the Tories up and UKIP down relative to the other phone pollsters?
However, the timetable doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand, it seems to be a self-assessment system:
Householders would have to disclose their property’s value on their income tax return. HM Revenue & Customs would carry out checks but if a person obtained an independent valuation, HMRC would not “second guess” it, Mr Balls said.
(which sounds a complete nightmare, but let's leave that aside for the moment).
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Farage was, at the time, generally regarded as a fruitcake with no particular following.
Or are you, once more, demonstrating your rather tenuous grasp of economics and fleeting relationship with facts?
Ben is incredibly excited at the possibility that we may or may not be 4 parts in a thousand poorer than we might have provisionally thought we were, subject of course to any further revisions.
But that isn't a great surprise since the threshold and rates he is proposing will only make him £300m not the £2bn he claims, so he is either going to make nothing (after the costs of processing and collection, and defending lawsuits taken against HMRC by irate rich people, are taken into account), or he is telling a big whopper about the threshold which will be more like 1.2m and cover just about any 3 bedroom house in London. Popular.
But then this isn't, and never was about money, its about differentiation and using the Politics of Envy to win votes, just like the 50% tax which also makes nothing.
Thanks, for that, Mr. England. Once the author of the report introduced Freemasonry as part of the conspiracy I confess it lost what shreds of credibility it might have had.
As to the D Notice, I don't believe there was one. The only possible topic that could have been subject to such a notice was a certain politicians home address and as that was in the public domain anyway what would have been the point.
Furthermore the author seems not to know what a D Notice is (actually they have been called something else for 20 years but let that pass). He/she seems to think there is some system whereby HMG says thou shalt publish nothing about X and all the news media have to comply, which is of course, complete rubbish. There is a system whereby HMG can ask, ask not compel, news outlets to refrain form publishing information that falls into certain categories, all defence related. It is used sparingly, as the amount off harmful stuff that has been published over the years will attest.
Of course, we do know that the Blair government ran its own, unofficial, programme of press censorship in the shape of the thug Campbell and his acolytes and imitators. Maybe that is what the author of the report you cited was talking about.
A bit dramatic from Ed Conway but a neat torpedo to a key Tory campaign trope:
The death of a boast
How revisions to the official data undermined one of the Chancellor’s proudest claims
If you’ve been following politics or economics in the UK for the past year or so, you’ll probably recall hearing something like this from George Osborne: “the UK is the fastest growing of any major advanced economy in the world.”
Now, however, in a rather unfestive surprise for the Chancellor, the Office for National Statistics says that is no longer the case.
Because of that reduced [2.6% from 3%] annual growth rate, the UK is growing slower than Australia, at the same rate as Canada, and only a touch faster than the US.
In 1989 I attended a lecture at the LSE. It was given by the Keynsian Economist Richard Layard.
He praised the fact that Mrs Thatcher had risen the long-term UK growth-rate from 2.25% to 2.75%. The similar lectures of Sir Richard Goodhart would - well - probably confuse you due to the mathematical focus.
Needless-to-say: Thirteen-years of Scottish-and-EU ignorance has reduced the LTGR of England to a poultry 2.4%. And yet you cheer...!
England has so much dynamism that even you should applaud. But we know your weakenesses; your hangovers; your contempt: A gracious nation that could regularly build a new, bigger, pie is not you want: You want tick-boxes and a smaller pie of which you - a socialist - can partake a bigger slice of....
Hate is not a political-concept: It is a sad reflection of one-self and one's own weaknesses. Hence you - like sven - are a painfull joke and a burden....
You're not comparing like - with - like budget deficits. The numbers you quote for the UK are post interest payments, the ones for Scotland assume no debt to pay interest on.
Thanks, for that, Mr. England. Once the author of the report introduced Freemasonry as part of the conspiracy I confess it lost what shreds of credibility it might have had.
I didnt get that far, I saw a site which has 141 subscriptions and essentially cites no sources to back up its rants, and decided life was too short.
@Survation: Have we already had the last published UK voting intention poll of 2014? If you thought it was over... it's not! More from us later tonight.
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Farage was, at the time, generally regarded as a fruitcake with no particular following.
Regarded by the left.. I rest my case ;-)
‘Tis the seaon of goodwill, so I’ll try not be be unkind but I do wish you’d try and recall what happened. It was after all only a a few years ago. UKIP were regarded as a fringe organisation in 2010 and polled 919,471 votes (3.1%).
Thanks, for that, Mr. England. Once the author of the report introduced Freemasonry as part of the conspiracy I confess it lost what shreds of credibility it might have had.
As to the D Notice, I don't believe there was one. The only possible topic that could have been subject to such a notice was a certain politicians home address and as that was in the public domain anyway what would have been the point.
Furthermore the author seems not to know what a D Notice is (actually they have been called something else for 20 years but let that pass). He/she seems to think there is some system whereby HMG says thou shalt publish nothing about X and all the news media have to comply, which is of course, complete rubbish. There is a system whereby HMG can ask, ask not compel, news outlets to refrain form publishing information that falls into certain categories, all defence related. It is used sparingly, as the amount off harmful stuff that has been published over the years will attest.
Of course, we do know that the Blair government ran its own, unofficial, programme of press censorship in the shape of the thug Campbell and his acolytes and imitators. Maybe that is what the author of the report you cited was talking about.
Google Operation Ore D Notice, there are dozens of reference to it.
I appreciate what you say and no doubt there are loads of consipracy theory nutjobs, but don't forget it was Icke that exposed Saville as a paedophile AND a necrophiliac while he was still alive.
Thanks, for that, Mr. England. Once the author of the report introduced Freemasonry as part of the conspiracy I confess it lost what shreds of credibility it might have had.
As to the D Notice, I don't believe there was one. The only possible topic that could have been subject to such a notice was a certain politicians home address and as that was in the public domain anyway what would have been the point.
Furthermore the author seems not to know what a D Notice is (actually they have been called something else for 20 years but let that pass). He/she seems to think there is some system whereby HMG says thou shalt publish nothing about X and all the news media have to comply, which is of course, complete rubbish. There is a system whereby HMG can ask, ask not compel, news outlets to refrain form publishing information that falls into certain categories, all defence related. It is used sparingly, as the amount off harmful stuff that has been published over the years will attest.
Of course, we do know that the Blair government ran its own, unofficial, programme of press censorship in the shape of the thug Campbell and his acolytes and imitators. Maybe that is what the author of the report you cited was talking about.
Google Operation Ore D Notice, there are dozens of reference to it.
I appreciate what you say and no doubt there are loads of consipracy theory nutjobs, but don't forget it was Icke that exposed Saville as a paedophile AND a necrophiliac while he was still alive.
Who can forget all those people that labelled Lord McAlpine a paedo whilst he was still alive.
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Farage was, at the time, generally regarded as a fruitcake with no particular following.
Regarded by the left.. I rest my case ;-)
‘Tis the seaon of goodwill, so I’ll try not be be unkind but I do wish you’d try and recall what happened. It was after all only a a few years ago. UKIP were regarded as a fringe organisation in 2010 and polled 919,471 votes (3.1%).
Yes, UKIP was no where, but Farage was quite well known, he had been banging his particular drum for quite a while. The point I was trying to make is that a campaign team which is essentially made of right-on liberal types is going to alienate half the population (all the tories, most of the WWC, quite a lot of Old Labour) before they even start. If half the population isn't going to give you the time of day, never mind listen to your message, you have really lost before you start. The "Yes to AV" badly needed to broaden its appeal outside the Guardianista set, and didn't.
Thanks, for that, Mr. England. Once the author of the report introduced Freemasonry as part of the conspiracy I confess it lost what shreds of credibility it might have had.
As to the D Notice, I don't believe there was one. The only possible topic that could have been subject to such a notice was a certain politicians home address and as that was in the public domain anyway what would have been the point.
Furthermore the author seems not to know what a D Notice is (actually they have been called something else for 20 years but let that pass). He/she seems to think there is some system whereby HMG says thou shalt publish nothing about X and all the news media have to comply, which is of course, complete rubbish. There is a system whereby HMG can ask, ask not compel, news outlets to refrain form publishing information that falls into certain categories, all defence related. It is used sparingly, as the amount off harmful stuff that has been published over the years will attest.
Of course, we do know that the Blair government ran its own, unofficial, programme of press censorship in the shape of the thug Campbell and his acolytes and imitators. Maybe that is what the author of the report you cited was talking about.
Google Operation Ore D Notice, there are dozens of reference to it.
I appreciate what you say and no doubt there are loads of consipracy theory nutjobs, but don't forget it was Icke that exposed Saville as a paedophile AND a necrophiliac while he was still alive.
Who can forget all those people that labelled Lord McAlpine a paedo whilst he was still alive.
Or those who would be summarily beheaded if they mad the same accusation about Mad Moh'....
Demographic changes have lowered long term gdp growth rates across the developed world.
And in 1989 Thatcher's GDP record would have been flattered by Lawson's huge credit bubble.
You've made enough of a fool of yourself already today with your rather sad attempts to talk down the UK economy - what can you tell us about growth rates in Germany, France, Italy, etc, etc, etc?
However, the timetable doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand, it seems to be a self-assessment system:
Householders would have to disclose their property’s value on their income tax return. HM Revenue & Customs would carry out checks but if a person obtained an independent valuation, HMRC would not “second guess” it, Mr Balls said.
(which sounds a complete nightmare, but let's leave that aside for the moment).
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
However, the timetable doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand, it seems to be a self-assessment system:
Householders would have to disclose their property’s value on their income tax return. HM Revenue & Customs would carry out checks but if a person obtained an independent valuation, HMRC would not “second guess” it, Mr Balls said.
(which sounds a complete nightmare, but let's leave that aside for the moment).
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
Has he thought this through?
I liked the idea by Heinlein in "The Number of The Beast".
Each person sets the value of their property and pays a tax based on it. HOWEVER Anyone can buy the property AT THE PRICE set by the owner - unless the owner RAISES the value and pays 3 years back-taxes at the new value.
Or are you, once more, demonstrating your rather tenuous grasp of economics and fleeting relationship with facts?
Ben is incredibly excited at the possibility that we may or may not be 4 parts in a thousand poorer than we might have provisionally thought we were, subject of course to any further revisions.
It's rather sweet.
Poorer? I thought he was talking about the increase of GDP - itself, crudely, a measure of economic activity and which says nothing about wealth. Furthermore by he is talking about the rate of growth of GDP - a second order measure (acceleration rather than velocity).
What Ben seems to trying to make an issue of is that a statistic, which probably less than 1% of the population understands, is 4 parts in a thousand lower than what that statistic was thought to be some months ago. Why any normal person should care, when there are more worrying measures available, is beyond me
Interesting point. Is there any evidence that people are more shy about revealing less "acceptable" switches when talking to a person rather than pushing buttons on a computer? One might expect social factors to cause people to under report LD->Tory and X->Kipper switching when talking to a person as opposed to filling in an online survey.
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
Has he thought this through?
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
It's not as though it was a secret potential tax that nobody had heard about, so it can't really be described as retrospective. People (a) with £multi-X million houses who (b) fret about paying a few thousand and (c) don't have a conscience and (d) had nonetheless planned to vote Labour have plenty of time to consider voting Tory instead. I'm sure it's a key swing group.
Well, Labour certainly worked against it this area. I was in a pub one evening when a local Labour supporter came in handing out official-looking leaflets which said “Vote No; give Nick Clegg a bloody nose!"
If Clegg wasn't so damn precious about who he involved in the campaign he might have done a lot better. Farage was in favour of AV, and would have reached parts of the electorate the right-on liberals could only dream of reaching, but no, he only wanted his liberal elite friends involved, and failed. I have no sympathy at all.
Farage was, at the time, generally regarded as a fruitcake with no particular following.
Regarded by the left.. I rest my case ;-)
‘Tis the seaon of goodwill, so I’ll try not be be unkind but I do wish you’d try and recall what happened. It was after all only a a few years ago. UKIP were regarded as a fringe organisation in 2010 and polled 919,471 votes (3.1%).
Yes, UKIP was no where, but Farage was quite well known, he had been banging his particular drum for quite a while. The point I was trying to make is that a campaign team which is essentially made of right-on liberal types is going to alienate half the population (all the tories, most of the WWC, quite a lot of Old Labour) before they even start. If half the population isn't going to give you the time of day, never mind listen to your message, you have really lost before you start. The "Yes to AV" badly needed to broaden its appeal outside the Guardianista set, and didn't.
No-one is suggesting that Yes handled the campaign well.
I think its fair game to single out Alex Salmond on this issue, after all he was prepared to gamble the economic future of an Independent Scotland on the back of his predictions on the price of Oil.
As a net oil importer UK plc should be a net gainer from this and there will undoubtedly be a positive effect on the BoP which will increase growth but the effect on Scotland will be quite severe. Aberdeen has been one of the best performing housing markets in the UK this year on a promised new wave of investment which will undoubtedly now be put on hold.
I may even be able to get an hotel room next time I have a case up there which will be a bonus. Aberdeen is about the only place I end up paying anything close to the "official" rate.
I'm sort of left puzzled why the Unionist parties aren't making more of this.
Salmond's vision of an oil economy, with big banks and using the Euro would be bankrupting Scots right now, an arc of austerity from Dumfries to Shetland
Alan, hard for them to say anything given they said the oil was almost finished and would contribute little to Scotland. They were forecasting oil at tuppence a gallon so hard for even those lying tossers to try and point it out.
What price is oil at the moment?
Salmondnomics is dead and discredited along with the Laffer lefties insisting an independent Scotland has to cut corporation tax. The Scottish Government’s first Oil and Gas Analytical Bulletin in March 2013 predicted a ‘renewed oil boom’ based on a ‘cautious’ oil price of $113 a barrel for North Sea Brent crude. As of December 9th 2014 the price stood at $66.85 a barrel, a fall of over 40%, with every sign that it will fall lower. This blows a significant hole in the Salmondnomic vision of independence.
Ex-RBS economist and oil expert Salmond was predicting $ 150 a barrel for late 2014. Is he ever right about anything ?
Don't think its reasonable to single out Salmond on this one. Dominic Lawson had interesting piece on ST at weekend on how poor forecasting generally is.
Yougov 13.7% Populus 13.5% Ashcroft 12.2% ComRes 11.7%
Phone
ICM 9.5% Ipsos 8.2% ComRes 7.0%
Shy Switchers?
I don't know where you get your figures from but the last ICM poll had a net movement from Con to Lib Dem 5 voters moving from Con to Lib Dem and 4 voters in the other direction . The last Comres phone poll had 5 voters moving in each direction so no net change . Ipsos mori had 9 voters moving from Lib Dem to Con but 11 moving from Con to Lib Dem .
However, the timetable doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand, it seems to be a self-assessment system:
Householders would have to disclose their property’s value on their income tax return. HM Revenue & Customs would carry out checks but if a person obtained an independent valuation, HMRC would not “second guess” it, Mr Balls said.
(which sounds a complete nightmare, but let's leave that aside for the moment).
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
Has he thought this through?
I suppose it might depend on how one interprets the word "pay". Most of us ordinary folk would consider "begin to pay" meaning the actual handing over of dosh. In economics (and in HMRC thinking) it is possible that "begin to pay" actually means "begin to be liable for".
So, owners of £2m houses would become liable from the date of the legislation (assuming no retrospective stuff). This could be within days of a Labour government taking office I suppose.
Or are you, once more, demonstrating your rather tenuous grasp of economics and fleeting relationship with facts?
Ben is incredibly excited at the possibility that we may or may not be 4 parts in a thousand poorer than we might have provisionally thought we were, subject of course to any further revisions.
It's rather sweet.
Poorer? I thought he was talking about the increase of GDP - itself, crudely, a measure of economic activity and which says nothing about wealth. Furthermore by he is talking about the rate of growth of GDP - a second order measure (acceleration rather than velocity).
What Ben seems to trying to make an issue of is that a statistic, which probably less than 1% of the population understands, is 4 parts in a thousand lower than what that statistic was thought to be some months ago. Why any normal person should care, when there are more worrying measures available, is beyond me
Quick question:
Enjoyed t'Economists atricle on the UK Statisticians of WWII. In light of that: Could anyone clarify the short-term impacts of falling prices of real GDP growth?
With Inflation a lot lower than expected I would assume that this affects Nominal-Income. So lower inflation effects Nominal-GDP but does this undermine the expectation of real income-growth (in the short-term)...?
In simple terms:
Growth was expected to be X based upon Y prices. Supply-and-demand parties have notices that Y will be lower: As such there is not Z money available. Using "quarks" all parties adjust their expectations.
''You've made enough of a fool of yourself already today with your rather sad attempts to talk down the UK economy - what can you tell us about growth rates in Germany, France, Italy, etc, etc, etc?''
Ben exists in a parallel universe where a gigantic and almighty state lauds it over a thriving economy.
A shame it has never existed in the history of the world. And it never will.
Interesting point. Is there any evidence that people are more shy about revealing less "acceptable" switches when talking to a person rather than pushing buttons on a computer? One might expect social factors to cause people to under report LD->Tory and X->Kipper switching when talking to a person as opposed to filling in an online survey.
Since the autumn, The Tories score 27 in the North online, and 19.7% on the phone - with the same pollster.
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
I begin to despair of this country. 1400 white girls raped by racist pedophiles in Rotherham.... silence. Inertia. Maybe an MBE for the "director of children's services".
But man posts vile and racist remarks on Facebook!!!?? A YEAR IN JAIL.
Yet a bit of vile abuse on Facebook and you get slammed inside, pronto.
Sometimes governments act swiftly
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
Jesus F Christ. This is potentially enormous. "Future minister in Blairt's government"??
So it involves ALL the main parties. No wonder there is terror in Westminster. Is this our version of the Belgian Dutroux pedo-scandal?
Grisly.
I know who that is, why do you think Blair slapped a D notice on Operation Ore.
What D notice? Operation Ore was conducted pretty shambolically when you actually read about what went on. Various celebrities were arrested and then found to be totally innocent. The basis of evidence badly flawed. The website behind the alleged crimes was itself subject to fraud resulting in the police wasting huge amounts of time money and credibility. For instance did you know that Pete Townsend was wrongly arrested? That the police's computer expert was anything but?
Of course if numpties want to build a self serving anti establishment case based on crank websites run by paranoid mental cases parading fantasy as fact then thats up to you. We should all hope the truth comes out but given all the fantasies out there and police paranoia and incompetence I think it might be wise to just wait and see.
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Do millions of people really own a £2million house?
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Too harsh:
I thought the Blairs' hold their property in trust via an Oirish passport. No doubt Chukus Yoh!Mony! has a similar arrangement via interesting parhtays!
O/T completely but this is an example of fantastic service by much maligned UK institutions that I think it worthy of spreading.
At about 15:00 yesterday afternoon I renewed my son's young person's railcard on-line. The new card has just arrived in the normal post, no express delivery, courier service or anything else. And this at Christmas too.
I am seriously impressed. I haven't been so impressed since I renewed my driving licence on line (in the process switching from the old paper licence to the new style), checking the use passport photo option, and it was delivered inside 48 hours.
@Survation: Have we already had the last published UK voting intention poll of 2014? If you thought it was over... it's not! More from us later tonight.
If it's a UK wide poll it will be interesting to compare their Scottish sub sample to their Scotland poll.
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Especially as most of London is approaching the next highest price band at somewhere north of 12% per year. If you buy your house this year for 1m, which will get you an average 3 bedroom detached house in a mediocre part of London like Barnet. How many years are you going to live there before you start worrying about getting your house valued ? If like last year London houses went up by 19% it will be worth over 2m in 4 years, so better start getting it valued in 3 years. If the market is only 12% it will take 6 years, start getting valued in 4-5, but the question really is who knows how fast their local house market is increasing in value, and hence on what basis to start getting their house valued.
If it was going to raise more than the square root of f*ck all I might be more enthusiastic, but even if Balls lowers the threshold enough to get the money he wants, which will have people buying an average London house getting it valued "just in case" within 5 years, its the equivalent of 2 weeks of repayment on the interest on our national debt.
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Do millions of people really own a £2million house?
Thank feck Dr Planck is not a real scientist....
If he was he would - erm - consider the scope of his statement; the bounds to be addressed; and - ultimately - how to measure the hypothesis. Sadly no-one takes Dr Planck seriously....
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Especially as most of London is approaching the next highest price band at somewhere north of 12% per year. If you buy your house this year for 1m, which will get you an average 3 bedroom detached house in a mediocre part of London like Barnet. How many years are you going to live there before you start worrying about getting your house valued ? If like last year London houses went up by 19% it will be worth over 2m in 4 years, so better start getting it valued in 3 years. If the market is only 12% it will take 6 years, start getting valued in 4-5, but the question really is who knows how fast their local house market is increasing in value, and hence on what basis to start getting their house valued.
If it was going to raise more than the square root of f*ck all I might be more enthusiastic, but even if Balls lowers the threshold enough to get the money he wants, which will have people buying an average London house getting it valued "just in case" within 5 years, its the equivalent of 2 weeks of repayment on the interest on our national debt.
But we have been promised that the £2m threshold will go up each year in line with property prices. If this is true then no one who is not eligible in 2015-16 will ever be eligible unless they move or something weird happens to the price of their home that is out of step with the wider trend.
I am afraid reluctant to believe this promise over the longer term.
But a lot more people own houses which they'll have to prove are below £2m in value.
Given that prices move down as well as up, could there be lawsuits? Quite a number of them, in fact.
It's all a mess, and the honest way of doing it - more tax bands on the top of the eight current council tax bands, plus a nationwide revaluation - is political suicide.
But it's the honest way of doing it. Another reason Labour are not proposing it is that they want central government to get the money, not the councils. In which case, make it so half the money from the top bands goes to the council, the other half to central government (or is offset against central government grants). That way the council gets money, and so does central government.
Labour's proposal just makes a broken system more broken, although I'm not against the concept per se.
But a lot more people own houses which they'll have to prove are below £2m in value.
Given that prices move down as well as up, could there be lawsuits? Quite a number of them, in fact.
I think you can pretty much guarantee that, putting taxes on even moderately well off people that seem inequitous can generate a blizzard of cases. HMRC's record isn't that great there either, the Services Companies (IR35) legislation is a classic, 1462 loses, and 6 wins just in respect of cases bought by one professional body. Its Regulatory impact assessment was to raise £220m in the first eight years, and it actually raised £9.2m (probably rather less than the cases cost the country) another success for Gordon.
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
Too late. They'll have already printed them. They hit the doormats days after the start of the financial year.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Especially as most of London is approaching the next highest price band at somewhere north of 12% per year. If you buy your house this year for 1m, which will get you an average 3 bedroom detached house in a mediocre part of London like Barnet. How many years are you going to live there before you start worrying about getting your house valued ? If like last year London houses went up by 19% it will be worth over 2m in 4 years, so better start getting it valued in 3 years. If the market is only 12% it will take 6 years, start getting valued in 4-5, but the question really is who knows how fast their local house market is increasing in value, and hence on what basis to start getting their house valued.
If it was going to raise more than the square root of f*ck all I might be more enthusiastic, but even if Balls lowers the threshold enough to get the money he wants, which will have people buying an average London house getting it valued "just in case" within 5 years, its the equivalent of 2 weeks of repayment on the interest on our national debt.
But we have been promised that the £2m threshold will go up each year in line with property prices. If this is true then no one who is not eligible in 2015-16 will ever be eligible unless they move or something weird happens to the price of their home that is out of step with the wider trend.
I am afraid reluctant to believe this promise over the longer term.
I wouldn't believe it right now. That would be inline with UK property prices, which have increased by around 12% this year, not London prices which have increased by around 19% this year. London house owners will get it in the neck.
But a lot more people own houses which they'll have to prove are below £2m in value.
Given that prices move down as well as up, could there be lawsuits? Quite a number of them, in fact.
It's all a mess, and the honest way of doing it - more tax bands on the top of the eight current council tax bands, plus a nationwide revaluation - is political suicide.
But it's the honest way of doing it. Another reason Labour are not proposing it is that they want central government to get the money, not the councils. In which case, make it so half the money from the top bands goes to the council, the other half to central government (or is offset against central government grants). That way the council gets money, and so does central government.
Labour's proposal just makes a broken system more broken, although I'm not against the concept per se.
Adding extra council tax bands is also a low visibility action. This is primarily a huge "soak the rich" dog whistle for its envious voters, its not about raising money, its a daft way to try and make money.
Based on these figures, Ed Miliband wins with NOM, and goes into some kind of Coalition with the SNP.
After a year or two of further, unavoidable austerity, he is massively unpopular. The SNP take the opportunity to show who's boss, and how much they hate everyone south of Berwick, and they (deliberately) make some impossible and divisive demands - e.g. remove Trident, cancel Scottish income tax, give all Aberdonian men a night with the Duchess of Cambridge.
Ed Miliband is unable to persuade England, or the royal family, of the necessity of complying with these requests. So the SNP removes its support, the government falls, and we have another GE in early 2017, were the Tories led by XXXXX sweep back into power with an overall majority.
Seems entirely feasible to me. Except, PERHAPS, for the bit about Kate Middleton.
That's not a bad prediction, Kate aside, except that you've forgotten UKIP. In the scenario you describe, the Conservatives are likely to be in disarray with defectors peeling off to UKIP, leaving Labour, no matter how incompetent and unpopular they are, in a position to win the second election. If they're smart (a bif 'if', admittedly) they'll find a way of ditching Ed along the way.
Nah. I reckon that once voters realise Miliband AND Labour, when in power, are obliged to pursue identical economic policies to the Tories, then Labour's unpopularity will be Hollande-esque. Historic. Epochal.
They will get utterly tonked in the GE I envisage. Voters will think "We might as well have a competent party doing horrible things", and they will return to the Tories.
As for UKIP, it all depends how they do in 2015. If they get over 10% I suspect the next Tory leader, after Cameron's resignation, will be minded to cut an informal electoral deal with Farage.
A new Government ,though, is likely to enjoy at least a honeymoon with the electorate and can seek to blame its problems on 'the mess we inherited from our predecessors'. The Coalition still tries to peddle this line - though its force much diminishes with time. Nevertheless it might still be sufficient to keep Milliband secure for two years or so.
But a lot more people own houses which they'll have to prove are below £2m in value.
Given that prices move down as well as up, could there be lawsuits? Quite a number of them, in fact.
I think you can pretty much guarantee that, putting taxes on even moderately well off people that seem inequitous can generate a blizzard of cases. HMRC's record isn't that great there either, the Services Companies (IR35) legislation is a classic, 1462 loses, and 6 wins just in respect of cases bought by one professional body. Its Regulatory impact assessment was to raise £220m in the first eight years, and it actually raised £9.2m (probably rather less than the cases cost the country) another success for Gordon.
You've just dampened my Christmas spirit by mentioning IR35 tax dodgers. Mind, I've heard that some of them in Aberdeen have had their rates cut, so not so bad for us staffies!
Based on these figures, Ed Miliband wins with NOM, and goes into some kind of Coalition with the SNP.
After a year or two of further, unavoidable austerity, he is massively unpopular. The SNP take the opportunity to show who's boss, and how much they hate everyone south of Berwick, and they (deliberately) make some impossible and divisive demands - e.g. remove Trident, cancel Scottish income tax, give all Aberdonian men a night with the Duchess of Cambridge.
Ed Miliband is unable to persuade England, or the royal family, of the necessity of complying with these requests. So the SNP removes its support, the government falls, and we have another GE in early 2017, were the Tories led by XXXXX sweep back into power with an overall majority.
Seems entirely feasible to me. Except, PERHAPS, for the bit about Kate Middleton.
That's not a bad prediction, Kate aside, except that you've forgotten UKIP. In the scenario you describe, the Conservatives are likely to be in disarray with defectors peeling off to UKIP, leaving Labour, no matter how incompetent and unpopular they are, in a position to win the second election. If they're smart (a bif 'if', admittedly) they'll find a way of ditching Ed along the way.
Nah. I reckon that once voters realise Miliband AND Labour, when in power, are obliged to pursue identical economic policies to the Tories, then Labour's unpopularity will be Hollande-esque. Historic. Epochal.
They will get utterly tonked in the GE I envisage. Voters will think "We might as well have a competent party doing horrible things", and they will return to the Tories.
As for UKIP, it all depends how they do in 2015. If they get over 10% I suspect the next Tory leader, after Cameron's resignation, will be minded to cut an informal electoral deal with Farage.
A new Government ,though, is likely to enjoy at least a honeymoon with the electorate and can seek to blame its problems on 'the mess we inherited from our predecessors'. The Coalition still tries to peddle this line - though its force much diminishes with time. Nevertheless it might still be sufficient to keep Milliband secure for two years or so.
Oh, Gee-wiz:
Ed Mili-[MODERATED] who chose higher energy-prices because he did not - then - care about the 'cost-of-living-crisis'? Where does Labour/Al-Beeb find such useful eejits...?
But we have been promised that the £2m threshold will go up each year in line with property prices.
That promise will be one of the first to be broken. Labour will have to make a lot of tough decisions, wealthy home owners should expect to be amongst the first to be hit.
I am curious, how would a new Labour Government frame blaming the previous Coalition Government for not clearing up the economic mess they inherited from the previous Labour Government quickly enough? Good luck with that one, I doubt that line would hold for two months let alone two years.
Based on these figures, Ed Miliband wins with NOM, and goes into some kind of Coalition with the SNP.
After a year or two of further, unavoidable austerity, he is massively unpopular. The SNP take the opportunity to show who's boss, and how much they hate everyone south of Berwick, and they (deliberately) make some impossible and divisive demands - e.g. remove Trident, cancel Scottish income tax, give all Aberdonian men a night with the Duchess of Cambridge.
Ed Miliband is unable to persuade England, or the royal family, of the necessity of complying with these requests. So the SNP removes its support, the government falls, and we have another GE in early 2017, were the Tories led by XXXXX sweep back into power with an overall majority.
Seems entirely feasible to me. Except, PERHAPS, for the bit about Kate Middleton.
That's not a bad prediction, Kate aside, except that you've forgotten UKIP. In the scenario you describe, the Conservatives are likely to be in disarray with defectors peeling off to UKIP, leaving Labour, no matter how incompetent and unpopular they are, in a position to win the second election. If they're smart (a bif 'if', admittedly) they'll find a way of ditching Ed along the way.
Nah. I reckon that once voters realise Miliband AND Labour, when in power, are obliged to pursue identical economic policies to the Tories, then Labour's unpopularity will be Hollande-esque. Historic. Epochal.
They will get utterly tonked in the GE I envisage. Voters will think "We might as well have a competent party doing horrible things", and they will return to the Tories.
As for UKIP, it all depends how they do in 2015. If they get over 10% I suspect the next Tory leader, after Cameron's resignation, will be minded to cut an informal electoral deal with Farage.
A new Government ,though, is likely to enjoy at least a honeymoon with the electorate and can seek to blame its problems on 'the mess we inherited from our predecessors'. The Coalition still tries to peddle this line - though its force much diminishes with time. Nevertheless it might still be sufficient to keep Milliband secure for two years or so.
Regarding last night's YouGov poll, I've had a look at the tabs and three things jump out:
– The lead based on unrounded* figures was about 3.2 points (so up 1.2 points from 2 pt lead at the weekend YouGov poll) – The Labour vote share was up ten points among 18-24 year olds (who have an 11.9% weighting, hence the 1.2 point boost to Labour) – The response rate among that demographic dropped 54% compared with the previous YouGov poll.
So the entire change is down to the movement in a crossbreak of just 80 people (MoE ±11 points), which needed to be upweighted to 245% of its original size. It would be quite surprising/lucky if such a huge drop in one age group's response rate were uniformly representative within that age group (and any bias would then be magnified by the need to upweight it so much)
This kind of thing happens all the time, but it seems to be happening a lot around Christmas this year, mostly with the phone pollsters, I suspect due to many people not being home to answer their landlines. It didn't seem to happen much last year, but the December 2013 Ipsos-MORI and ICM polls were both a week earlier then than they were this year.
But online polling won't be entirely immune either, with an added risk for YouGov, because their fieldwork window is so short (only 22 hours).
So I'd advise a lot of caution when looking at festive polls.
And if I don't post again beforehand, seasons greetings to all! I've very much enjoyed PB the last few months, it's sometimes hard to read everything on every thread so apologies if I didn't reply to any replies/questions. 2015 will give us plenty more to talk about! I'm already working on a "10 charts" type post to review the year and preview 2015.
O/T completely but this is an example of fantastic service by much maligned UK institutions that I think it worthy of spreading.
At about 15:00 yesterday afternoon I renewed my son's young person's railcard on-line. The new card has just arrived in the normal post, no express delivery, courier service or anything else. And this at Christmas too.
I am seriously impressed. I haven't been so impressed since I renewed my driving licence on line (in the process switching from the old paper licence to the new style), checking the use passport photo option, and it was delivered inside 48 hours.
The passport computer project was a good example of a public sector IT project done as it should be - clear specs at the start, no changes in mid-project, and delivered on time and on budget with no bugs to speak of.
To make a non-partisan comment: there's a theory that the public sector is bad at IT which is unfair to the professionals. The problem of big projects (public and private) is that the people ordering them tend to change their minds as they progress, partly because the big project is so complex that it has unexpected ramifications (example: NHS IT under the last government and universal benefit under this one). The trivial answer is not to do big projects, but some things actually can't easily be broken down into small projects - e.g. reforming the benefits system a bit at a time.
O/T completely but this is an example of fantastic service by much maligned UK institutions that I think it worthy of spreading.
At about 15:00 yesterday afternoon I renewed my son's young person's railcard on-line. The new card has just arrived in the normal post, no express delivery, courier service or anything else. And this at Christmas too.
I am seriously impressed. I haven't been so impressed since I renewed my driving licence on line (in the process switching from the old paper licence to the new style), checking the use passport photo option, and it was delivered inside 48 hours.
The passport computer project was a good example of a public sector IT project done as it should be - clear specs at the start, no changes in mid-project, and delivered on time and on budget with no bugs to speak of.
To make a non-partisan comment: there's a theory that the public sector is bad at IT which is unfair to the professionals. The problem of big projects (public and private) is that the people ordering them tend to change their minds as they progress, partly because the big project is so complex that it has unexpected ramifications (example: NHS IT under the last government and universal benefit under this one). The trivial answer is not to do big projects, but some things actually can't easily be broken down into small projects - e.g. reforming the benefits system a bit at a time.
Hmmm,
Sven:
The Labour gubbermint - correctly - threw-out EDS from the NHS EMail contract in 2004. And then what happened...?
O/T completely but this is an example of fantastic service by much maligned UK institutions that I think it worthy of spreading.
At about 15:00 yesterday afternoon I renewed my son's young person's railcard on-line. The new card has just arrived in the normal post, no express delivery, courier service or anything else. And this at Christmas too.
I am seriously impressed. I haven't been so impressed since I renewed my driving licence on line (in the process switching from the old paper licence to the new style), checking the use passport photo option, and it was delivered inside 48 hours.
The passport computer project was a good example of a public sector IT project done as it should be - clear specs at the start, no changes in mid-project, and delivered on time and on budget with no bugs to speak of.
To make a non-partisan comment: there's a theory that the public sector is bad at IT which is unfair to the professionals. The problem of big projects (public and private) is that the people ordering them tend to change their minds as they progress, partly because the big project is so complex that it has unexpected ramifications (example: NHS IT under the last government and universal benefit under this one). The trivial answer is not to do big projects, but some things actually can't easily be broken down into small projects - e.g. reforming the benefits system a bit at a time.
As I mentioned yesterday, we had great service from the passport office last week - we handed in the form on the Tuesday afternoon, and got the passport yesterday. It could hardly be better.
But you are having a laugh when you mention the NHS IT project. It was not unexpected ramifications: they were all too expected, and led to £10 billion being wasted.
But a lot more people own houses which they'll have to prove are below £2m in value.
Given that prices move down as well as up, could there be lawsuits? Quite a number of them, in fact.
I think you can pretty much guarantee that, putting taxes on even moderately well off people that seem inequitous can generate a blizzard of cases. HMRC's record isn't that great there either, the Services Companies (IR35) legislation is a classic, 1462 loses, and 6 wins just in respect of cases bought by one professional body. Its Regulatory impact assessment was to raise £220m in the first eight years, and it actually raised £9.2m (probably rather less than the cases cost the country) another success for Gordon.
You've just dampened my Christmas spirit by mentioning IR35 tax dodgers. Mind, I've heard that some of them in Aberdeen have had their rates cut, so not so bad for us staffies!
Well quite. Speaking as an ex-pat it doesn't really affect me either. To be honest though IR35 is an optional tax, and easy to not pay in most circumstances, which is why the government has struggled to take 1% of the tax it expected to take from it, more idiotic financial laws from Gordon, the take from which probably doesn't even cover the expense of implementing it.
Twitter Andrew Pierce @toryboypierce now8 seconds ago @edballsmp tells the Indy he wants to pass more music exams. Better for all if he tinkers with piano rather than the economy
If OGH's analysis that the Conservatives "I find it very difficult to see how the Conservatives can win most seats in this part of the UK."
is correct then given that Wales and Scotland (Even with a huge SNP swing) will still give Labour a ~ 30 seat headstart in the overall race (And that assumes a terrible night for Labour north of the border) if you take England as level, then correspondingly
William Hills Lab most seats @ Evens must be value.
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
Has he thought this through?
Have you thought it through? Why not ask for the information in the 2014-2015 return, due next autumn and payable in Jan 2016? That would explain why there are urgent discussions going on with the Treasury officials.
It's not as though it was a secret potential tax that nobody had heard about, so it can't really be described as retrospective. People (a) with £multi-X million houses who (b) fret about paying a few thousand and (c) don't have a conscience and (d) had nonetheless planned to vote Labour have plenty of time to consider voting Tory instead. I'm sure it's a key swing group.
I really resent Labour people like you stating that people who object to a tax or paying more tax are without a conscience. Having a moral conscience is not linked to a party political view of the world. Nor does any one party have a monopoly on morality or conscience.
I could just as easily say that those who outsource their concern for others to the state by paying tax rather than actually doing anything themselves (writing a cheque is so much easier than spending time with a lady with dementia) are lacking in conscience or morality ("by their deeds shall you be known"). But I don't because I don't assume that having a conscience can only result in one particular political view being taken. There are people of morality on all parts of the political spectrum and for Labour to arrogate morality to itself is the worst kind of arrogance.
You're not comparing like - with - like budget deficits. The numbers you quote for the UK are post interest payments, the ones for Scotland assume no debt to pay interest on.
Not true - The Scottish deficit estimate included a historic share of UK public debt (page 76 of the white paper). OK, add 0.8-0.9% for, at worst, a population-based share and it is still comparable to the average UK deficit.
O/T completely but this is an example of fantastic service by much maligned UK institutions that I think it worthy of spreading.
At about 15:00 yesterday afternoon I renewed my son's young person's railcard on-line. The new card has just arrived in the normal post, no express delivery, courier service or anything else. And this at Christmas too.
I am seriously impressed. I haven't been so impressed since I renewed my driving licence on line (in the process switching from the old paper licence to the new style), checking the use passport photo option, and it was delivered inside 48 hours.
The passport computer project was a good example of a public sector IT project done as it should be - clear specs at the start, no changes in mid-project, and delivered on time and on budget with no bugs to speak of.
To make a non-partisan comment: there's a theory that the public sector is bad at IT which is unfair to the professionals. The problem of big projects (public and private) is that the people ordering them tend to change their minds as they progress, partly because the big project is so complex that it has unexpected ramifications (example: NHS IT under the last government and universal benefit under this one). The trivial answer is not to do big projects, but some things actually can't easily be broken down into small projects - e.g. reforming the benefits system a bit at a time.
As I mentioned yesterday, we had great service from the passport office last week - we handed in the form on the Tuesday afternoon, and got the passport yesterday. It could hardly be better.
But you are having a laugh when you mention the NHS IT project. It was not unexpected ramifications: they were all too expected, and led to £10 billion being wasted.
I guess the point here is that everyone should have expected unexpected ramifications.
Comments
What makes this even worse is that, if the minority government depends on the SNP, then it is dependent on a party which actively benefits from failure at Westminster.
It won't end well, believe me.
"John Mann has passed detectives information about the suspicious deaths of the men who were allegedly poised to lift the lid on child sex abuse at the heart of the Establishment.
The unnamed caretaker was said to have tapes on ultra-violent ‘sex parties’ when he died in an apparent arson attack.
A second council employee, social services manager Bulic Forsythe, was found dead by firefighters in his blazing flat in Clapham. His skull had been fractured by a heavy weapon.
In the months before his murder the 42-year-old had told colleagues at Lambeth Council he was on the verge of exposing child sex abuse and corruption."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2884471/VIP-child-abuse-whistleblowers-murdered-MP-says-men-poised-lift-lid-scandal.html
Here is a tip: Read t'Economist. The GERS model is a [MODERATED]-ised version of the EIU model from the late 'Nineties....
From 1966 to 1987 the bias was modest, favouring neither party much and with no clear direction.
The shattering of the mining industry in particular, combined with generally falling turnouts, plus the rise of third parties, largely at the expense of the Tories, generated a significant pro-Labour bias from 1992 onwards. It peaked in 2001 and has been falling since, although is still worth about 50 seats...
The UKIP vote is the one that's hardest to predict and I don't think any of us have a solid basis to predict what it'll do, but the default assumption is probably that it'll do what it says it'll do - vote UKIP.
http://www.tpuc.org/blair-covering-up-paedophile-scandal/
Also, if I remember correctly, Nick Clegg came into the front line of the Campaign only when Mr Cameron stopped being neutral - at the insistence of his backbenchers.
Do unto Others as would be done to you....
Hypothesis: Those currently giving UKIP as their chosen party are less likely to be certain to vote, and Tories more likely, thus explaining the difference in the MORI poll scores.
Is refuted by the evidence.
However, I did notice that the Tories do quite well in the "Go on, tell me who you will vote for, pretty pleeeeease?" question. See Table 12. Perhaps it's the results of this question that nudge the Tories up and UKIP down relative to the other phone pollsters?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-balls-labour-government-would-fasttrack-the-mansion-tax-9941165.html
However, the timetable doesn't seem to make sense. On the one hand, it seems to be a self-assessment system:
Householders would have to disclose their property’s value on their income tax return. HM Revenue & Customs would carry out checks but if a person obtained an independent valuation, HMRC would not “second guess” it, Mr Balls said.
(which sounds a complete nightmare, but let's leave that aside for the moment).
So the earliest anyone could 'fess up to the sin of owning a house which has risen in value beyond some arbitrary figure would be in their income tax return, presumably for the year 2015-2016, due by January 2017. If it's like income tax they'd then have to pay the tax in January 2017, with the option of deferring it (at what interest rate?) if they're not higher-rate taxpayers.
And yet:
“I would like to see that revenue coming in in the first year of a Labour government, before the end of the financial year."
Has he thought this through?
WOW!
Amazed it's not leading the news!
Or are you, once more, demonstrating your rather tenuous grasp of economics and fleeting relationship with facts?
It's rather sweet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11310135/Nigel-Farage-and-Ukips-crybabies-need-to-learn-to-take-criticism.html
But that isn't a great surprise since the threshold and rates he is proposing will only make him £300m not the £2bn he claims, so he is either going to make nothing (after the costs of processing and collection, and defending lawsuits taken against HMRC by irate rich people, are taken into account), or he is telling a big whopper about the threshold which will be more like 1.2m and cover just about any 3 bedroom house in London. Popular.
But then this isn't, and never was about money, its about differentiation and using the Politics of Envy to win votes, just like the 50% tax which also makes nothing.
As to the D Notice, I don't believe there was one. The only possible topic that could have been subject to such a notice was a certain politicians home address and as that was in the public domain anyway what would have been the point.
Furthermore the author seems not to know what a D Notice is (actually they have been called something else for 20 years but let that pass). He/she seems to think there is some system whereby HMG says thou shalt publish nothing about X and all the news media have to comply, which is of course, complete rubbish. There is a system whereby HMG can ask, ask not compel, news outlets to refrain form publishing information that falls into certain categories, all defence related. It is used sparingly, as the amount off harmful stuff that has been published over the years will attest.
Of course, we do know that the Blair government ran its own, unofficial, programme of press censorship in the shape of the thug Campbell and his acolytes and imitators. Maybe that is what the author of the report you cited was talking about.
In 1989 I attended a lecture at the LSE. It was given by the Keynsian Economist Richard Layard.
He praised the fact that Mrs Thatcher had risen the long-term UK growth-rate from 2.25% to 2.75%. The similar lectures of Sir Richard Goodhart would - well - probably confuse you due to the mathematical focus.
Needless-to-say: Thirteen-years of Scottish-and-EU ignorance has reduced the LTGR of England to a poultry 2.4%. And yet you cheer...!
England has so much dynamism that even you should applaud. But we know your weakenesses; your hangovers; your contempt: A gracious nation that could regularly build a new, bigger, pie is not you want: You want tick-boxes and a smaller pie of which you - a socialist - can partake a bigger slice of....
Hate is not a political-concept: It is a sad reflection of one-self and one's own weaknesses. Hence you - like sven - are a painfull joke and a burden....
You're not comparing like - with - like budget deficits. The numbers you quote for the UK are post interest payments, the ones for Scotland assume no debt to pay interest on.
Demographic changes have lowered long term gdp growth rates across the developed world.
I appreciate what you say and no doubt there are loads of consipracy theory nutjobs, but don't forget it was Icke that exposed Saville as a paedophile AND a necrophiliac while he was still alive.
Paddington Bear statue left with a very sore head after vandals decapitate it
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11309937/Paddington-Bear-statue-left-with-a-very-sore-head-after-vandals-decapitate-it.html
Each person sets the value of their property and pays a tax based on it. HOWEVER
Anyone can buy the property AT THE PRICE set by the owner - unless the owner RAISES the value and pays 3 years back-taxes at the new value.
What Ben seems to trying to make an issue of is that a statistic, which probably less than 1% of the population understands, is 4 parts in a thousand lower than what that statistic was thought to be some months ago. Why any normal person should care, when there are more worrying measures available, is beyond me
Online
Yougov 13.7%
Populus 13.5%
Ashcroft 12.2%
ComRes 11.7%
Phone
ICM 9.5%
Ipsos 8.2%
ComRes 7.0%
Shy Switchers?
It's not as though it was a secret potential tax that nobody had heard about, so it can't really be described as retrospective. People (a) with £multi-X million houses who (b) fret about paying a few thousand and (c) don't have a conscience and (d) had nonetheless planned to vote Labour have plenty of time to consider voting Tory instead. I'm sure it's a key swing group.
So, owners of £2m houses would become liable from the date of the legislation (assuming no retrospective stuff). This could be within days of a Labour government taking office I suppose.
Enjoyed t'Economists atricle on the UK Statisticians of WWII. In light of that: Could anyone clarify the short-term impacts of falling prices of real GDP growth?
With Inflation a lot lower than expected I would assume that this affects Nominal-Income. So lower inflation effects Nominal-GDP but does this undermine the expectation of real income-growth (in the short-term)...?
In simple terms:
Ben exists in a parallel universe where a gigantic and almighty state lauds it over a thriving economy.
A shame it has never existed in the history of the world. And it never will.
CON-UKIP switching is 4-5 points higher online.
The political nightmare of course is that anyone with a house which might possibly be worth something approaching £2m will be faced with having to make a declaration, which in practice means paying for a valuation, possibly every year.
Good luck with that little bombshell for millions of people who thought this was nothing to do with them.
Of course if numpties want to build a self serving anti establishment case based on crank websites run by paranoid mental cases parading fantasy as fact then thats up to you.
We should all hope the truth comes out but given all the fantasies out there and police paranoia and incompetence I think it might be wise to just wait and see.
I thought the Blairs' hold their property in trust via an Oirish passport. No doubt Chukus Yoh!Mony! has a similar arrangement via interesting parhtays!
CON-LD
Online
Ashcroft 1.7
Comres 1
Yougov 1
Populus 0.8
Phone
ICM 2.2
Comres 1.7
Ipsos 1.3
The net movement isn't the issue. The discrepancy between online and call-based is.
Even the same polling organisation is getting differing responses to the same question.
At about 15:00 yesterday afternoon I renewed my son's young person's railcard on-line. The new card has just arrived in the normal post, no express delivery, courier service or anything else. And this at Christmas too.
I am seriously impressed. I haven't been so impressed since I renewed my driving licence on line (in the process switching from the old paper licence to the new style), checking the use passport photo option, and it was delivered inside 48 hours.
If it was going to raise more than the square root of f*ck all I might be more enthusiastic, but even if Balls lowers the threshold enough to get the money he wants, which will have people buying an average London house getting it valued "just in case" within 5 years, its the equivalent of 2 weeks of repayment on the interest on our national debt.
If he was he would - erm - consider the scope of his statement; the bounds to be addressed; and - ultimately - how to measure the hypothesis. Sadly no-one takes Dr Planck seriously....
Given that prices move down as well as up, could there be lawsuits? Quite a number of them, in fact.
I am afraid reluctant to believe this promise over the longer term.
But it's the honest way of doing it. Another reason Labour are not proposing it is that they want central government to get the money, not the councils. In which case, make it so half the money from the top bands goes to the council, the other half to central government (or is offset against central government grants). That way the council gets money, and so does central government.
Labour's proposal just makes a broken system more broken, although I'm not against the concept per se.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5iqY-ICIAEzzJz.jpg:large
Ed Mili-[MODERATED] who chose higher energy-prices because he did not - then - care about the 'cost-of-living-crisis'? Where does Labour/Al-Beeb find such useful eejits...?
"The clear winner, with a quarter of the votes..."
Just shows how great FPTP is!
– The lead based on unrounded* figures was about 3.2 points (so up 1.2 points from 2 pt lead at the weekend YouGov poll)
– The Labour vote share was up ten points among 18-24 year olds (who have an 11.9% weighting, hence the 1.2 point boost to Labour)
– The response rate among that demographic dropped 54% compared with the previous YouGov poll.
So the entire change is down to the movement in a crossbreak of just 80 people (MoE ±11 points), which needed to be upweighted to 245% of its original size. It would be quite surprising/lucky if such a huge drop in one age group's response rate were uniformly representative within that age group (and any bias would then be magnified by the need to upweight it so much)
This kind of thing happens all the time, but it seems to be happening a lot around Christmas this year, mostly with the phone pollsters, I suspect due to many people not being home to answer their landlines. It didn't seem to happen much last year, but the December 2013 Ipsos-MORI and ICM polls were both a week earlier then than they were this year.
But online polling won't be entirely immune either, with an added risk for YouGov, because their fieldwork window is so short (only 22 hours).
So I'd advise a lot of caution when looking at festive polls.
And if I don't post again beforehand, seasons greetings to all! I've very much enjoyed PB the last few months, it's sometimes hard to read everything on every thread so apologies if I didn't reply to any replies/questions. 2015 will give us plenty more to talk about! I'm already working on a "10 charts" type post to review the year and preview 2015.
*Workings out:
((467-425)/1642)/(1-.06-.14)=3.197%
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/50cp4fluek/SundayTimesResults_141219_VI_and_Tracker.pdf
((572-539)/2109)/(1-0.6-.14)=1.956%
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/3de0qwa0dn/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-221214.pdf
(Yes I know the denominator is based on rounded "DK/WNV" but it's close enough to 1 that the difference is miniscule).
To make a non-partisan comment: there's a theory that the public sector is bad at IT which is unfair to the professionals. The problem of big projects (public and private) is that the people ordering them tend to change their minds as they progress, partly because the big project is so complex that it has unexpected ramifications (example: NHS IT under the last government and universal benefit under this one). The trivial answer is not to do big projects, but some things actually can't easily be broken down into small projects - e.g. reforming the benefits system a bit at a time.
Sven:
The Labour gubbermint - correctly - threw-out EDS from the NHS EMail contract in 2004. And then what happened...?
But you are having a laugh when you mention the NHS IT project. It was not unexpected ramifications: they were all too expected, and led to £10 billion being wasted.
Reduced bill from the EU I presume........
http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/testing-boundaries-3-lib-dems-vs-all.html
Andrew Pierce @toryboypierce now8 seconds ago
@edballsmp tells the Indy he wants to pass more music exams. Better for all if he tinkers with piano rather than the economy
Reduced bill from the EU I presume........
Yes.
If OGH's analysis that the Conservatives "I find it very difficult to see how the Conservatives can win most seats in this part of the UK."
is correct then given that Wales and Scotland (Even with a huge SNP swing) will still give Labour a ~ 30 seat headstart in the overall race (And that assumes a terrible night for Labour north of the border) if you take England as level, then correspondingly
William Hills Lab most seats @ Evens must be value.
I could just as easily say that those who outsource their concern for others to the state by paying tax rather than actually doing anything themselves (writing a cheque is so much easier than spending time with a lady with dementia) are lacking in conscience or morality ("by their deeds shall you be known"). But I don't because I don't assume that having a conscience can only result in one particular political view being taken. There are people of morality on all parts of the political spectrum and for Labour to arrogate morality to itself is the worst kind of arrogance.
You really should know better. Tsk.
Great film - unless you are a Kipper.
They won't like its undertones, I shouldn't wonder.
I'm posting via the vanilla forums.