I genuinely believe that anyone other than the SNP could do a better job of getting their priorities right when it comes to running the Scottish NHS right now. For start, I would get rid of the new shift hours that nursing staff now work. What the hell were people thinking when they thought this was a good idea, certainly not maintaining a good continuity of care for the patients that is for sure.
"As a side note. I have been warning of the difficulties that the Scottish NHS was facing for the last few years on PB, it is under serious pressure right now"
While this is true, as it is everywhere in the UK, a recent poll showed the SNP are the most trusted party on the NHS in Scotland.
In spite of all the efforts of BBC Scotland, there is no plurality believing that SLAB or the Tories would do as well, never mind better.
LOL, surprise surprise a Tory thinks they could sell of the NHS and it would be better. I am sure it is the SNP that do the shift rotas on the NHS. Not too bright methinks or just blinded by hatred of SNP.
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
Nope, you are obviously not ready to admit that this smart politics by Jim Murphy when it comes to targeting the Scots voters he is trying to persuade to vote for Labour at the next GE. I doubt that dyed in the wool Yes voting Celtic fans are at the top of that list. He is at least attempting to bring together and unite Scots with this campaign, whereas the SNP seem determined to maintain the politics of division...
You are obviously not old enough to remember the popularity of both Billy McNeil and John Greig.... Go on, admit it through gnashing of teeth, this is extremely smart politics from Jim Murphy?
As J***s K***y notes, the much touted SCon revival on the back of Davidson's 'good' referendum appears entirely absent. It seems, as with Murphy, that despite winning the referendum, it has had very few knock-on benefits for Unionist pols.
How pathetic can Murphy get, he now wants knighthoods for Billy McNeil and John Greig. You just could not make it up.
UK honours have always gone down well with the Green Brigade.
There are people who give a toss about honours, and there are people who don't. I'm pretty sure Yes voting Celtic supporters are in the latter category.
It's just another example of Murphy's slightly tin-eared hoordom: 'You like this, and this? Is this doing it for you baby?'
Jim Murphy understands who he needs to get back to Labour and has some understanding of what motivates them. I'm far from convinced that he has time to achieve the job for May to salvage much from the wreckage, or that the people he needs to get back are ready to listen to him.
Not many in Scotland share your optimism , apart from a few Tory surgers.
There are 2 Britons claiming unemployment benefit in Poland. One in Slovenia. And None in Lithuania or Romania
According to the statistics there are still many more EU claimants in the UK, than UK claimants in the rest of the EU, though the phrase 'Unemployed Britons in richer EU states outnumber jobless from those countries in UK', is an interesting spin.
Fucking hell, I'm in the top 0.5% - doesn't feel that way.
It's incredible, isn't t?
I'm in the top 0.04%.
PS I also imagine that almost everyone on here is in the top 1% - which requires an income of just £25,000 a year - lower than the UK average salary. We are literally the 1 percent.
The UK mean salary is £26,000 thousand is but the median salary is £19,000ish
Even the median UK salary puts you in the top 2%, globally.
Quite remarkable and rather humbling.
Incredibly humbling - it makes me grateful for having the good fortune to have been born where I was.
However , in many of these countries you can live better on a minute wage than you can in the UK on a large one, so not a real way to measure how you are doing.
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
You have to recalibrate for general grumpy bipolar vituperativeness, the "turgid, irrelevant piffle" is equivalent to a normal British person's "quite an interesting article".
Fucking hell, I'm in the top 0.5% - doesn't feel that way.
It's incredible, isn't t?
I'm in the top 0.04%.
PS I also imagine that almost everyone on here is in the top 1% - which requires an income of just £25,000 a year - lower than the UK average salary. We are literally the 1 percent.
The UK mean salary is £26,000 thousand is but the median salary is £19,000ish
Even the median UK salary puts you in the top 2%, globally.
Quite remarkable and rather humbling.
Incredibly humbling - it makes me grateful for having the good fortune to have been born where I was.
However , in many of these countries you can live better on a minute wage than you can in the UK on a large one, so not a real way to measure how you are doing.
"The move comes after George Osborne, the Chancellor, heaped pressure on energy companies to lower bills."
Whereas Ed the Incompetent's key policy is to freeze energy bills even as the market starts a downturn.
There must be many people who took up the offers that the power companies came up with in response to Ed's whizzo idea to freeze prices. Said companies being more than happy to freeze at a peak. Those people are probably now not very happy about the deal they took. I hope that they recall whose great idea it was.
Things have come to a pretty pass when a 20-point SNP lead, 4 months before the GE, is seen as encouraging news for Labour.
Well the movement is in the right direction and is supported by another poll.
Possibly, but looking at the three most recent Survation polls, they show:
SNP 46% 48% 46% Labour 24% 24% 26%
There might be a smidgen of movement there, but if so it is tiny in comparison to the ground to be made up. And the figures are perfectly consistent with no movement at all.
Much clutching at straws on here today , your pointing out the truth will not be welcome.
Has the SNP membership rise run out of steam, anyone know?
Last I saw it was over the 92K mark , up from around 25K before the referendum. We would surely have heard if it had reached 100K.
So the SNP added 34,000 members a month in the two months after Indyref, and (possibly) have not added as many as 3,400 a month in the following 2 months......I think that could not unreasonably be interpreted as 'running out of steam'.......
Even if you are right, and you may be, then adding about 7K members in the last 2 months isn't bad when SLAB have altogether about that number, or not much more (depending on the source: it's hard to be sure when SLAB have so carefully concealed it).
In 10 years of living in Stirling, I have never been canvassed by SLAB. Whereas I've been canvassed by the SNP, LIbDems and the Tories at each election. I think SLAB lack ground resources, which is why they had to bus in activists from across the border for the referendum.
In terms of the SNP surge, in Stirling membership is still rising steadily. By the end of October it stood at 1,500 (up 500%), by the end of 2014 it had risen to 1,822. Not sure about the national picture though.
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
Cutting and pasting one third of an article is a potential copyright infringement. It really should not be done.
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
You have to recalibrate for general grumpy bipolar vituperativeness, the "turgid, irrelevant piffle" is equivalent to a normal British person's "quite an interesting article".
You should not have to make excuses for a loutish oaf, tell it as it is a smug ar**hole imagining he can talk down to people. Just poor breeding.
Fucking hell, I'm in the top 0.5% - doesn't feel that way.
It's incredible, isn't t?
I'm in the top 0.04%.
PS I also imagine that almost everyone on here is in the top 1% - which requires an income of just £25,000 a year - lower than the UK average salary. We are literally the 1 percent.
The UK mean salary is £26,000 thousand is but the median salary is £19,000ish
Even the median UK salary puts you in the top 2%, globally.
Quite remarkable and rather humbling.
Incredibly humbling - it makes me grateful for having the good fortune to have been born where I was.
However , in many of these countries you can live better on a minute wage than you can in the UK on a large one, so not a real way to measure how you are doing.
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Fucking hell, I'm in the top 0.5% - doesn't feel that way.
It's incredible, isn't t?
I'm in the top 0.04%.
PS I also imagine that almost everyone on here is in the top 1% - which requires an income of just £25,000 a year - lower than the UK average salary. We are literally the 1 percent.
The UK mean salary is £26,000 thousand is but the median salary is £19,000ish
Even the median UK salary puts you in the top 2%, globally.
Quite remarkable and rather humbling.
Incredibly humbling - it makes me grateful for having the good fortune to have been born where I was.
However , in many of these countries you can live better on a minute wage than you can in the UK on a large one, so not a real way to measure how you are doing.
It's fair to say that many senior SNP politicians have changed their views on many key issues over the years, so it does not seem unreasonable for Murphy to do the same. But it is going to be a long, hard road for him to change minds that only relatively recently were actively engaged in the most passionate, committed election event the UK has seen for many a long year. I suspect that deep down Murphy realises this and that currently he is in damage limitation mode. The big test for him is not May, it is next year's Scottish election. He seems to be setting Scottish Labour up for that rather than the GE, which is probably as it should be - however annoying and inconvenient that may be for Ed Miliband (who, after all, has presided over the ScotLab collapse).
We really don't need four long paragraphs of this turgid, irrelevant piffle
Is that the royal 'we', or are you now a moderator?
Just politely trying to keep the site readable for everyone else.
Also, Our Genial Host rightly disapproves of extended cut-and-pastes, due to copyright issues.
Standard form is one paragraph, max, or two at a stretch - and a link.
Lol, so says the moderator general
@SeanT dead right. PB is scanned by several media organisations and I regularly get take down notices from their solicitors.
Mike, I do realise that and whilst not the full article it was a bit on the large side. However my comment , was in relation to the smugness of Sean's overall comment.
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
Cutting and pasting one third of an article is a potential copyright infringement. It really should not be done.
Cutting and pasting any more than a line or two from behind a paywall is almost certainly an infringement.
I'm guessing there's not going to be a HUGE amount of blowback from Hollyrood.com; in fact they'll have got a few visits they may not otherwise have received. However I nobly pledge to pay the costs of any future litigation involving this transgression.
Fucking hell, I'm in the top 0.5% - doesn't feel that way.
It's incredible, isn't t?
I'm in the top 0.04%.
PS I also imagine that almost everyone on here is in the top 1% - which requires an income of just £25,000 a year - lower than the UK average salary. We are literally the 1 percent.
The UK mean salary is £26,000 thousand is but the median salary is £19,000ish
Even the median UK salary puts you in the top 2%, globally.
Quite remarkable and rather humbling.
Incredibly humbling - it makes me grateful for having the good fortune to have been born where I was.
However , in many of these countries you can live better on a minute wage than you can in the UK on a large one, so not a real way to measure how you are doing.
Thankyou Topper , as I expected and explains why despite earning lots I am still skint.
I remember quite clearly that excellent opening section in Bonfire of the Vanities (the book) - where Sherman McCoy describes, down to the last dollar, and in such a way to have readers nodding their heads in agreement, why earning US$1m leaves him on the breadline.
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Cheer up! Spurs are proud holders of the 2nd best North London football performance of the month trophy
It's fair to say that many senior SNP politicians have changed their views on many key issues over the years, so it does not seem unreasonable for Murphy to do the same. But it is going to be a long, hard road for him to change minds that only relatively recently were actively engaged in the most passionate, committed election event the UK has seen for many a long year. I suspect that deep down Murphy realises this and that currently he is in damage limitation mode. The big test for him is not May, it is next year's Scottish election. He seems to be setting Scottish Labour up for that rather than the GE, which is probably as it should be - however annoying and inconvenient that may be for Ed Miliband (who, after all, has presided over the ScotLab collapse).
Interesting thought. Another interpretation is that Mr M is atually aiming at GE2015 but is responding to the shift of Scots' Westminster VI pattern to something much closer to Holyrood (ie he may have recognised that SLAB cannot rely on a Wesminster-Holyrood difference).
But what happens if SLAB lose more than say 5-10 seats in May? Can Mr M continue as SLAB leader? Or will nobody else want to bell the cat? He did say IIRC that SLAB would not lose a single seat, in pretty much those (admittedly ambiguous) words.
(Note BTW that the possibility that Mr M loses his own MP's seat is covered by the spin of recent months that he'll mebbe take a year off between parliaments - no doubt covered by a rule change if needed, if it was correctly understood that the SLAB leader needed to be a MP or MSP).
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
Cutting and pasting one third of an article is a potential copyright infringement. It really should not be done.
Cutting and pasting any more than a line or two from behind a paywall is almost certainly an infringement.
I'm guessing there's not going to be a HUGE amount of blowback from Hollyrood.com; in fact they'll have got a few visits they may not otherwise have received. However I nobly pledge to pay the costs of any future litigation involving this transgression.
Ha, ha. It's the paywall cut and pastes that are going to be the big problem for Mike. But you never know when others may get arsey.
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Because Mr Farage is so different to other politicians, I am convinced that a press photographer just happened to be there to record this touching moment:
1) SeanT is right, it's better not to post whole articles. Normal articles should have a paragraph (or less) and a link. Articles hidden behind paywalls should sulkily ignored to avoid giving the miserable bastards any traffic.
I more or less agree, but what I posted was around a third of the artice. I'd assumed SeanT's original response was an excoriating, aesthetic judgment on the piece rather a polite point of etiquette. So difficult to tell sometimes.
Cutting and pasting one third of an article is a potential copyright infringement. It really should not be done.
Cutting and pasting any more than a line or two from behind a paywall is almost certainly an infringement.
I'm guessing there's not going to be a HUGE amount of blowback from Hollyrood.com; in fact they'll have got a few visits they may not otherwise have received. However I nobly pledge to pay the costs of any future litigation involving this transgression.
Allow me to praise Ms Rhodes and her magazine - rather more balanced than some, no most, of the Scottish media, or what passes for it.
'Two Scottish MPs, one claiming not to be a Unionist while undeniably there to defend the Union, the other proud to be a Nationalist and aware that those definitions wound his opponent up no end.
“I’m not an effing Unionist,” Murphy continually whispered in my ear [...]'
There is no "cheer" of any kind for Labour in these figures small or otherwise. Just the opposite in fact. Here is just six of the best pointers.
1) The survey was three days later than Panelbase ie 20 per cent SNP lead three days AFTER 10 per cent SNP lead. 2) The SNP lead among women is now even higher than among men 3) The geographical breakdown is disastrous for Labour. SNP leads everywhere but biggest swings in Glasgow and West Central Scotland (58 to 28!) 4) Big SNP lead in North East suggests an "oil effect" if anything favourable to SNP 5) SNP outpolls Liberals by 2-1 in Highlands , the only place Liberals have significant support 6) SNP at 50 per cent for Scottish Parliament! In other words Labour under Murphy would get masssively less seats than the 2011 disaster under Ian Gray!
There is much, much more in the detail and all of it good news for the SNP team.
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Because Mr Farage is so different to other politicians, I am convinced that a press photographer just happened to be there to record this touching moment:
Been away for a few days. Has anything happened? It doesn't seem like it. Currently enduring 24 season 3. Boy is it crap. It makes Tom Clancy look plausible.
I regard OGH as being like the BBC. He makes an effort to be impartial but inevitably has his own slant on things. Which, unlike the BBC, he doesn't try to hide.
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Because Mr Farage is so different to other politicians, I am convinced that a press photographer just happened to be there to record this touching moment:
There is no "cheer" of any kind for Labour in these figures small or otherwise. Just the opposite in fact. Here is just six of the best pointers.
1) The survey was three days later than Panelbase ie 20 per cent SNP lead three days AFTER 10 per cent SNP lead. 2) The SNP lead among women is now even higher than among men 3) The geographical breakdown is disastrous for Labour. SNP leads everywhere but biggest swings in Glasgow and West Central Scotland (58 to 28!) 4) Big SNP lead in North East suggests an "oil effect" if anything favourable to SNP 5) SNP outpolls Liberals by 2-1 in Highlands , the only place Liberals have significant support 6) SNP at 50 per cent for Scottish Parliament! In other words Labour under Murphy would get masssively less seats than the 2011 disaster under Ian Gray!
There is much, much more in the detail and all of it good news for the SNP team.
Women: hmm, so all that footie stuff from SLAB has gone down well eh?
Not so sure about Holyrood - in reality a bit more compelx because of the Caucus Race effect in which Labour fiddled the voting system so 'everyone has won and all must have a prize', to quote the Dodo ...
Nope, you are obviously not ready to admit that this smart politics by Jim Murphy when it comes to targeting the Scots voters he is trying to persuade to vote for Labour at the next GE. I doubt that dyed in the wool Yes voting Celtic fans are at the top of that list. He is at least attempting to bring together and unite Scots with this campaign, whereas the SNP seem determined to maintain the politics of division...
You are obviously not old enough to remember the popularity of both Billy McNeil and John Greig.... Go on, admit it through gnashing of teeth, this is extremely smart politics from Jim Murphy?
As J***s K***y notes, the much touted SCon revival on the back of Davidson's 'good' referendum appears entirely absent. It seems, as with Murphy, that despite winning the referendum, it has had very few knock-on benefits for Unionist pols.
How pathetic can Murphy get, he now wants knighthoods for Billy McNeil and John Greig. You just could not make it up.
UK honours have always gone down well with the Green Brigade.
There are people who give a toss about honours, and there are people who don't. I'm pretty sure Yes voting Celtic supporters are in the latter category.
It's just another example of Murphy's slightly tin-eared hoordom: 'You like this, and this? Is this doing it for you baby?'
Jim Murphy understands who he needs to get back to Labour and has some understanding of what motivates them. I'm far from convinced that he has time to achieve the job for May to salvage much from the wreckage, or that the people he needs to get back are ready to listen to him.
Not many in Scotland share your optimism , apart from a few Tory surgers.
It's fair to say that many senior SNP politicians have changed their views on many key issues over the years, so it does not seem unreasonable for Murphy to do the same. But it is going to be a long, hard road for him to change minds that only relatively recently were actively engaged in the most passionate, committed election event the UK has seen for many a long year. I suspect that deep down Murphy realises this and that currently he is in damage limitation mode. The big test for him is not May, it is next year's Scottish election. He seems to be setting Scottish Labour up for that rather than the GE, which is probably as it should be - however annoying and inconvenient that may be for Ed Miliband (who, after all, has presided over the ScotLab collapse).
Interesting thought. Another interpretation is that Mr M is atually aiming at GE2015 but is responding to the shift of Scots' Westminster VI pattern to something much closer to Holyrood (ie he may have recognised that SLAB cannot rely on a Wesminster-Holyrood difference).
But what happens if SLAB lose more than say 5-10 seats in May? Can Mr M continue as SLAB leader? Or will nobody else want to bell the cat? He did say IIRC that SLAB would not lose a single seat, in pretty much those (admittedly ambiguous) words.
(Note BTW that the possibility that Mr M loses his own MP's seat is covered by the spin of recent months that he'll mebbe take a year off between parliaments - no doubt covered by a rule change if needed, if it was correctly understood that the SLAB leader needed to be a MP or MSP).
I'd say that Scotland is currently EdM's disaster. Anyone in Labour blaming Murphy for a Labour catastrophe in May would be insane, though I am sure a few will. At some stage, though, Scotland will move into post-post-referendum mode. That's when the spotlight will fully fall on JM.
Encouraging poll for both Lab and Con in terms of their respective levels of support. It must be the first time their combined share of the vote has been > 70% for quite some time. Are people's minds at last being focused with the GE now only three and a half months away?
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Because Mr Farage is so different to other politicians, I am convinced that a press photographer just happened to be there to record this touching moment:
Labour are pretending their price freeze doesn't mean freezing prices, and the Conservatives are pretending Cameron's policy of setting fire to the internet isn't completely stupid. The Lib Dems are also participating in the election.
There is no "cheer" of any kind for Labour in these figures small or otherwise. Just the opposite in fact. Here is just six of the best pointers.
1) The survey was three days later than Panelbase ie 20 per cent SNP lead three days AFTER 10 per cent SNP lead. 2) The SNP lead among women is now even higher than among men 3) The geographical breakdown is disastrous for Labour. SNP leads everywhere but biggest swings in Glasgow and West Central Scotland (58 to 28!) 4) Big SNP lead in North East suggests an "oil effect" if anything favourable to SNP 5) SNP outpolls Liberals by 2-1 in Highlands , the only place Liberals have significant support 6) SNP at 50 per cent for Scottish Parliament! In other words Labour under Murphy would get masssively less seats than the 2011 disaster under Ian Gray!
There is much, much more in the detail and all of it good news for the SNP team.
Belatedly, can I comment on your question from the other day?
If you're betting on constituencies in Scotland, you have to accept that is an inherently risky thing to do. Scottish politics has been upended, and no one really knows exactly how it is playing out.
That said, I do think that there are value bets there for those with high appetites for risk. There have to be, if the SNP are odds against in most Labour-held seats but are well ahead of them in the polls.
Your strategy of looking at the 2011 Holyrood votes seems perfectly sensible to me, but make sure you don't exclude other possibilities too. In the absence of constituency polls, we're all making educated guesses as to how exactly the SNP rise in support is playing out. I've made some suggestions on my site, but I'm fairly tentative about them.
Because of the uncertainty, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to get a few constituencies covered.
Encouraging poll for both Lab and Con in terms of their respective levels of support. It must be the first time their combined share of the vote has been > 70% for quite some time. Are people's minds at last being focussed with the GE now only three and a half months away?
Is why I said Populus might be the gold standard at the election.
Mr. CD13, very unfair on Mr. Smithson. He doesn't demand £3bn a year, complain about not getting enough money, or throw away F1 coverage using a line of reasoning that would make Judas Iscariot blush.
YouGov have put Peter Kellner's article from the Sunday Times up.
If he's right then there's some decent bets out there.
David Cameron is on course to lead the largest party following May’s general election – but it could be touch and go whether he can remain prime minister
William Hill have now put up prices for quite a lot of Scottish constituencies.
I've put up quite enough posts on Scotland recently and don't intend putting up another in the near future, but I thought others might find this useful.
I think that there are still some bargains here. The SNP are second favourites in the bulk of these seats, in stark contrast to what you would expect from their poll ratings.
You'd have to expect things to change pretty rapidly for there not to be seats worth betting on here.
I've looked through the table, and my god those Labour majorities - nevertheless an 11% swing sounds less than a 10,000 majority and the swing to the SNP in Scotland is way above that.
Over at UK Polling report they think Livingston is a Lab Hold, but it looks like a decent SNP bet to me
Interesting issues around offer and acceptance under contract law.... Is a party invite merely an invitation to treat?
Disappointed in you, pb.com. I thought SOMEBODY would come back with "No, a party invite is an invitation to treats...."
I can do you some pedantry... the problem isn't offer and acceptance since it seems on the facts there were both, it's about intention to create legal relations.
Should she also claim for the present he would have brought? Should he seek to set off the price of a party bag?
It's fair to say that many senior SNP politicians have changed their views on many key issues over the years, so it does not seem unreasonable for Murphy to do the same. But it is going to be a long, hard road for him to change minds that only relatively recently were actively engaged in the most passionate, committed election event the UK has seen for many a long year. I suspect that deep down Murphy realises this and that currently he is in damage limitation mode. The big test for him is not May, it is next year's Scottish election. He seems to be setting Scottish Labour up for that rather than the GE, which is probably as it should be - however annoying and inconvenient that may be for Ed Miliband (who, after all, has presided over the ScotLab collapse).
Interesting thought. Another interpretation is that Mr M is atually aiming at GE2015 but is responding to the shift of Scots' Westminster VI pattern to something much closer to Holyrood (ie he may have recognised that SLAB cannot rely on a Wesminster-Holyrood difference).
But what happens if SLAB lose more than say 5-10 seats in May? Can Mr M continue as SLAB leader? Or will nobody else want to bell the cat? He did say IIRC that SLAB would not lose a single seat, in pretty much those (admittedly ambiguous) words.
(Note BTW that the possibility that Mr M loses his own MP's seat is covered by the spin of recent months that he'll mebbe take a year off between parliaments - no doubt covered by a rule change if needed, if it was correctly understood that the SLAB leader needed to be a MP or MSP).
I'd say that Scotland is currently EdM's disaster. Anyone in Labour blaming Murphy for a Labour catastrophe in May would be insane, though I am sure a few will. At some stage, though, Scotland will move into post-post-referendum mode. That's when the spotlight will fully fall on JM.
You are probably right in the first bit. However, as regards the spotlight, if you lived up here, you'd realise that Mr M already has a higher media profile than W/Cdr Gibson the day after the Dams Raid. I hate to think how unreadable the media would be if you are right. As it is, one might almost think that Mr M is leader of the UK Labour Party as well as the Scottish Labour Party (not that they aren;t the same, but let's not worry about whether putting a see you jimmy hat on a Devon cow makes it into a Hielan coo ...).
Been away for a few days. Has anything happened? It doesn't seem like it. Currently enduring 24 season 3. Boy is it crap. It makes Tom Clancy look plausible.
Given Tom Clancy wrote about a terror attack of an airliner being crashed into a building thats not too hard.
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
There is no "cheer" of any kind for Labour in these figures small or otherwise. Just the opposite in fact. Here is just six of the best pointers.
1) The survey was three days later than Panelbase ie 20 per cent SNP lead three days AFTER 10 per cent SNP lead. 2) The SNP lead among women is now even higher than among men 3) The geographical breakdown is disastrous for Labour. SNP leads everywhere but biggest swings in Glasgow and West Central Scotland (58 to 28!) 4) Big SNP lead in North East suggests an "oil effect" if anything favourable to SNP 5) SNP outpolls Liberals by 2-1 in Highlands , the only place Liberals have significant support 6) SNP at 50 per cent for Scottish Parliament! In other words Labour under Murphy would get masssively less seats than the 2011 disaster under Ian Gray!
There is much, much more in the detail and all of it good news for the SNP team.
Belatedly, can I comment on your question from the other day?
If you're betting on constituencies in Scotland, you have to accept that is an inherently risky thing to do. Scottish politics has been upended, and no one really knows exactly how it is playing out.
That said, I do think that there are value bets there for those with high appetites for risk. There have to be, if the SNP are odds against in most Labour-held seats but are well ahead of them in the polls.
Your strategy of looking at the 2011 Holyrood votes seems perfectly sensible to me, but make sure you don't exclude other possibilities too. In the absence of constituency polls, we're all making educated guesses as to how exactly the SNP rise in support is playing out. I've made some suggestions on my site, but I'm fairly tentative about them.
Because of the uncertainty, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to get a few constituencies covered.
Betfair sportsbook have put up a lot of constituencies too now.. Their prices arent that different from the others.... but if you have been restricted by other firms its a chance to get some more on
YouGov have put Peter Kellner's article from the Sunday Times up.
If he's right then there's some decent bets out there.
David Cameron is on course to lead the largest party following May’s general election – but it could be touch and go whether he can remain prime minister
I can understand the Greens being against fracking (nasty chemicals and all that), but would they also have been against developing North Sea oil in the 1960s?
Nope, you are obviously not ready to admit that this smart politics by Jim Murphy when it comes to targeting the Scots voters he is trying to persuade to vote for Labour at the next GE. I doubt that dyed in the wool Yes voting Celtic fans are at the top of that list. He is at least attempting to bring together and unite Scots with this campaign, whereas the SNP seem determined to maintain the politics of division...
You are obviously not old enough to remember the popularity of both Billy McNeil and John Greig.... Go on, admit it through gnashing of teeth, this is extremely smart politics from Jim Murphy?
As J***s K***y notes, the much touted SCon revival on the back of Davidson's 'good' referendum appears entirely absent. It seems, as with Murphy, that despite winning the referendum, it has had very few knock-on benefits for Unionist pols.
How pathetic can Murphy get, he now wants knighthoods for Billy McNeil and John Greig. You just could not make it up.
UK honours have always gone down well with the Green Brigade.
There are people who give a toss about honours, and there are people who don't. I'm pretty sure Yes voting Celtic supporters are in the latter category.
It's just another example of Murphy's slightly tin-eared hoordom: 'You like this, and this? Is this doing it for you baby?'
Jim Murphy understands who he needs to get back to Labour and has some understanding of what motivates them. I'm far from convinced that he has time to achieve the job for May to salvage much from the wreckage, or that the people he needs to get back are ready to listen to him.
Not many in Scotland share your optimism , apart from a few Tory surgers.
How is fracking in Scotland going to play out?
Dunno. But there is an obvious asymmetry -
Westminster provides the licences and get the money
Scotland (ie the taxpayers) get the pollution and the costs
Consider how that plays out, especially if the offshore industry does not get the support it is expecting after being such a cash cow for London for decades (this is not a SNP thing but dominating the business news up here).
I can understand the Greens being against fracking (nasty chemicals and all that), but would they also have been against developing North Sea oil in the 1960s?
The Scottish Greens are kinda against now. They should probably rejig their website copy though (temporarily).
'The world is also facing the end of the age of cheap oil.
I regard OGH as being like the BBC. He makes an effort to be impartial but inevitably has his own slant on things. Which, unlike the BBC, he doesn't try to hide.
If you were to ask anyone who has edited PB, myself, David Herdson, Double Carpet et al, the hardest task isn't writing the threads, but working out what topic you should write about.
No matter what you choose, somebody will never be happy.
Additionally, it is bloody hard to write a PB thread, when it is someone you know personally.
Indeed. I was thinking of how absurd 24 is in comparison to 911. It's off the charts. Jack Bruer makes Arnie look ordinary. A nuclear bomb in LA that he pilots away to the Mojave and bailes out? A killer virus bomb in LA? A daughter kidnapped twice or was it three times in one day.
I regard OGH as being like the BBC. He makes an effort to be impartial but inevitably has his own slant on things. Which, unlike the BBC, he doesn't try to hide.
If you were to ask anyone who has edited PB, myself, David Herdson, Double Carpet et al, the hardest task isn't writing the threads, but working out what topic you should write about.
No matter what you choose, somebody will never be happy.
Additionally, it is bloody hard to write a PB thread, when it is someone you know personally.
Nope, you are obviously not ready to admit that this smart politics by Jim Murphy when it comes to targeting the Scots voters he is trying to persuade to vote for Labour at the next GE. I doubt that dyed in the wool Yes voting Celtic fans are at the top of that list. He is at least attempting to bring together and unite Scots with this campaign, whereas the SNP seem determined to maintain the politics of division...
You are obviously not old enough to remember the popularity of both Billy McNeil and John Greig.... Go on, admit it through gnashing of teeth, this is extremely smart politics from Jim Murphy?
As J***s K***y notes, the much touted SCon revival on the back of Davidson's 'good' referendum appears entirely absent. It seems, as with Murphy, that despite winning the referendum, it has had very few knock-on benefits for Unionist pols.
How pathetic can Murphy get, he now wants knighthoods for Billy McNeil and John Greig. You just could not make it up.
UK honours have always gone down well with the Green Brigade.
There are people who give a toss about honours, and there are people who don't. I'm pretty sure Yes voting Celtic supporters are in the latter category.
It's just another example of Murphy's slightly tin-eared hoordom: 'You like this, and this? Is this doing it for you baby?'
Jim Murphy understands who he needs to get back to Labour and has some understanding of what motivates them. I'm far from convinced that he has time to achieve the job for May to salvage much from the wreckage, or that the people he needs to get back are ready to listen to him.
Not many in Scotland share your optimism , apart from a few Tory surgers.
How is fracking in Scotland going to play out?
Nobody wants it , but as London have now said Scotland decides who does it as long as SNP in charge it will be curtailed, so likely to be helpful to them for sure.
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
All the more so when the Government is throwing money at us in an attempt to convince us to insulate. Many of the elderly in receipt of the £200 Winter Fuel Allowance would be considerably better off if they were to be paid to have their homes properly protected from the cold weather.
I regard OGH as being like the BBC. He makes an effort to be impartial but inevitably has his own slant on things. Which, unlike the BBC, he doesn't try to hide.
If you were to ask anyone who has edited PB, myself, David Herdson, Double Carpet et al, the hardest task isn't writing the threads, but working out what topic you should write about.
No matter what you choose, somebody will never be happy.
Additionally, it is bloody hard to write a PB thread, when it is someone you know personally.
I have a two pre-prepared* threads, ready to be used on a rainy day, one of them is on AV/Electoral reform the other is comparing Ed Miliband to Hannibal (the inept general of yore and Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith of the A-Team)
YouGov have put Peter Kellner's article from the Sunday Times up.
If he's right then there's some decent bets out there.
David Cameron is on course to lead the largest party following May’s general election – but it could be touch and go whether he can remain prime minister
I regard OGH as being like the BBC. He makes an effort to be impartial but inevitably has his own slant on things. Which, unlike the BBC, he doesn't try to hide.
If you were to ask anyone who has edited PB, myself, David Herdson, Double Carpet et al, the hardest task isn't writing the threads, but working out what topic you should write about.
No matter what you choose, somebody will never be happy.
Additionally, it is bloody hard to write a PB thread, when it is someone you know personally.
Wasn't necessarily a big moan, just that it is an interesting seat, ( a three way go), Mike has found a betting angle, and the candidate selection itself was a national news story twice
Seemed very relevant to politics and betting, where as constant polling analysis threads tend to go round in circles/be old news pretty quickly
Who can forget my devastatingly original thread on Ed Miliband and his non policies? And I have offered several threads that have been ignored so have tried to help out
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Cheer up! Spurs are proud holders of the 2nd best North London football performance of the month trophy
Indeed - Typical Gonners always have to pip us - at least we've beaten this season's PL Champs!
Shouldnt they wait until the Scottish Government revises its projections for oil prices?
I don't think alliances made during the referendum campaign extend to the Scottish Greens waiting breathlessly upon pronouncements made by the SNP government.
Nope, you are obviously not ready to admit that this smart politics by Jim Murphy when it comes to targeting the Scots voters he is trying to persuade to vote for Labour at the next GE. I doubt that dyed in the wool Yes voting Celtic fans are at the top of that list. He is at least attempting to bring together and unite Scots with this campaign, whereas the SNP seem determined to maintain the politics of division...
You are obviously not old enough to remember the popularity of both Billy McNeil and John Greig.... Go on, admit it through gnashing of teeth, this is extremely smart politics from Jim Murphy?
As J***s K***y notes, the much touted SCon revival on the back of Davidson's 'good' referendum appears entirely absent. It seems, as with Murphy, that despite winning the referendum, it has had very few knock-on benefits for Unionist pols.
How pathetic can Murphy get, he now wants knighthoods for Billy McNeil and John Greig. You just could not make it up.
UK honours have always gone down well with the Green Brigade.
There are people who give a toss about honours, and there are people who don't. I'm pretty sure Yes voting Celtic supporters are in the latter category.
It's just another example of Murphy's slightly tin-eared hoordom: 'You like this, and this? Is this doing it for you baby?'
Jim Murphy understands who he needs to get back to Labour and has some understanding of what motivates them. I'm far from convinced that he has time to achieve the job for May to salvage much from the wreckage, or that the people he needs to get back are ready to listen to him.
Not many in Scotland share your optimism , apart from a few Tory surgers.
How is fracking in Scotland going to play out?
There's a fascinating case about coal bed methane playing out around Canonbie on the Scottish Border. It has it all, dodgy and duplicitous planning applications, feudal land ownership structures, secret deals to block other conglomerates.
Interesting photograph of Farage there - it's clearly been framed to show the turnout to it's best advantage, but there can't be more than 150 people in it. That's hardly a street rammed to bursting with supporters.
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88 Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Cheer up! Spurs are proud holders of the 2nd best North London football performance of the month trophy
Indeed - Typical Gonners always have to pip us - at least we've beaten this season's PL Champs!
It seems so.. would love to see them nause it but looks unlikely
If the polsters stay so far apart on combined LabCon share some are going to be a long way off the actual result. Presumably it is all down to past vote weighting/treatment of don't knows and other fudge factors. However, 35/35 seems more likely than 30/30 to me.
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
This is possibly my boringest comment ever, but have you tried HIVE? It's heating you control with wifi, from your PC, laptop, iPad, smartphone, anywhere in the world - or from your nice warm bed. Amazing.
It asks you - as you leave the house - do you want to turn your heating off, or down, or set it at 13C for 3 hours? It offers automatic frost protection. It saves £100s.
I just got a hefty rebate from NPower - three figures - because after installing Hive my heating bills nosedived, and I had overpaid.
Not boring at all. Interesting (to me anyway) because I have just been offered this by nPower and couldn't work out whether worth it or not. So thanks - will have another look.
BTW - just to show how much draughts cost you - and what a difference two mild winters make - my combined monthly gas/electricity payments dropped by nearly four-fifths.
As you say, whatever threads you put up, the 'others' will suspect they're being short changed.
Many Labour people accuse the BBC of being rabidly right wing. We all have our biases, and despite what some people think, even scientists do.
That's why some theories last longer than they should. Incidentally, string theory and M theory, beloved of Stephen Hawking, also seems to be drifting out of fashion. I can't follow the maths but it appears the concept of eleven dimensions and a multiverse may be losing popularity.
Even 'Big Bang' the sitcom has the character Sheldon Cooper wanting to switch from it (and the script writers do receive advice from the theoretical physics experts).
It's lasted thirty years and I thought it might linger as it's virtually impossible to prove it false. I may be an old fuddy-duddy, but I'd call that metaphysics. But it made things interesting for a while - the aim of many scientific theories.
Fucking hell, I'm in the top 0.5% - doesn't feel that way.
It's incredible, isn't t?
I'm in the top 0.04%.
PS I also imagine that almost everyone on here is in the top 1% - which requires an income of just £25,000 a year - lower than the UK average salary. We are literally the 1 percent.
The UK mean salary is £26,000 thousand is but the median salary is £19,000ish
Even the median UK salary puts you in the top 2%, globally.
Quite remarkable and rather humbling.
Incredibly humbling - it makes me grateful for having the good fortune to have been born where I was.
However , in many of these countries you can live better on a minute wage than you can in the UK on a large one, so not a real way to measure how you are doing.
Thankyou Topper , as I expected and explains why despite earning lots I am still skint.
I remember quite clearly that excellent opening section in Bonfire of the Vanities (the book) - where Sherman McCoy describes, down to the last dollar, and in such a way to have readers nodding their heads in agreement, why earning US$1m leaves him on the breadline.
Excellent.
One of the funniest books I have ever read. The trial scenes were also hysterical.
If the polsters stay so far apart on combined LabCon share some are going to be a long way off the actual result. Presumably it is all down to past vote weighting/treatment of don't knows and other fudge factors. However, 35/35 seems more likely than 30/30 to me.
It's not uncommon for Populus to give combined scores of c.70% for the big two, with correspondingly lower scores for UKIP and the Greens.
Telephone polling companies tend to produce lower combined scores for Con/Lab than online companies, although last week's MORI poll was an exception.
Oxfam (they used to worry about famine) are filling the BBC news channels with this "report" into global inequality. 10 years ago other NGOs complained about Oxfam's closeness with the Labour party. From the New Statesman May 2005. http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/world-affairs/2014/04/why-oxfam-failing-africa "One senior NGO official .....describes the relationship as "far too cosy". He says: "They have incredible access, and what that has meant is that Oxfam are the ones who are always asked to speak for the whole development movement.......They have decided that, in the longer term, their lot is best served by being in with Labour and they go out on a limb to endorse the government.""
Practice also makes a huge difference. I find a thermostat over 17c stifling. I wear t-shirts in January too. Sometimes house guests keep their coats on though :-o
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
This is possibly my boringest comment ever, but have you tried HIVE? It's heating you control with wifi, from your PC, laptop, iPad, smartphone, anywhere in the world - or from your nice warm bed. Amazing.
It asks you - as you leave the house - do you want to turn your heating off, or down, or set it at 13C for 3 hours? It offers automatic frost protection. It saves £100s.
I just got a hefty rebate from NPower - three figures - because after installing Hive my heating bills nosedived, and I had overpaid.
Not boring at all. Interesting (to me anyway) because I have just been offered this by nPower and couldn't work out whether worth it or not. So thanks - will have another look.
BTW - just to show how much draughts cost you - and what a difference two mild winters make - my combined monthly gas/electricity payments dropped by nearly four-fifths.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
When you were a teenager you would have said "it's fashionable" in a tone which implied that explained everything, and no further discussion was required... my sister did, my daughter would do it we didn't live in the tropics
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
This is possibly my boringest comment ever, but have you tried HIVE? It's heating you control with wifi, from your PC, laptop, iPad, smartphone, anywhere in the world - or from your nice warm bed. Amazing.
It asks you - as you leave the house - do you want to turn your heating off, or down, or set it at 13C for 3 hours? It offers automatic frost protection. It saves £100s.
I just got a hefty rebate from NPower - three figures - because after installing Hive my heating bills nosedived, and I had overpaid.
Not boring at all. Interesting (to me anyway) because I have just been offered this by nPower and couldn't work out whether worth it or not. So thanks - will have another look.
BTW - just to show how much draughts cost you - and what a difference two mild winters make - my combined monthly gas/electricity payments dropped by nearly four-fifths.
It's definitely worth it. Here's a positive review (and I think they underplay the money-saving aspect). Hive and its cousins are also the future of heating, for sure: within 10 years all domestic central heating will be operated this way - might as well start now?
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
This is possibly my boringest comment ever, but have you tried HIVE? It's heating you control with wifi, from your PC, laptop, iPad, smartphone, anywhere in the world - or from your nice warm bed. Amazing.
It asks you - as you leave the house - do you want to turn your heating off, or down, or set it at 13C for 3 hours? It offers automatic frost protection. It saves £100s.
I just got a hefty rebate from NPower - three figures - because after installing Hive my heating bills nosedived, and I had overpaid.
Not boring at all. Interesting (to me anyway) because I have just been offered this by nPower and couldn't work out whether worth it or not. So thanks - will have another look.
BTW - just to show how much draughts cost you - and what a difference two mild winters make - my combined monthly gas/electricity payments dropped by nearly four-fifths.
It's definitely worth it. Here's a positive review (and I think they underplay the money-saving aspect). Hive and its cousins are also the future of heating, for sure: within 10 years all domestic central heating will be operated this way - might as well start now?
For those looking to replace their boiler also very very much worth looking at the new Flow boilers. They generate electricity from your gas supply and heat water. Thermally this is alot more efficient than generating in a power station and transmitting the electricity long distances. The water is heated as a by-product of the power or as 'surge' demand when needed. Dramatic cuts to both gas AND ELECTRICITY bills.
Shouldnt they wait until the Scottish Government revises its projections for oil prices?
I don't think alliances made during the referendum campaign extend to the Scottish Greens waiting breathlessly upon pronouncements made by the SNP government.
I cant imagine many people are waiting breathlessly for the SNP government's oil price projections (well, not for their informative value anyway).
Am I the only one deeply depressed by the Muslim Council of GB response to Eric Pickles letter this morning. did they actually read it beforw condemning it?
As you say, whatever threads you put up, the 'others' will suspect they're being short changed.
Many Labour people accuse the BBC of being rabidly right wing. We all have our biases, and despite what some people think, even scientists do.
That's why some theories last longer than they should. Incidentally, string theory and M theory, beloved of Stephen Hawking, also seems to be drifting out of fashion. I can't follow the maths but it appears the concept of eleven dimensions and a multiverse may be losing popularity.
Even 'Big Bang' the sitcom has the character Sheldon Cooper wanting to switch from it (and the script writers do receive advice from the theoretical physics experts).
It's lasted thirty years and I thought it might linger as it's virtually impossible to prove it false. I may be an old fuddy-duddy, but I'd call that metaphysics. But it made things interesting for a while - the aim of many scientific theories.
Comments
"The move comes after George Osborne, the Chancellor, heaped pressure on energy companies to lower bills."
Whereas Ed the Incompetent's key policy is to freeze energy bills even as the market starts a downturn.
A Tory Prime Minister aiming/talking about full employment.
He make EdM look dynamic...in comparison,of course.
In terms of the SNP surge, in Stirling membership is still rising steadily. By the end of October it stood at 1,500 (up 500%), by the end of 2014 it had risen to 1,822. Not sure about the national picture though.
Queued for over an hour for a copy of the latest Charlie Hebdo edition, when he gets his hand on it, he complains "but it’s in French!”
http://www.theguardian.com/media/mediamonkeyblog/2015/jan/18/charlie-hebdo-magazine-french
https://www.gov.uk/exceptions-to-copyright
Cutting and pasting any more than a line or two from behind a paywall is almost certainly an infringement.
CON 35
LAB 36
LD 8
UKIP 13
GRN 4
How interesting, I saw a tweet counting them up earlier..... 92 people
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88
Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Excellent.
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88
Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Cheer up! Spurs are proud holders of the 2nd best North London football performance of the month trophy
But what happens if SLAB lose more than say 5-10 seats in May? Can Mr M continue as SLAB leader? Or will nobody else want to bell the cat? He did say IIRC that SLAB would not lose a single seat, in pretty much those (admittedly ambiguous) words.
(Note BTW that the possibility that Mr M loses his own MP's seat is covered by the spin of recent months that he'll mebbe take a year off between parliaments - no doubt covered by a rule change if needed, if it was correctly understood that the SLAB leader needed to be a MP or MSP).
as you say the angle here is 'favourable...
The Official Kate@circusfreak88
Even if you can agree with his xenophobia, legal hand guns, do you really want a man who can't count as PM? #UKIP
Because Mr Farage is so different to other politicians, I am convinced that a press photographer just happened to be there to record this touching moment:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/tower-of-london-poppies-mistyeyed-nigel-farage-appears-to-wipe-away-tears-during-visit-9838930.html
https://www.holyrood.com/articles/editors-note/identity-crisis
Irresistible intro too -
'Two Scottish MPs, one claiming not to be a Unionist while undeniably there to defend the Union, the other proud to be a Nationalist and aware that those definitions wound his opponent up no end.
“I’m not an effing Unionist,” Murphy continually whispered in my ear [...]'
I now have the chance to look at the Survation detail.
http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Scottish-Attitudes-Jan.pdf
There is no "cheer" of any kind for Labour in these figures small or otherwise. Just the opposite in fact. Here is just six of the best pointers.
1) The survey was three days later than Panelbase ie 20 per cent SNP lead three days AFTER 10 per cent SNP lead.
2) The SNP lead among women is now even higher than among men
3) The geographical breakdown is disastrous for Labour. SNP leads everywhere but biggest swings in Glasgow and West Central Scotland (58 to 28!)
4) Big SNP lead in North East suggests an "oil effect" if anything favourable to SNP
5) SNP outpolls Liberals by 2-1 in Highlands , the only place Liberals have significant support
6) SNP at 50 per cent for Scottish Parliament! In other words Labour under Murphy would get masssively less seats than the 2011 disaster under Ian Gray!
There is much, much more in the detail and all of it good news for the SNP team.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/tower-of-london-poppies-mistyeyed-nigel-farage-appears-to-wipe-away-tears-during-visit-9838930.html
Farage actually refuted any claim he shed a tear here.. I pointed this out to you at the time when you tried to make this point
I regard OGH as being like the BBC. He makes an effort to be impartial but inevitably has his own slant on things. Which, unlike the BBC, he doesn't try to hide.
He just had something in his eyes:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nigel-farage-weeps-outside-tower-of-london-remembrance-day-poppy-memorial-9839275.html
Not so sure about Holyrood - in reality a bit more compelx because of the Caucus Race effect in which Labour fiddled the voting system so 'everyone has won and all must have a prize', to quote the Dodo ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nigel-farage-weeps-outside-tower-of-london-remembrance-day-poppy-memorial-9839275.html
Maybe! You'll believe what you want to I suppose
Labour are pretending their price freeze doesn't mean freezing prices, and the Conservatives are pretending Cameron's policy of setting fire to the internet isn't completely stupid. The Lib Dems are also participating in the election.
If you're betting on constituencies in Scotland, you have to accept that is an inherently risky thing to do. Scottish politics has been upended, and no one really knows exactly how it is playing out.
That said, I do think that there are value bets there for those with high appetites for risk. There have to be, if the SNP are odds against in most Labour-held seats but are well ahead of them in the polls.
Your strategy of looking at the 2011 Holyrood votes seems perfectly sensible to me, but make sure you don't exclude other possibilities too. In the absence of constituency polls, we're all making educated guesses as to how exactly the SNP rise in support is playing out. I've made some suggestions on my site, but I'm fairly tentative about them.
Because of the uncertainty, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to get a few constituencies covered.
If he's right then there's some decent bets out there.
David Cameron is on course to lead the largest party following May’s general election – but it could be touch and go whether he can remain prime minister
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/01/19/how-cameron-could-win-and-lose/
Over at UK Polling report they think Livingston is a Lab Hold, but it looks like a decent SNP bet to me
£50 @ 11-10 it is.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/01/16/greens-leaders-debates-poster_n_6487498.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
I doubt even after the surge that there are the resources to actually put this on real poster sites though.
Should she also claim for the present he would have brought? Should he seek to set off the price of a party bag?
[edited to alter a minor zoological error]
The single most important thing I did to reduce my heating bills was to insulate my house properly and eliminate as many draughts as possible. It has made a huge difference both to the bills and to our comfort.
Improving our existing housing stock would do at least as much as price freezing/lower energy bills and what-have-you to reduce what people have to spend and our carbon emissions.
That and telling teenagers who seem to think a light T-shirt is adequate wear for early January to stop moaning and put some clothes on.
Boring, unglamorous, old-fashioned: yes but essential IMO.
I can understand the Greens being against fracking (nasty chemicals and all that), but would they also have been against developing North Sea oil in the 1960s?
Coal mining obviously would have been a no-no.
Just curious.
Westminster provides the licences and get the money
Scotland (ie the taxpayers) get the pollution and the costs
Consider how that plays out, especially if the offshore industry does not get the support it is expecting after being such a cash cow for London for decades (this is not a SNP thing but dominating the business news up here).
'The world is also facing the end of the age of cheap oil.
- See more at: http://www.scottishgreens.org.uk/policy/energy/#sthash.jExsRc0R.dpuf'
No matter what you choose, somebody will never be happy.
Additionally, it is bloody hard to write a PB thread, when it is someone you know personally.
Nothing about
1. Voting reform
2. Scotland
3. The debates
4. The latest opinion polls
5. Coalitions
6. PMQs
7. Bye-elections
8. Cyclegate
9. Nigel
Other than that you're good.
Looking forward to the next thread on 8th May.
*Horrendous tautology I know.
Seemed very relevant to politics and betting, where as constant polling analysis threads tend to go round in circles/be old news pretty quickly
Who can forget my devastatingly original thread on Ed Miliband and his non policies? And I have offered several threads that have been ignored so have tried to help out
46%, 44%, 38%, 44%, 52%.
Guess which one comes in the most recent Populus, after the introduction of the pensioner bribebond?
Nothing more motivating to get my filing done and rename some scanned paperwork....
Indeed - Typical Gonners always have to pip us - at least we've beaten this season's PL Champs!
It seems so.. would love to see them nause it but looks unlikely
If the polsters stay so far apart on combined LabCon share some are going to be a long way off the actual result. Presumably it is all down to past vote weighting/treatment of don't knows and other fudge factors. However, 35/35 seems more likely than 30/30 to me.
BTW - just to show how much draughts cost you - and what a difference two mild winters make - my combined monthly gas/electricity payments dropped by nearly four-fifths.
As you say, whatever threads you put up, the 'others' will suspect they're being short changed.
Many Labour people accuse the BBC of being rabidly right wing. We all have our biases, and despite what some people think, even scientists do.
That's why some theories last longer than they should. Incidentally, string theory and M theory, beloved of Stephen Hawking, also seems to be drifting out of fashion. I can't follow the maths but it appears the concept of eleven dimensions and a multiverse may be losing popularity.
Even 'Big Bang' the sitcom has the character Sheldon Cooper wanting to switch from it (and the script writers do receive advice from the theoretical physics experts).
It's lasted thirty years and I thought it might linger as it's virtually impossible to prove it false. I may be an old fuddy-duddy, but I'd call that metaphysics. But it made things interesting for a while - the aim of many scientific theories.
http://www.france24.com/en/20150119-hollande-approval-rate-doubles-wake-terror-attacks-ifop-poll-france/
Telephone polling companies tend to produce lower combined scores for Con/Lab than online companies, although last week's MORI poll was an exception.
http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/world-affairs/2014/04/why-oxfam-failing-africa
"One senior NGO official .....describes the relationship as "far too cosy". He says: "They have incredible access, and what that has meant is that Oxfam are the ones who are always asked to speak for the whole development movement.......They have decided that, in the longer term, their lot is best served by being in with Labour and they go out on a limb to endorse the government.""
http://www.flowenergy.uk.com/
Am I the only one deeply depressed by the Muslim Council of GB response to Eric Pickles letter this morning. did they actually read it beforw condemning it?