Only saw the edited highlights of the debate on the news, but heard the last half hour on 5Live in the car. The Ed/Nicola slanging match was the only high point for the Tories methinks, and what I saw and heard reinforced my view that Cameron made a HUGE strategic mistake allowing this debate to happen without his presence. Who on earth at CCHQ thought it sensible, 3 weeks before a GE, to allow all the opposition parties bar one to have 90 minutes of prime time BBC1 to attack you personally as a coward too frit to turn up and to attack your record without any right of reply?
What a stupid election-losing cretin that man is.
Of course Ed and the others put the boot in. Why wouldn't they. Fair play to them.
EdM looks more and more prime ministerial as every day passes in this campaign, he hasn't put a foot wrong. Whereas Dave just coasts along, hardly bothering.
I'm warming to Ed. There's something in my make-up that, politics of it aside, wants Ed to win just for doing a good job, being human, and socking it to his detractors. And wants Dave to vanish into obscurity pronto, for turning out to be one of the biggest disappointments, wet blankets and let-downs in living memory.
Agree with that There was a “Half hour with Ed Milliband” or something before the debates, where he came across as very human and pleasant. He’s having a “Good War”! My wife and I, reflecting on the debates etc over the breakfast table, both felt the same.
That said, Mrs S, not very "into" politics but soft-left in approach (and a teacher!), cannot believe Labour elected Miliband, thinks he's weird and is appalled at the prospect of Nicola Sturgeon (whom she cannot abide) wielding the balance of power, did acknowledge to me last night as we watched the BBC Ten together, appalled, that holding her nose and voting Tory might be the only option.
I doubt she will (she may vote Green which may be nearly as good as voting Tory in our Lab with small majority constituency), but it was interesting to see a left-leaner actually contemplating a Tory vote knowing that EdM is (she feels) incapable of winning a majority and the prospect of him sharing power with the SNP repellent; if Labour was romping ahead in the polls and Ed looked more up to the job, there wouldn't be any internal quandary in her mind at all.
As a matter of interest, what is affecting her views about Ms S? It can hardly be the lady herself as she has hardly been allowed to speak for herself in the media until very recently.
"Dave simply doesn't want it enough. That infamous kitchen interview was revealing. Any other Tory leader would instead be throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign."
A well known Creative Director once said that the problem with account execs is they think they're chefs when infact they're waiters.
I've alway's seen Dave as an account exec because he's so typical of one. Their job is to present other people's work and their creative imput is minimal. My guess is that in Lynton Cosby they have chosen a second rate chef so there's not much the waiter can do
What a surprise, a pair of old lefties like OGH and John Curtice agree with one another. I see Stephen Fisher has in this morning's projection increased the Tory lead over Labour by 9 seats.
Those of us who were politically active before 1983 when the LibDems were pretty much irrelevant remember that the entire government changed either way on a relatively small number of votes and both Tories and Labour tended to score within a very narrow range.
I got the distinct feeling Curtice will be voting SNP in Stirling just to disprove the extent of tactical voting some have supposed will take place
Only saw the edited highlights of the debate on the news, but heard the last half hour on 5Live in the car. The Ed/Nicola slanging match was the only high point for the Tories methinks, and what I saw and heard reinforced my view that Cameron made a HUGE strategic mistake allowing this debate to happen without his presence. Who on earth at CCHQ thought it sensible, 3 weeks before a GE, to allow all the opposition parties bar one to have 90 minutes of prime time BBC1 to attack you personally as a coward too frit to turn up and to attack your record without any right of reply?
What a stupid election-losing cretin that man is.
Of course Ed and the others put the boot in. Why wouldn't they. Fair play to them.
EdM looks more and more prime ministerial as every day passes in this campaign, he hasn't put a foot wrong. Whereas Dave just coasts along, hardly bothering.
I'm warming to Ed. There's something in my make-up that, politics of it aside, wants Ed to win just for doing a good job, being human, and socking it to his detractors. And wants Dave to vanish into obscurity pronto, for turning out to be one of the biggest disappointments, wet blankets and let-downs in living memory.
Six months ago Chris Patten warned his party not to underestimate Ed M. Looks like he was right.
Personally, I have bet large on some kind of Lab minority or coalition, but I remain flabbergasted that the late swing back to the incumbent Tories with an economy on the mend doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it will be as one of the pollsters (Ben Page i think) told Newsnight and the late swing will only happen on the day of the actual election.
What has happened to the old guard all round? Labour's old guard are nowhere to be seen, the Tories, apart from Hague last night, the same. This is an election fronted only by newbies who all seem to turn off the electorate.
Good question. Where is John Major?
Labour had to get Blair out of the way early. [Or was that the other way around?]
I suspect Major will be deployed during election week.
Based on the following assumptions, all of which I think are reasonable:
- the UKIP vote share is significantly higher than last time; - UKIP polls better in Tory held seats and takes its vote disproportionately from the Tories; - in Labour safe seats where Tories cannot win, the UKIP vote again comprises a disproportionate number of former Tories; - UKIP is squeezed down in those Tory-Lab marginal where the real contest takes place; - UKIP wins very few seats
this would mean that the Tory vote share drops, both in its safe and hopeless seats, but the effect in the marginals (and hence on its seat tally) is much less. I suggest this as a possible explanation for why the previously assumed Tory disadvantage (based on models mostly assuming straight two-party swing) may now have disappeared?
You can see why Ed wanted to do these TV debates - as we've seen from all the polling numbers (including Survation last night) Labour voters are by far the biggest group of watchers so he has had a very good opportunity to show his own voters what he's like rather than the press caricature.
He's proved he's a good debater too. Not as good as Sturgeon (who has it easier by dint of not being accountable to the English voters) but better than Cameron.
Cameron barely scored a hit on Miliband's Brownian past. Did he even try? I've always thought Cameron too polite - someone like Thatcher or Michael Howard probably would've gotten into Miliband over his previous governing role, especially on the economy, Mid Staffs, his decisions when Environment Minister etc.
But Cameron doesn't do the forensic stuff. I can see now why he is uncomfortable with the debates.
Only saw the edited highlights of the debate on the news, but heard the last half hour on 5Live in the car. The Ed/Nicola slanging match was the only high point for the Tories methinks, and what I saw and heard reinforced my view that Cameron made a HUGE strategic mistake allowing this debate to happen without his presence. Who on earth at CCHQ thought it sensible, 3 weeks before a GE, to allow all the opposition parties bar one to have 90 minutes of prime time BBC1 to attack you personally as a coward too frit to turn up and to attack your record without any right of reply?
What a stupid election-losing cretin that man is.
Of course Ed and the others put the boot in. Why wouldn't they. Fair play to them.
EdM looks more and more prime ministerial as every day passes in this campaign, he hasn't put a foot wrong. Whereas Dave just coasts along, hardly bothering.
I'm warming to Ed. There's something in my make-up that, politics of it aside, wants Ed to win just for doing a good job, being human, and socking it to his detractors. And wants Dave to vanish into obscurity pronto, for turning out to be one of the biggest disappointments, wet blankets and let-downs in living memory.
Six months ago Chris Patten warned his party not to underestimate Ed M. Looks like he was right.
Personally, I have bet large on some kind of Lab minority or coalition, but I remain flabbergasted that the late swing back to the incumbent Tories with an economy on the mend doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it will be as one of the pollsters (Ben Page i think) told Newsnight and the late swing will only happen on the day of the actual election.
What has happened to the old guard all round? Labour's old guard are nowhere to be seen, the Tories, apart from Hague last night, the same. This is an election fronted only by newbies who all seem to turn off the electorate.
Good question. Where is John Major?
Labour had to get Blair out of the way early. [Or was that the other way around?]
I suspect Major will be deployed during election week.
Only saw the edited highlights of the debate on the news, but heard the last half hour on 5Live in the car. The Ed/Nicola slanging match was the only high point for the Tories methinks, and what I saw and heard reinforced my view that Cameron made a HUGE strategic mistake allowing this debate to happen without his presence. Who on earth at CCHQ thought it sensible, 3 weeks before a GE, to allow all the opposition parties bar one to have 90 minutes of prime time BBC1 to attack you personally as a coward too frit to turn up and to attack your record without any right of reply?
What a stupid election-losing cretin that man is.
Of course Ed and the others put the boot in. Why wouldn't they. Fair play to them.
EdM looks more and more prime ministerial as every day passes in this campaign, he hasn't put a foot wrong. Whereas Dave just coasts along, hardly bothering.
I'm warming to Ed. There's something in my make-up that, politics of it aside, wants Ed to win just for doing a good job, being human, and socking it to his detractors. And wants Dave to vanish into obscurity pronto, for turning out to be one of the biggest disappointments, wet blankets and let-downs in living memory.
Six months ago Chris Patten warned his party not to underestimate Ed M. Looks like he was right.
Personally, I have bet large on some kind of Lab minority or coalition, but I remain flabbergasted that the late swing back to the incumbent Tories with an economy on the mend doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it will be as one of the pollsters (Ben Page i think) told Newsnight and the late swing will only happen on the day of the actual election.
What has happened to the old guard all round? Labour's old guard are nowhere to be seen, the Tories, apart from Hague last night, the same. This is an election fronted only by newbies who all seem to turn off the electorate.
Good question. Where is John Major?
Labour had to get Blair out of the way early. [Or was that the other way around?]
I suspect Major will be deployed during election week.
If Major and Mandy both come out extremely prominently in the last week, that's GSM to the Tories.
Mr. Jessop, that's the doubling of computing power, right?
Now long until the singularity marks the beginning of our overthrow by superior artificial intelligence.
Sort of. Gordon Moore himself has changed it several times, but I think it's currently a doubling of transistors on a chip every two years. It's becoming increasingly hard to match as the technology strikes the wall of quantum theory and other esoteric problems.
Up to around ten years ago, the 'speed' of a processor was judged by the clock speed. But recently it's been stuck around the 3-4GHz mark for consumer chips.
At the 3Ghz (3*10^9 / second) frequency, light (speed = 3 X 10^8 ms-1) travels 10cm between clock cycles.
Yep, it's amazing that the speed of light - seen as being so incredibly fast - can become a limiting factor in chip design. The new 3D transistor gates are incredible as well.
Only saw the edited highlights of the debate on the news, but heard the last half hour on 5Live in the car. The Ed/Nicola slanging match was the only high point for the Tories methinks, and what I saw and heard reinforced my view that Cameron made a HUGE strategic mistake allowing this debate to happen without his presence. Who on earth at CCHQ thought it sensible, 3 weeks before a GE, to allow all the opposition parties bar one to have 90 minutes of prime time BBC1 to attack you personally as a coward too frit to turn up and to attack your record without any right of reply?
What a stupid election-losing cretin that man is.
Of course Ed and the others put the boot in. Why wouldn't they. Fair play to them.
EdM looks more and more prime ministerial as every day passes in this campaign, he hasn't put a foot wrong. Whereas Dave just coasts along, hardly bothering.
I'm warming to Ed. There's something in my make-up that, politics of it aside, wants Ed to win just for doing a good job, being human, and socking it to his detractors. And wants Dave to vanish into obscurity pronto, for turning out to be one of the biggest disappointments, wet blankets and let-downs in living memory.
Six months ago Chris Patten warned his party not to underestimate Ed M. Looks like he was right.
Personally, I have bet large on some kind of Lab minority or coalition, but I remain flabbergasted that the late swing back to the incumbent Tories with an economy on the mend doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it will be as one of the pollsters (Ben Page i think) told Newsnight and the late swing will only happen on the day of the actual election.
What has happened to the old guard all round? Labour's old guard are nowhere to be seen, the Tories, apart from Hague last night, the same. This is an election fronted only by newbies who all seem to turn off the electorate.
Good question. Where is John Major?
Labour had to get Blair out of the way early. [Or was that the other way around?]
I suspect Major will be deployed during election week.
If Major and Mandy both come out extremely prominently in the last week, that's GSM to the Tories.
I see that there was fulsome praise from Christine Lagarde for UK economic policy, short of saying "Vote Conservative" it couldn't have been better for Osborne and Cameron.
"It's clearly also delivering results because when we look at the comparative growth rates delivered by various countries in Europe, it's obvious that what's happening in the UK has actually worked," she said.
"Disagree. What I think we're seeing very clearly is an electorate that for the most part simply doesn't see the challenges this country faces. I found the questions and responses last night to be pretty scary on the whole. Magicmoneytreeism is alive and well in UK lalaland. And this puts CCHQ in a big quandary - is it about getting elected or talking sense? The two seem diametrically opposed to me. If Dave starts saying the things he might need to say to get elected he'll be torn apart by the 'sound money / common sense' world and if he talks sound money and common sense he's going to get torn apart by the spendy mob. I have almost no symapthy for Greece or Venezuela or Argentina etc because they have elected their lunatics again and again and again for decades. A fucked up general public attitude to financial sound management, wealth creation and how advanced economies can survive and compete will lead to their countries getting fucked up. Our general public attitudes in the UK are fucked up and naive too - as was so lamentably on display last night. I fear we're going to elect some very economically fucked up bozos to run the place and when it all goes pear shaped, as it inevitably will, somehow it's going to be Fatcha's fault. Maybe we should blame the BBC and our education system. In a world where knowledge is at everyone's fingertips how is it possible for so many to be so very misguided?
I can see the Tories falling to 30% in the polls over the weekend, if not below that floor.
The writing's been on the wall for ages, and once again, and not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I seem to have been one of the few people to have foreseen what is now becoming obvious.
I'm surprised psychology theses haven't been written about pb.com. It's all here.
For interest, one poll in April so far has put the Tories on 30% and there have been five scores of 31%. A Populus poll of mid-March put the Tories on 29%. If the "true" level of Tory support is equal to the average of the last polls by the phone pollsters (ie 35%) and we assume a systematic bias putting the Tories 1% lower on internet polls, then we would be surprised if we did not have an outlier on the low side from an internet pollster of ~30% before polling day.
I advise everyone to brace themselves for the reaction of @Bob__Sykes to such a poll.
When this campaign started the immovable object was that Ed couldn't be a Prime Minister.
If Cameron had ignored him and spent the campaign boring everyone with deficit reduction and austerity they would now be romping home.
Instead he's achieved the impossible. By insisting on seven at the debates followed by his no show he's not only made Ed look Prime Ministerial but also the leader of a nation wide centre left revival with three very impressive female leaders vying for his favours.
Dave of all people should understand the value of a USP so why he threw his away with an anti austerity manifesto and engineered one for Ed is baffling
Jeez Roger. That big black thing in your photo- did it fly into your house?
BTW- very good post. I cannot even quite believe that the election is this tight- everything is in the Tories favour. They should be romping home as you said. Something has gone wrong somewhere with their strategy.
The fact that they are not romping home suggests that a large minority of the electorate do not care or do not believe that Labour wrecked the economy, and do not care or do not believe that they always wreck the economy, and therefore do not care or do not believe that they will do so again.
That is an extraordinary achievement by Labour, it has to be said.
It is as though 35% of the electorate believed either that buses aren't dangerous and it is safe to chuck yourself under one; or that they know they're dangerous, but expect to be pushing other people under the bus.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the country I live in, but perhaps I should be less surprised by this. Scotland is 85% socialist, run-down, badly educated, unhealthy, arse-wipingly poor and has an ongoing diaspora of its best and brightest; despite which its voters seem agreed that the solution is more of the same and blame the English.
I wonder what it would take to drop Labour's vote below 29%? Food riots? A programme of genocide?
I've just been watching a Guardian video on Facebook about my old home town, now described as Farageland (Boston). An interesting analysis of the problem. Massive immigration has distorted the economy; good for the framers, bad for the workers, yet Labour are supportive.
On one side, the view that the locals should get off their arses and work. On the other, the view that it's good for the local economy.
The problem in a nutshell and the reason for Ukip's rise. When I worked on the land there, it was a different time. The work was hard but available. I wondered how many Guardian reporters would be happy to 'get off their arses' and do those hours for the good of the economy.
Mutual incomprehension.
Maybe the locals *are* getting off their arses, and seeking well-paid work, as opposed to poorly-paid work. There were a series of articles about immigration in The Times, in which one employer bemoaned the fact that British workers were too ambitious, and would leave his company if better-paid jobs were offered by rivals. He preferred immigrants who were prepared to stay where they were.
Farming - particularly hard manual labour - is shitty and poorly paid work.
But ignoring this point for a second, one of the key reasons why British people don't want to do poorly paid seasonal work is that our tax and benefits system actively discourages it.
If you go and take a job in Norfolk in the fields, you need to sign off, you need to give up your housing benefit, and you probably need to apply for working tax credits.
All for six weeks work.
And then you have to sign on again. And fill in masses of paperwork. And maybe it'll be three months before your benefits are reinstated.
We have created a system which actively discourages British people from taking these jobs.
Student work, anyway should be done by machines or not at all if it is not profit making.
So are you suggesting that we should import more food and so worsen our balance of payments?
Janos Kornai could explain why loss making enterprises shouldn't be propped up. The BoP always balances and I suspect food makes up only a minimal component anyway.
With regards to the Lib Dems "comfort" polling in Scotland in WAK and ED, I hope it wasn't this style of polling that OGH was reffering to when he said that private polling showed that named candidates significantly reduced the SNPs polling figures and that is why he was selling SNP @ 21.
That was one of the reasons I didn't buy @ 21.
Tried to make up for it since
I got out of my SNP sell 21 seat sell bet at 27. Fortunately I covered this several times over with my 35 point increase on th Sturgeon buy on winning first debate.
do they have to phone Edinburgh before every vote in the HoC?
Wouldn't be that organised a deal anyway. And not all votes will be relevant. No point in phoning when the Tories are supporting you, or if it is about English affairs with no significant fiscal knockon to Barnett. Plus if they have any sense they'll have enough SNP representation on committees to thrash out minor issues early on.
It does assume that Labour is capable of speaking to the SNP in a rational way, without getting derailed into biting the carpet, etc., which neither Mr Brown nor SLAB (in Holyrood during the SNP minority government) ever seemed able to do for long - remember Mr Brown could never bring himself to acknowledge the SNP election victory let alone phone Mr Salmond to congratulate him (something on which Mr Cameron was much more punctilious).
Of course, things may be different with both Mr B and (mostly) SLAB out of the equation, as your scenario presupposes.
It's looking increasingly likely that EICCBPM. He's negotiated the debates fine. The Right Wing Press campaign is having little effect on the polls which look decidedly steady. Deadlocked parliament looks the likely outcome. I still wonder whether a second election within a year is the real nap.
My taxi driver on the way in to work today, who voted UKIP at the Euros, is going to vote Labour at the General (Hendon), on the basis that "Dismal was a good MP last time around, and that Farage is a bit shouty." He was a lifelong Labour supporter, who's 2010 vote for the Conservatives, and 2014 vote for UKIP were the only two times he's ever "crossed the line".
Equally anecdotally, a big Labour student team that is touring marginals told me that they'd found I had a good personal vote but it was exceeded by Dismore, whose personal vote was "quite extraordinary". As in my case, one has to allow for some erosion as people die/move etc., but I'd expect him to do well.
"Jeez Roger. That big black thing in your photo- did it fly into your house?"
The answer is a long one but the short version is that it's a rook that has been living with my cousin in Aberdeen for the last 24 years and which is documented here
David Smith @dsmitheconomics 27s28 seconds ago More good jobs figures - employment up nearly 250k in three months to record 73.4% of workforce; unemployment rate down to 5.6%.
If you feed in latest You gov poll which has equal shares for Tory and Labour of 34% (Ld 7 UKIP 14) and latest Scottish polls you get in total seats,on UNS 281 Tory and 285 Labour.
If we assume that boundary changes would have delivered an extra 20 seats to the Tories and and 20 less for Labour then the UK totals would be 301 Tory and 265 Labour.As the campaign progresses Dave may increasingly rue the day he allowed the Tory right wing to torpedo Lord's Reform.
He should be ruing the day that he didn't put the AV referendum in the same bill as the boundary reform, literally as per the Coalition agreement.
Not that I particularly blame the Lib Dems for reneging - boundary reform had the potential to be an extinction-level event for them given how much they depend on incumbency.
Do you mean that boundary reform should have been conditional on the introduction of AV? Or vice-versa?
Dave should have threatened to dissolve the Coalition if the LDs went ahead and reneged on boundary reform, but he was too focused on ensuring he kept in power till 2015 thinking it would all turn out alright and he'd coast back into power in his own right.
Well, that turned out well didn't it David....
A signicant feature of the last Parliament was how quickly Labour got it’s act togther (relatively speaking at least). A Party which looked to be down and out in mid 2010 was back up and running by Christmas. Which leads me to suspect that IF Cameron had thrown the LD’s out of coalition then there could have been some sort of arrangement between the latter and Labour. Probably not with Clegg involved, of course!
With regards to the Lib Dems "comfort" polling in Scotland in WAK and ED, I hope it wasn't this style of polling that OGH was reffering to when he said that private polling showed that named candidates significantly reduced the SNPs polling figures and that is why he was selling SNP @ 21.
That was one of the reasons I didn't buy @ 21.
Tried to make up for it since
I got out of my SNP sell 21 seat sell bet at 27. Fortunately I covered this several times over with my 35 point increase on th Sturgeon buy on winning first debate.
"Dave simply doesn't want it enough. That infamous kitchen interview was revealing. Any other Tory leader would instead be throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign."
A well known Creative Director once said that the problem with account execs is they think they're chefs when infact they're waiters.
I've alway's seen Dave as an account exec because he's so typical of one. Their job is to present other people's work and their creative imput is minimal. My guess is that in Lynton Cosby they have chosen a second rate chef so there's not much the waiter can do
Dave has set the British public a challenge with the manifesto.
Plenty of popular (and some eg RTB not popular) policies. A moment of silence thereafter I think is sensible to allow people to reflect on the economics of each manifesto.
Now, and as evidenced by last night's debate (which Ed couldn't quite dispel), it's quite obvious that many people are not only sick of austerity but are actively planning to end it to a greater or lesser degree.
So we have the position as follows, and it hasn't changed much: Conservatives look after the economy; everyone else wants to spend, spend spend. Ed tried to push back on this but that is solidly Cons turf.
And of course, if the public does agree with an end to austerity and vote themselves benefit, then it's going to be a bumpy ride but that will be their choice.
Has any journo bothered to point out to Cameron that the line "Based on current polling, Labour can't govern without the SNP", combined with the fact that Labour and Conservatives are polling neck and neck, logically implies that the Conservatives won't be able to govern at all?
Mr. Jessop, that's the doubling of computing power, right?
Now long until the singularity marks the beginning of our overthrow by superior artificial intelligence.
Sort of. Gordon Moore himself has changed it several times, but I think it's currently a doubling of transistors on a chip every two years. It's becoming increasingly hard to match as the technology strikes the wall of quantum theory and other esoteric problems.
Up to around ten years ago, the 'speed' of a processor was judged by the clock speed. But recently it's been stuck around the 3-4GHz mark for consumer chips.
Not just for consumer chips. I think the chips in most new supercomputers have slightly slower clock speeds than the previous generation, but they make up for that with sheer number (and improved interconnects, etc, to have them work together more efficiently).
At that point it probably becomes a programming issue: trying to break the problem up into parcels so that it can be processed efficiently on the massively parallel computers. And that's about a million miles away from anything I've ever done.
I think some of the modern supercomputers use GPUs rather than CPUs because they're already massively parallelised? Although that would probably depend on the target tasks.
With regards to the Lib Dems "comfort" polling in Scotland in WAK and ED, I hope it wasn't this style of polling that OGH was reffering to when he said that private polling showed that named candidates significantly reduced the SNPs polling figures and that is why he was selling SNP @ 21.
That was one of the reasons I didn't buy @ 21.
Tried to make up for it since
I got out of my SNP sell 21 seat sell bet at 27. Fortunately I covered this several times over with my 35 point increase on th Sturgeon buy on winning first debate.
Cutting losses on likely losers is very sensible
The first cut is the cheapest
But the cash out button only gets pressed when mugerroos are in front #bookiespension
"Dave simply doesn't want it enough. That infamous kitchen interview was revealing. Any other Tory leader would instead be throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign."
A well known Creative Director once said that the problem with account execs is they think they're chefs when infact they're waiters.
I've alway's seen Dave as an account exec because he's so typical of one. Their job is to present other people's work and their creative imput is minimal. My guess is that in Lynton Cosby they have chosen a second rate chef so there's not much the waiter can do
Dave has set the British public a challenge with the manifesto.
Plenty of popular (and some eg RTB not popular) policies. A moment of silence thereafter I think is sensible to allow people to reflect on the economics of each manifesto.
Now, and as evidenced by last night's debate (which Ed couldn't quite dispel), it's quite obvious that many people are not only sick of austerity but are actively planning to end it to a greater or lesser degree.
So we have the position as follows, and it hasn't changed much: Conservatives look after the economy; everyone else wants to spend, spend spend. Ed tried to push back on this but that is solidly Cons turf.
And of course, if the public does agree with an end to austerity and vote themselves benefit, then it's going to be a bumpy ride but that will be their choice.
So Dave not wrong to not be there, IMO.
Isn't the meme now that it is the conservatives promising to throw money at public services?
If Major and Mandy both come out extremely prominently in the last week, that's GSM to the Tories.
I think politicians grow more credible with age. Look at Hague. It seems like as UK politicians get older, they become less interested in the trappings of power which is a great shame.
A re-run of the 2001 election would be interesting now- Blair and Brown versus Hague and Portillo (as they are now), both teams with the years under their belt, without being tarnished by power and being more grounded human beings. That ambition that fires 30 something males leads to their political careers being over by the time they are in their early 50's- it'll be the same for Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Miliband- and I guess all of them will be better people when they are in their 50's, and better still when they reach their 60's. The cult of youth and ambition- it deprives the country of these talented people when they are older and wiser. Hague leaving the HoC is a great loss for politics.
"Dave simply doesn't want it enough. That infamous kitchen interview was revealing. Any other Tory leader would instead be throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign."
A well known Creative Director once said that the problem with account execs is they think they're chefs when infact they're waiters.
I've alway's seen Dave as an account exec because he's so typical of one. Their job is to present other people's work and their creative imput is minimal. My guess is that in Lynton Cosby they have chosen a second rate chef so there's not much the waiter can do
Dave has set the British public a challenge with the manifesto.
Plenty of popular (and some eg RTB not popular) policies. A moment of silence thereafter I think is sensible to allow people to reflect on the economics of each manifesto.
Now, and as evidenced by last night's debate (which Ed couldn't quite dispel), it's quite obvious that many people are not only sick of austerity but are actively planning to end it to a greater or lesser degree.
So we have the position as follows, and it hasn't changed much: Conservatives look after the economy; everyone else wants to spend, spend spend. Ed tried to push back on this but that is solidly Cons turf.
And of course, if the public does agree with an end to austerity and vote themselves benefit, then it's going to be a bumpy ride but that will be their choice.
So Dave not wrong to not be there, IMO.
Isn't the meme now that it is the conservatives promising to throw money at public services?
Isam, when you ask questions like that, you fail to live up to the challenge that Dave has set you.
"Dave simply doesn't want it enough. That infamous kitchen interview was revealing. Any other Tory leader would instead be throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign."
A well known Creative Director once said that the problem with account execs is they think they're chefs when infact they're waiters.
I've alway's seen Dave as an account exec because he's so typical of one. Their job is to present other people's work and their creative imput is minimal. My guess is that in Lynton Cosby they have chosen a second rate chef so there's not much the waiter can do
Dave has set the British public a challenge with the manifesto.
Plenty of popular (and some eg RTB not popular) policies. A moment of silence thereafter I think is sensible to allow people to reflect on the economics of each manifesto.
Now, and as evidenced by last night's debate (which Ed couldn't quite dispel), it's quite obvious that many people are not only sick of austerity but are actively planning to end it to a greater or lesser degree.
So we have the position as follows, and it hasn't changed much: Conservatives look after the economy; everyone else wants to spend, spend spend. Ed tried to push back on this but that is solidly Cons turf.
And of course, if the public does agree with an end to austerity and vote themselves benefit, then it's going to be a bumpy ride but that will be their choice.
So Dave not wrong to not be there, IMO.
Isn't the meme now that it is the conservatives promising to throw money at public services?
It's like saying the NHS isn't safe in Lab hands - maybe elements of truth and relevance but no one's going to win a campaign on that message.
"Disagree. What I think we're seeing very clearly is an electorate that for the most part simply doesn't see the challenges this country faces. I found the questions and responses last night to be pretty scary on the whole. Magicmoneytreeism is alive and well in UK lalaland. And this puts CCHQ in a big quandary - is it about getting elected or talking sense? The two seem diametrically opposed to me. If Dave starts saying the things he might need to say to get elected he'll be torn apart by the 'sound money / common sense' world and if he talks sound money and common sense he's going to get torn apart by the spendy mob. I have almost no symapthy for Greece or Venezuela or Argentina etc because they have elected their lunatics again and again and again for decades. A fucked up general public attitude to financial sound management, wealth creation and how advanced economies can survive and compete will lead to their countries getting fucked up. Our general public attitudes in the UK are fucked up and naive too - as was so lamentably on display last night. I fear we're going to elect some very economically fucked up bozos to run the place and when it all goes pear shaped, as it inevitably will, somehow it's going to be Fatcha's fault. Maybe we should blame the BBC and our education system. In a world where knowledge is at everyone's fingertips how is it possible for so many to be so very misguided?
I can see the Tories falling to 30% in the polls over the weekend, if not below that floor.
The writing's been on the wall for ages, and once again, and not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I seem to have been one of the few people to have foreseen what is now becoming obvious.
I'm surprised psychology theses haven't been written about pb.com. It's all here.
For interest, one poll in April so far has put the Tories on 30% and there have been five scores of 31%. A Populus poll of mid-March put the Tories on 29%. If the "true" level of Tory support is equal to the average of the last polls by the phone pollsters (ie 35%) and we assume a systematic bias putting the Tories 1% lower on internet polls, then we would be surprised if we did not have an outlier on the low side from an internet pollster of ~30% before polling day.
I advise everyone to brace themselves for the reaction of @Bob__Sykes to such a poll.
My prescience wasn't about a Tory poll of 30%, but more generally about Dave losing power to a minority Labour government backed by various other assorted losers.
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
Mr. Jessop, that's the doubling of computing power, right?
Now long until the singularity marks the beginning of our overthrow by superior artificial intelligence.
Sort of. Gordon Moore himself has changed it several times, but I think it's currently a doubling of transistors on a chip every two years. It's becoming increasingly hard to match as the technology strikes the wall of quantum theory and other esoteric problems.
Up to around ten years ago, the 'speed' of a processor was judged by the clock speed. But recently it's been stuck around the 3-4GHz mark for consumer chips.
Not just for consumer chips. I think the chips in most new supercomputers have slightly slower clock speeds than the previous generation, but they make up for that with sheer number (and improved interconnects, etc, to have them work together more efficiently).
At that point it probably becomes a programming issue: trying to break the problem up into parcels so that it can be processed efficiently on the massively parallel computers. And that's about a million miles away from anything I've ever done.
I think some of the modern supercomputers use GPUs rather than CPUs because they're already massively parallelised? Although that would probably depend on the target tasks.
Yes, the code structure can make a big difference, but it's here that detailed knowledge of the CPU architecture and the compiler is necessary, and those skills don't normally come cheap. It tends to be easier for budget holders to spend money on hardware than the people writing the code to run on it.
Has any journo bothered to point out to Cameron that the line "Based on current polling, Labour can't govern without the SNP", combined with the fact that Labour and Conservatives are polling neck and neck, logically implies that the Conservatives won't be able to govern at all?
It was bizarre to see QT last week where Gove was accusing Douglas Alexander of being unable to win outright so scurrying around to do a grubby deal w the SNP to get them in... As the chief whip if a coalition that five years ago GE would have refused to countenance
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
They might be bad at politics but they are good at running the country. Which would you prefer your politicians to be good at?
How many times can the IMF praise the UK's economic performance, and how distant a memory does the recession have to become before those people who "enjoyed" half a generation of profligacy begin to believe that naught percent finance and self-certifying mortgages is not the route to happiness and wealth?
IMO Dave & George have done all they can - it is now up to the public and, much like Ed's reply on RTB last night, Lab have nothing to say other than the Cons policies are nasty and in Lab's hands the very same policies would be nice.
When this campaign started the immovable object was that Ed couldn't be a Prime Minister.
If Cameron had ignored him and spent the campaign boring everyone with deficit reduction and austerity they would now be romping home.
Instead he's achieved the impossible. By insisting on seven at the debates followed by his no show he's not only made Ed look Prime Ministerial but also the leader of a nation wide centre left revival with three very impressive female leaders vying for his favours.
Dave of all people should understand the value of a USP so why he threw his away with an anti austerity manifesto and engineered one for Ed is baffling
Jeez Roger. That big black thing in your photo- did it fly into your house?
BTW- very good post. I cannot even quite believe that the election is this tight- everything is in the Tories favour. They should be romping home as you said. Something has gone wrong somewhere with their strategy.
The fact that they are not romping home suggests that a large minority of the electorate do not care or do not believe that Labour wrecked the economy, and do not care or do not believe that they always wreck the economy, and therefore do not care or do not believe that they will do so again.
That is an extraordinary achievement by Labour, it has to be said.
It is as though 35% of the electorate believed either that buses aren't dangerous and it is safe to chuck yourself under one; or that they know they're dangerous, but expect to be pushing other people under the bus.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the country I live in, but perhaps I should be less surprised by this. Scotland is 85% socialist, run-down, badly educated, unhealthy, arse-wipingly poor and has an ongoing diaspora of its best and brightest; despite which its voters seem agreed that the solution is more of the same and blame the English.
I wonder what it would take to drop Labour's vote below 29%? Food riots? A programme of genocide?
Maybe most people just understand that the financial crisis in 2008 was an international one that hit all economies regardless of their political make-up. Not everybody buys into the Mail's view of the world.
"Disagree. What I think we're seeing very clearly is an electorate that for the most part simply doesn't see the challenges this country faces. I found the questions and responses last night to be pretty scary on the whole. Magicmoneytreeism is alive and well in UK lalaland. And this puts CCHQ in a big quandary - is it about getting elected or talking sense? The two seem diametrically opposed to me. If Dave starts saying the things he might need to say to get elected he'll be torn apart by the 'sound money / common sense' world and if he talks sound money and common sense he's going to get torn apart by the spendy mob. I have almost no symapthy for Greece or Venezuela or Argentina etc because they have elected their lunatics again and again and again for decades. A fucked up general public attitude to financial sound management, wealth creation and how advanced economies can survive and compete will lead to their countries getting fucked up. Our general public attitudes in the UK are fucked up and naive too - as was so lamentably on display last night. I fear we're going to elect some very economically fucked up bozos to run the place and when it all goes pear shaped, as it inevitably will, somehow it's going to be Fatcha's fault. Maybe we should blame the BBC and our education system. In a world where knowledge is at everyone's fingertips how is it possible for so many to be so very misguided?
"
"I can see the Tories falling to 30% in the polls over the weekend, if not below that floor.
The writing's been on the wall for ages, and once again, and not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I seem to have been one of the few people to have foreseen what is now becoming obvious."
Bob - Care to have a £20 bet on that at evens money? You say that the Tories' share of the vote in a recognised nationwide UK poll falls to 30% or lower before midnight on Sunday 19 April, I say it does not. We'll then see whether what you claim is obvious is indeed so!
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
That's been the issue in Scotland for years - though when someone tried that he got the thumbs down from the membership (Murdo Fraser, some years ago). To be fair, that also involved cutting links with the London based party, which is a bit selfcontradictory for a Unionist party. Still, one wonders how they'd be doing now if Mr F had been listened to ...
With regards to the Lib Dems "comfort" polling in Scotland in WAK and ED, I hope it wasn't this style of polling that OGH was reffering to when he said that private polling showed that named candidates significantly reduced the SNPs polling figures and that is why he was selling SNP @ 21.
That was one of the reasons I didn't buy @ 21.
Tried to make up for it since
I got out of my SNP sell 21 seat sell bet at 27. Fortunately I covered this several times over with my 35 point increase on th Sturgeon buy on winning first debate.
Now that was a brave, brave and incredibly profitable call! I simply could not see Sturgeon winning the first debate - which made me glad I didn't bet on it.
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
Bit early for post mortems ?
Well, even if they struggle to some sort of minority government, that will be nowhere near as good as they should be doing given the circumstances.
There is something very inherently wrong with the way the electorate and the Conservative Party connect and we're now into the third decade of this...
At some point, someone in the Tories will have to bite the bullet and confront what's going wrong.
Disbanding the party and starting again is probably something that should have happened after 1997.... They did get close with the "nasty party" stuff but didn't follow it through to it's natural conclusion.
Has any journo bothered to point out to Cameron that the line "Based on current polling, Labour can't govern without the SNP", combined with the fact that Labour and Conservatives are polling neck and neck, logically implies that the Conservatives won't be able to govern at all?
It was bizarre to see QT last week where Gove was accusing Douglas Alexander of being unable to win outright so scurrying around to do a grubby deal w the SNP to get them in... As the chief whip if a coalition that five years ago GE would have refused to countenance
For all the Lib Dem's faults, wanting to break up the Uk isn't one of their aims, unlike the Nats.
Mr. Jessop, that's the doubling of computing power, right?
Now long until the singularity marks the beginning of our overthrow by superior artificial intelligence.
Sort of. Gordon Moore himself has changed it several times, but I think it's currently a doubling of transistors on a chip every two years. It's becoming increasingly hard to match as the technology strikes the wall of quantum theory and other esoteric problems.
Up to around ten years ago, the 'speed' of a processor was judged by the clock speed. But recently it's been stuck around the 3-4GHz mark for consumer chips.
Not just for consumer chips. I think the chips in most new supercomputers have slightly slower clock speeds than the previous generation, but they make up for that with sheer number (and improved interconnects, etc, to have them work together more efficiently).
At that point it probably becomes a programming issue: trying to break the problem up into parcels so that it can be processed efficiently on the massively parallel computers. And that's about a million miles away from anything I've ever done.
I think some of the modern supercomputers use GPUs rather than CPUs because they're already massively parallelised? Although that would probably depend on the target tasks.
Yes, the code structure can make a big difference, but it's here that detailed knowledge of the CPU architecture and the compiler is necessary, and those skills don't normally come cheap. It tends to be easier for budget holders to spend money on hardware than the people writing the code to run on it.
"It tends to be easier for budget holders to spend money on hardware than the people writing the code to run on it."
Heh. Don't I know it.. ;-)
I've never really done massively parallel programming. The only multicore coding I've been involved with was where each core performed a discrete task such as running a UI and demultiplexing.
When I was at QMW I used to go into the VLSI lab and chat to the Gods who were learning to design chips. My maths was never good enough to join them.
David Smith @dsmitheconomics 27s28 seconds ago More good jobs figures - employment up nearly 250k in three months to record 73.4% of workforce; unemployment rate down to 5.6%.
Enjoy before Labour wreck it.
Doesn't that still leave wages down in real terms from 2010?
When this campaign started the immovable object was that Ed couldn't be a Prime Minister.
If Cameron had ignored him and spent the campaign boring everyone with deficit reduction and austerity they would now be romping home.
Instead he's achieved the impossible. By insisting on seven at the debates followed by his no show he's not only made Ed look Prime Ministerial but also the leader of a nation wide centre left revival with three very impressive female leaders vying for his favours.
Dave of all people should understand the value of a USP so why he threw his away with an anti austerity manifesto and engineered one for Ed is baffling
Jeez Roger. That big black thing in your photo- did it fly into your house?
BTW- very good post. I cannot even quite believe that the election is this tight- everything is in the Tories favour. They should be romping home as you said. Something has gone wrong somewhere with their strategy.
The fact that they are not romping home suggests that a large minority of the electorate do not care or do not believe that Labour wrecked the economy, and do not care or do not believe that they always wreck the economy, and therefore do not care or do not believe that they will do so again.
That is an extraordinary achievement by Labour, it has to be said.
It is as though 35% of the electorate believed either that buses aren't dangerous and it is safe to chuck yourself under one; or that they know they're dangerous, but expect to be pushing other people under the bus.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the country I live in, but perhaps I should be less surprised by this. Scotland is 85% socialist, run-down, badly educated, unhealthy, arse-wipingly poor and has an ongoing diaspora of its best and brightest; despite which its voters seem agreed that the solution is more of the same and blame the English.
I wonder what it would take to drop Labour's vote below 29%? Food riots? A programme of genocide?
Maybe most people just understand that the financial crisis in 2008 was an international one that hit all economies regardless of their political make-up. Not everybody buys into the Mail's view of the world.
The polling doesn't support that view - the last Labour govt gets the blame.
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
I think this is one of the great unknowns. Thatcher ruined the name of the Tories for a large number of voters who are in the active group of voters whereas some of the support she garnered will have died off now.
I have always voted LD but if I were to openly support the conservatives then I would get derided by my friends. It has been bad enough supporting the coalition. There does seem to be a much more open view of the Tories at student level. When I was a student in the 90s they didn't even bother with a young Tories society as they would not have had enough for the official positions.
Maybe most people just understand that the financial crisis in 2008 was an international one that hit all economies regardless of their political make-up. Not everybody buys into the Mail's view of the world.
Our financial crisis was building up long before 2008 with £1 out of every £4 being borrowed money. All the financial crisis of 2008 did was to make people admit that such a stupid strategy was untenable.
The 2008 crisis is long gone, the enormous, eye-watering debt accrued by Labour pre-2008 is still with us.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
Maybe most people just understand that the financial crisis in 2008 was an international one that hit all economies regardless of their political make-up. Not everybody buys into the Mail's view of the world.
The Australians and Canadians did OK. Admittedly they have vast natural resources, but they also had well-run banks that were properly regulated and capitalised.
(Before anyone starts squealing about the Dutch auction on 'lighter' regulation prior to 2007, I hadn't forgotten it. However, the problem was not the laws themselves but the fact that they were being systematically and wilfully broken by no fewer than seven major banks with the active connivance of the FSA and at best the passive assistance of the Treasury and BoE.)
No one can deny that Ukip have fallen in the polls... But equally the polls that score them highest still point to a fantastic result... It's long been my view that the polls haven't got a handle on the Ukip effect, whether they over or underestimate I don't know
If you are convinced the low polls are correct ( and a lot of people will think that as it's been their argument all along) then fair enough.. If like me you think it's a general polling mess (7-19% range in a week is basically less helpful that inventing numbers) then backing Ukip overs in seats is an obvious bet
Anyone who wants to lay bookie best price overs in any market up to 9.5 level i will take it
Gin.1138. If the Tories are hated so much how come we have a Tory PM and have been in power for the last five years
Well Gordon Brown was pretty much as bad as it get's in terms of how dreadful a Prime Minister can be (though we haven't yet seen Miliband in action) and yet even in those circumstances the Tories couldn't get a majority...
When this campaign started the immovable object was that Ed couldn't be a Prime Minister.
If Cameron had ignored him and spent the campaign boring everyone with deficit reduction and austerity they would now be romping home.
Instead he's achieved the impossible. By insisting on seven at the debates followed by his no show he's not only made Ed look Prime Ministerial but also the leader of a nation wide centre left revival with three very impressive female leaders vying for his favours.
Dave of all people should understand the value of a USP so why he threw his away with an anti austerity manifesto and engineered one for Ed is baffling
Jeez Roger. That big black thing in your photo- did it fly into your house?
BTW- very good post. I cannot even quite believe that the election is this tight- everything is in the Tories favour. They should be romping home as you said. Something has gone wrong somewhere with their strategy.
The fact that they are not romping home suggests that a large minority of the electorate do not care or do not believe that Labour wrecked the economy, and do not care or do not believe that they always wreck the economy, and therefore do not care or do not believe that they will do so again.
That is an extraordinary achievement by Labour, it has to be said.
It is as though 35% of the electorate believed either that buses aren't dangerous and it is safe to chuck yourself under one; or that they know they're dangerous, but expect to be pushing other people under the bus.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the country I live in, but perhaps I should be less surprised by this. Scotland is 85% socialist, run-down, badly educated, unhealthy, arse-wipingly poor and has an ongoing diaspora of its best and brightest; despite which its voters seem agreed that the solution is more of the same and blame the English.
I wonder what it would take to drop Labour's vote below 29%? Food riots? A programme of genocide?
Maybe most people just understand that the financial crisis in 2008 was an international one that hit all economies regardless of their political make-up. Not everybody buys into the Mail's view of the world.
An earthquake may hit all buildings equally, but the ones that survive will be the ones with the strongest foundations.
No one can deny that Ukip have fallen in the polls... But equally the polls that score them highest still point to a fantastic result... It's long been my view that the polls haven't got a handle on the Ukip effect, whether they over or underestimate I don't know
If you are convinced the low polls are correct ( and a lot of people will think that as it's been their argument all along) then fair enough.. If like me you think it's a general polling mess (7-19% range in a week is basically less helpful that inventing numbers) then backing Ukip overs in seats is an obvious bet
Anyone who wants to lay bookie best price overs in any market up to 9.5 level i will take it
I am looking forward with interest to the outcome of our over/under 10% bet!!
"Sounds brilliant. I'm not a great bird fancier but my wife is and I've ordered a copy for her."
On behalf of my cousin thank you very much! It's a very good well written book and when she comes to "Roger" in it that's me.
Roger- come to the Victoria at Beeston (Broxtowe) on the 5th May for a pre election night. I'm going to help out on Nick's campaign for a couple of days at the end of the campaign- and he's lodging me with a sympathiser.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
They thought of that in 2003 as well. Indeed, they also thought about it in 1965, 1935, 1886, 1849 and 1834.
Merely changing a name doesn't make any meaningful positive difference to the way things are perceived (sometimes it can work negatively - e.g. calling Labour 'Socialist' in the 1950s). What the Tories need to do is stop campaigning on things that look helpful for the rich, and start ONLY talking about those things that benefit others (e.g. higher tax thresholds, greater chance of employment).
And they need to do that for 20 years without respite to make it as hard as possible for Labour, who after all buy into exactly the same fiscal structure as the Tories, to hypocritically claim that the Tories are on the side of the rich and Labour are on the side of the poor.
When this campaign started the immovable object was that Ed couldn't be a Prime Minister.
If Cameron had ignored him and spent the campaign boring everyone with deficit reduction and austerity they would now be romping home.
Instead he's achieved the impossible. By insisting on seven at the debates followed by his no show he's not only made Ed look Prime Ministerial but also the leader of a nation wide centre left revival with three very impressive female leaders vying for his favours.
Dave of all people should understand the value of a USP so why he threw his away with an anti austerity manifesto and engineered one for Ed is baffling
Jeez Roger. That big black thing in your photo- did it fly into your house?
BTW- very good post. I cannot even quite believe that the election is this tight- everything is in the Tories favour. They should be romping home as you said. Something has gone wrong somewhere with their strategy.
The fact that they are not romping home suggests that a large minority of the electorate do not care or do not believe that Labour wrecked the economy, and do not care or do not believe that they always wreck the economy, and therefore do not care or do not believe that they will do so again.
That is an extraordinary achievement by Labour, it has to be said.
It is as though 35% of the electorate believed either that buses aren't dangerous and it is safe to chuck yourself under one; or that they know they're dangerous, but expect to be pushing other people under the bus.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the country I live in, but perhaps I should be less surprised by this. Scotland is 85% socialist, run-down, badly educated, unhealthy, arse-wipingly poor and has an ongoing diaspora of its best and brightest; despite which its voters seem agreed that the solution is more of the same and blame the English.
I wonder what it would take to drop Labour's vote below 29%? Food riots? A programme of genocide?
Maybe most people just understand that the financial crisis in 2008 was an international one that hit all economies regardless of their political make-up. Not everybody buys into the Mail's view of the world.
Labour had a golden economic period not of their own making but from the economic benefit of China moving to a mixed market economy. This was then also ruined by world events. So either the can claim the credit for both our neither.
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
Changing the name of the party won't change many people's opinions. They will still be seen as the same Tory party by the bulk of the public. Perhaps there is a lesson from Canada, where the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives merged to form a united front. The Reform Party lost their reputation as being unserious amateurs, and the Progressive Conservatives lost their reputation as being stuffy Ontario elitists.
I can see the Tories falling to 30% in the polls over the weekend, if not below that floor.
The writing's been on the wall for ages, and once again, and not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I seem to have been one of the few people to have foreseen what is now becoming obvious.
I'm surprised psychology theses haven't been written about pb.com. It's all here.
For interest, one poll in April so far has put the Tories on 30% and there have been five scores of 31%. A Populus poll of mid-March put the Tories on 29%. If the "true" level of Tory support is equal to the average of the last polls by the phone pollsters (ie 35%) and we assume a systematic bias putting the Tories 1% lower on internet polls, then we would be surprised if we did not have an outlier on the low side from an internet pollster of ~30% before polling day.
I advise everyone to brace themselves for the reaction of @Bob__Sykes to such a poll.
My prescience wasn't about a Tory poll of 30%, but more generally about Dave losing power to a minority Labour government backed by various other assorted losers.
Did the quoting get messed up? Did you not write these words?
"I can see the Tories falling to 30% in the polls over the weekend, if not below that floor."
Incidentally, if the Tories do fall to 30% in the general election it's hard to see Miliband not winning a majority in his own right.
Easterross said: "What a surprise, a pair of old lefties like OGH and John Curtice agree with one another. I see Stephen Fisher has in this morning's projection increased the Tory lead over Labour by 9 seats.
Those of us who were politically active before 1983 when the LibDems were pretty much irrelevant remember that the entire government changed either way on a relatively small number of votes and both Tories and Labour tended to score within a very narrow range."
I can't find your original post of the above comment anywhere on this thread - has it perchance been edited out - surely not? Suffice it to say that the latest Fisher projection is most encouraging for the Blue Team and has cheered me up considerably after feeling very low about their chances last night.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
I think it would need to be a more fundamental change than that, LOL.
Both notions: that UKIP appeal to those on the right and are thus a threat to the Conservatives, and at the same time draw upon substantial support from the working class, are to some degree true. What we show not to be true is the assumption that most working-class defection to UKIP is working-class defection from Labour.
Only saw the edited highlights of the debate on the news, but heard the last half hour on 5Live in the car. The Ed/Nicola slanging match was the only high point for the Tories methinks, and what I saw and heard reinforced my view that Cameron made a HUGE strategic mistake allowing this debate to happen without his presence. Who on earth at CCHQ thought it sensible, 3 weeks before a GE, to allow all the opposition parties bar one to have 90 minutes of prime time BBC1 to attack you personally as a coward too frit to turn up and to attack your record without any right of reply?
What a stupid election-losing cretin that man is.
Of course Ed and the others put the boot in. Why wouldn't they. Fair play to them.
EdM looks more and more prime ministerial as every day passes in this campaign, he hasn't put a foot wrong. Whereas Dave just coasts along, hardly bothering.
I'm warming to Ed. There's something in my make-up that, politics of it aside, wants Ed to win just for doing a good job, being human, and socking it to his detractors. And wants Dave to vanish into obscurity pronto, for turning out to be one of the biggest disappointments, wet blankets and let-downs in living memory.
Six months ago Chris Patten warned his party not to underestimate Ed M. Looks like he was right.
Personally, I have bet large on some kind of Lab minority or coalition, but I remain flabbergasted that the late swing back to the incumbent Tories with an economy on the mend doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it will be as one of the pollsters (Ben Page i think) told Newsnight and the late swing will only happen on the day of the actual election.
What has happened to the old guard all round? Labour's old guard are nowhere to be seen, the Tories, apart from Hague last night, the same. This is an election fronted only by newbies who all seem to turn off the electorate.
We are still three weeks away from the election. The curve of decision will increase exponentially towards the date. (other than postal votes and in Tower Hamlets where the counting has already started).
For all the rhetoric, people eventually use their heads when away from the puffing of political policies perpetually produced by political parties.
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
The Tories are behind with just three of ten pollsters.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
They thought of that in 2003 as well. Indeed, they also thought about it in 1965, 1935, 1886, 1849 and 1834.
Merely changing a name doesn't make any meaningful positive difference to the way things are perceived (sometimes it can work negatively - e.g. calling Labour 'Socialist' in the 1950s). What the Tories need to do is stop campaigning on things that look helpful for the rich, and start ONLY talking about those things that benefit others (e.g. higher tax thresholds, greater chance of employment).
And they need to do that for 20 years without respite to make it as hard as possible for Labour, who after all buy into exactly the same fiscal structure as the Tories, to hypocritically claim that the Tories are on the side of the rich and Labour are on the side of the poor.
I'm not suggesting a new party would be the end point. It would just be the beginning.
I agree entirely about a change of policy and outlook too....
No one can deny that Ukip have fallen in the polls... But equally the polls that score them highest still point to a fantastic result... It's long been my view that the polls haven't got a handle on the Ukip effect, whether they over or underestimate I don't know
If you are convinced the low polls are correct ( and a lot of people will think that as it's been their argument all along) then fair enough.. If like me you think it's a general polling mess (7-19% range in a week is basically less helpful that inventing numbers) then backing Ukip overs in seats is an obvious bet
Anyone who wants to lay bookie best price overs in any market up to 9.5 level i will take it
I think this makes sense isam. If UKIP underperform in the polls, and only get 5-7%, they will still likely will Clacton. If the poll well and get 15-17% they could well win a dozen seats. That means there's a lot more upside than downside compared to the current market predictions.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
I think it would need to be a more fundamental change than that, LOL.
The Tories are fine but the message is poor. Cameron is running scared of the media when the fundamental part of any campaign is communicate your message. If he was 20 points ahead he could do it but when he is neck an neck it is weird. Boris, too, is a great communicator but where the hell is he?
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
I think it would need to be a more fundamental change than that, LOL.
I always thought Conservative to be an odd name for a political party. After all, politics is about facilitating change in a moving world, not looking back. The People's Party is better- but unBritish I guess.
My prescience wasn't about a Tory poll of 30%, but more generally about Dave losing power to a minority Labour government backed by various other assorted losers.
Gosh, as soon as you make a specific, short-term, easily determinable assertion your trumpet goes remarkably quiet.
No one can deny that Ukip have fallen in the polls... But equally the polls that score them highest still point to a fantastic result... It's long been my view that the polls haven't got a handle on the Ukip effect, whether they over or underestimate I don't know
If you are convinced the low polls are correct ( and a lot of people will think that as it's been their argument all along) then fair enough.. If like me you think it's a general polling mess (7-19% range in a week is basically less helpful that inventing numbers) then backing Ukip overs in seats is an obvious bet
Anyone who wants to lay bookie best price overs in any market up to 9.5 level i will take it
I am looking forward with interest to the outcome of our over/under 10% bet!!
Oh yeah... That was a spread bet wasn't it?
I haven't written it down, could you email me the details please?
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
I think it would need to be a more fundamental change than that, LOL.
I always thought Conservative to be an odd name for a political party. After all, politics is about facilitating change in a moving world, not looking back. The People's Party is better- but unBritish I guess.
Maybe they should rename themselves "The Capital Party" to help emphasise the difference with Labour?
It might have the unintended benefit of improving their London polling.
The unemployment figures are one part of the ARSE calculations. The projection from ARSE two years ago was that by polling day the figure would be 1.85m.
That figure has now been exceeded but it's useful to note the internals of my ARSE are fully functional.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
They thought of that in 2003 as well. Indeed, they also thought about it in 1965, 1935, 1886, 1849 and 1834.
Merely changing a name doesn't make any meaningful positive difference to the way things are perceived (sometimes it can work negatively - e.g. calling Labour 'Socialist' in the 1950s). What the Tories need to do is stop campaigning on things that look helpful for the rich, and start ONLY talking about those things that benefit others (e.g. higher tax thresholds, greater chance of employment).
And they need to do that for 20 years without respite to make it as hard as possible for Labour, who after all buy into exactly the same fiscal structure as the Tories, to hypocritically claim that the Tories are on the side of the rich and Labour are on the side of the poor.
I'm not suggesting a new party would be the end point. It would just be the beginning.
I agree entirely about a change of policy and outlook too....
A change of policy and outlook would require them to look beyond the private school/London bubble and appreciate what everyday people think. A good first step is to get out of this silly mindset that adopting popular policies on defence, crime and immigration don't mean you are "giving up the centre ground". If UKIP are winning left-wing votes to come second in 100 Labour seats, that's hardly giving up the centre ground, is it?
I'm not suggesting a new party would be the end point. It would just be the beginning.
I agree entirely about a change of policy and outlook too....
In that case, Gin1138, you are arguing at cross purposes from me. I would say the Tories have done more for the poor in five years coalition with the Liberal Democrats (let it not be forgotten, higher tax thresholds was a LD policy) than Labour have done in the last fifty. But they are b****y awful at explaining that. The coalition are making progress on sorting out income tax. Labour gave us tax credits, which due to the ineptitude of the mere principle caused more stress, financial hardship and administrative chaos than a poll tax operated by Wonga would have been. The coalition at least tried to sort out the education offered in schools. Labour gave us BSF, which has left us with a huge number of white elephants, already disintegrating due to poor build quality, that are still not paid for. The coalition gave us GP commissioning - Labour gave us the LCP and Mid Staffordshire. All of these help the poor - the rich pay for health and schooling and have a wholly different tax system anyway - but what is the Tory selling point this time around? IHT reform!!!
No one can deny that Ukip have fallen in the polls... But equally the polls that score them highest still point to a fantastic result... It's long been my view that the polls haven't got a handle on the Ukip effect, whether they over or underestimate I don't know
If you are convinced the low polls are correct ( and a lot of people will think that as it's been their argument all along) then fair enough.. If like me you think it's a general polling mess (7-19% range in a week is basically less helpful that inventing numbers) then backing Ukip overs in seats is an obvious bet
Anyone who wants to lay bookie best price overs in any market up to 9.5 level i will take it
I am looking forward with interest to the outcome of our over/under 10% bet!!
Oh yeah... That was a spread bet wasn't it?
I haven't written it down, could you email me the details please?
Not looking good for Cammo, a poor 2 weeks and the prospect of a Miliband government beholden to Scotland is now looking probable.
If the Conservatives do end up losing they should perhaps look back and consider they were not bold enough. Their main failing has to be the inability to rid the deficit, in reality they have tinkered around the edges of Public Sector cuts, barely even scraping the surface in dealing with the huge inefficiency and bloated ineffective management structures.
Nowhere has the disappointment been more acute than in Eduction, all the promise of Gove that there would be huge change, I have three teenagers and I see no improvement, quite the opposite.
Economically this government has a lot to shout about, also they have kept the taxes most of us hate paying down unlike Labour. Labour though seem so much more effective getting their message across, whether it be Bedroom Tax, or Tax Cuts for Millionaires, they get their slogans out to make full advantage.
Personally as an average earner I fully expect to be hit badly in the pocket with a Miliband led government, as will most people the Tories though don't get that message out, they really should have done and starting now may be too late.
I don't believe Miliband has done enough in opposition to deserve the chance to run the country, frankly as a Labour voter in the past he and his shadow cabinet have been hugely weak. However to under estimate him as many Conservatives have is totally wrong, mainly because he really wants power, to do what he did to win the Labour leadership totally demonstrates that, also in a staged campaign away from the Commons hothouse he is very capable of projecting himself in a positive manner, as he has done. Anybody who thought he was going to make a fool of himself like Brown is living in cloud cuckoo land.
A really poor campaign for the Conservatives again, if the right-wing press sense defeat and go towards UKIP, it could yet end up a very grim night for the Tories. They really need to buck up and fight for the best position they can muster, even in opposition.
Amazingly good employment numbers..highest on record..
Hardly as important as a debate is it ?
All these great economic figures just highlight's further two points:
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
I think this is one of the great unknowns. Thatcher ruined the name of the Tories for a large number of voters who are in the active group of voters whereas some of the support she garnered will have died off now.
I have always voted LD but if I were to openly support the conservatives then I would get derided by my friends. It has been bad enough supporting the coalition. There does seem to be a much more open view of the Tories at student level. When I was a student in the 90s they didn't even bother with a young Tories society as they would not have had enough for the official positions.
I think this is right. Mrs T was not popular with the young. People who developed their political ideas in the eighties and nineties are now mostly forty and fifty somethings with no fondness for the Tories. Farage is the same age as me but looks and sounds like an old man.
People do get more right wing with age but there is a strong inbuilt dislike of the Conservatives to overcome, and not just in Scotland. The strong dislike of Blair and Brown will work its way through in time too, but the Dave Detox has never really worked for the Nasty party.
Easterross said: "What a surprise, a pair of old lefties like OGH and John Curtice agree with one another. I see Stephen Fisher has in this morning's projection increased the Tory lead over Labour by 9 seats.
Those of us who were politically active before 1983 when the LibDems were pretty much irrelevant remember that the entire government changed either way on a relatively small number of votes and both Tories and Labour tended to score within a very narrow range."
I can't find your original post of the above comment anywhere on this thread - has it perchance been edited out - surely not? Suffice it to say that the latest Fisher projection is most encouraging for the Blue Team and has cheered me up considerably after feeling very low about their chances last night.
I can simulate many of the forecasting methods. The only way I can come up with similar results to Stephen Fisher is to to use a mix of some national polls, the Ashcroft data in the marginals, and also to take account of the ComRes data for South West England AND assume a last minute swing to the Conservatives, perhaps in the polling booth itself. But, of course,perhaps all of that IS correct. For psephologists this is a fascinating and challenging election.
On past form, the most accurate prediction may be the one that has in-built mistakes that are in the opposite direction to the errors of the pollsters!
"How many times can the IMF praise the UK's economic performance, and how distant a memory does the recession have to become before those people who "enjoyed" half a generation of profligacy begin to believe that naught percent finance and self-certifying mortgages is not the route to happiness and wealth?"
I think it was David Frost who wrote a book about the peculiar foibles of the British called "England Dear England".
Where else he said would you see a sign which simply said "Anyone throwing stones at this sign will be prosected". Or where else would describing someone as a "Fun Seeker" be an insult?
The English just don't trust it when things are going well. One of the biggest political mistakes of his lifetime he said was Harold Macmillan saying "You've never had it so good". because when voters thought about it and realized what he'd said was correct they voted in a Labour government
Mr. Thompson, whilst a valid point, the news afterwards was full of broadcasters banging on endlessly about the debate, and the papers will, I imagine, have a fair bit about it as well.
Wow thats a p-poor audience share. Don't suppose the 4.3m watched the whole thing either.
So i guess cameron got it right.
This election hasn't caught fire. Ive hardly seen a single billboard or poster, no-one i knows talking about it. its boring most everyone else apart from a few of us on here.
Will it ignite? Or don't people care? Must admit I've wondered if i can be bothered to vote & I like politics.
Comments
[Edit: assuming you live south of the border.]
"Dave simply doesn't want it enough. That infamous kitchen interview was revealing. Any other Tory leader would instead be throwing the kitchen sink at the campaign."
A well known Creative Director once said that the problem with account execs is they think they're chefs when infact they're waiters.
I've alway's seen Dave as an account exec because he's so typical of one. Their job is to present other people's work and their creative imput is minimal. My guess is that in Lynton Cosby they have chosen a second rate chef so there's not much the waiter can do
I suspect Major will be deployed during election week.
- the UKIP vote share is significantly higher than last time;
- UKIP polls better in Tory held seats and takes its vote disproportionately from the Tories;
- in Labour safe seats where Tories cannot win, the UKIP vote again comprises a disproportionate number of former Tories;
- UKIP is squeezed down in those Tory-Lab marginal where the real contest takes place;
- UKIP wins very few seats
this would mean that the Tory vote share drops, both in its safe and hopeless seats, but the effect in the marginals (and hence on its seat tally) is much less. I suggest this as a possible explanation for why the previously assumed Tory disadvantage (based on models mostly assuming straight two-party swing) may now have disappeared?
Cameron barely scored a hit on Miliband's Brownian past. Did he even try? I've always thought Cameron too polite - someone like Thatcher or Michael Howard probably would've gotten into Miliband over his previous governing role, especially on the economy, Mid Staffs, his decisions when Environment Minister etc.
But Cameron doesn't do the forensic stuff. I can see now why he is uncomfortable with the debates.
This looks like another good excuse to highlight Brittany Spears' guide to Semiconductor Physics:
http://britneyspears.ac/physics/basics/basics.htm
Computer chips are truly mankind's greatest technological wonder. And we all carry one (or two, or three) in our pockets with virtually no thought.
If
a. Miliband is PM with SNP votes
and
b. Nicola is in charge, leading all negotiations
but
c. it is a vote by vote deal
do they have to phone Edinburgh before every vote in the HoC?
For interest, one poll in April so far has put the Tories on 30% and there have been five scores of 31%. A Populus poll of mid-March put the Tories on 29%. If the "true" level of Tory support is equal to the average of the last polls by the phone pollsters (ie 35%) and we assume a systematic bias putting the Tories 1% lower on internet polls, then we would be surprised if we did not have an outlier on the low side from an internet pollster of ~30% before polling day.
I advise everyone to brace themselves for the reaction of @Bob__Sykes to such a poll.
That is an extraordinary achievement by Labour, it has to be said.
It is as though 35% of the electorate believed either that buses aren't dangerous and it is safe to chuck yourself under one; or that they know they're dangerous, but expect to be pushing other people under the bus.
Sometimes I can't quite believe the country I live in, but perhaps I should be less surprised by this. Scotland is 85% socialist, run-down, badly educated, unhealthy, arse-wipingly poor and has an ongoing diaspora of its best and brightest; despite which its voters seem agreed that the solution is more of the same and blame the English.
I wonder what it would take to drop Labour's vote below 29%? Food riots? A programme of genocide?
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/april-2015/sty-labour-market-statistics--april-2015.html
BBC Breaking News @BBCBreaking 45s46 seconds ago
UK unemployment fell by 76,000 to 1.84m (5.6%) between Dec & Feb, @ONS says http://bbc.in/1G07Iyx
It does assume that Labour is capable of speaking to the SNP in a rational way, without getting derailed into biting the carpet, etc., which neither Mr Brown nor SLAB (in Holyrood during the SNP minority government) ever seemed able to do for long - remember Mr Brown could never bring himself to acknowledge the SNP election victory let alone phone Mr Salmond to congratulate him (something on which Mr Cameron was much more punctilious).
Of course, things may be different with both Mr B and (mostly) SLAB out of the equation, as your scenario presupposes.
David Smith @dsmitheconomics 27s28 seconds ago
More good jobs figures - employment up nearly 250k in three months to record 73.4% of workforce; unemployment rate down to 5.6%.
Enjoy before Labour wreck it.
Probably not with Clegg involved, of course!
Plenty of popular (and some eg RTB not popular) policies. A moment of silence thereafter I think is sensible to allow people to reflect on the economics of each manifesto.
Now, and as evidenced by last night's debate (which Ed couldn't quite dispel), it's quite obvious that many people are not only sick of austerity but are actively planning to end it to a greater or lesser degree.
So we have the position as follows, and it hasn't changed much: Conservatives look after the economy; everyone else wants to spend, spend spend. Ed tried to push back on this but that is solidly Cons turf.
And of course, if the public does agree with an end to austerity and vote themselves benefit, then it's going to be a bumpy ride but that will be their choice.
So Dave not wrong to not be there, IMO.
I think some of the modern supercomputers use GPUs rather than CPUs because they're already massively parallelised? Although that would probably depend on the target tasks.
But the cash out button only gets pressed when mugerroos are in front #bookiespension
If Major and Mandy both come out extremely prominently in the last week, that's GSM to the Tories.
I think politicians grow more credible with age. Look at Hague. It seems like as UK politicians get older, they become less interested in the trappings of power which is a great shame.
A re-run of the 2001 election would be interesting now- Blair and Brown versus Hague and Portillo (as they are now), both teams with the years under their belt, without being tarnished by power and being more grounded human beings.
That ambition that fires 30 something males leads to their political careers being over by the time they are in their early 50's- it'll be the same for Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Miliband- and I guess all of them will be better people when they are in their 50's, and better still when they reach their 60's.
The cult of youth and ambition- it deprives the country of these talented people when they are older and wiser. Hague leaving the HoC is a great loss for politics.
1. How terrible Cameron, Osborne and Lynton Crosby are at politics.
2. How toxic the Tory brand must still be with the electorate.
This is an election that the Tories should be walking. Historians will look back in 50 years time and wonder how it was that the Conservatives blew it (like they blew 2010).
I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name...
Reality? 1.84m unemployed, highest numbers employed EVER.
Labour. Always wrong. Why would you take the risk?
"Sounds brilliant. I'm not a great bird fancier but my wife is and I've ordered a copy for her."
On behalf of my cousin thank you very much! It's a very good well written book and when she comes to "Roger" in it that's me.
How many times can the IMF praise the UK's economic performance, and how distant a memory does the recession have to become before those people who "enjoyed" half a generation of profligacy begin to believe that naught percent finance and self-certifying mortgages is not the route to happiness and wealth?
IMO Dave & George have done all they can - it is now up to the public and, much like Ed's reply on RTB last night, Lab have nothing to say other than the Cons policies are nasty and in Lab's hands the very same policies would be nice.
The writing's been on the wall for ages, and once again, and not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I seem to have been one of the few people to have foreseen what is now becoming obvious."
Bob - Care to have a £20 bet on that at evens money? You say that the Tories' share of the vote in a recognised nationwide UK poll falls to 30% or lower before midnight on Sunday 19 April, I say it does not. We'll then see whether what you claim is obvious is indeed so!
There is something very inherently wrong with the way the electorate and the Conservative Party connect and we're now into the third decade of this...
At some point, someone in the Tories will have to bite the bullet and confront what's going wrong.
Disbanding the party and starting again is probably something that should have happened after 1997.... They did get close with the "nasty party" stuff but didn't follow it through to it's natural conclusion.
Heh. Don't I know it.. ;-)
I've never really done massively parallel programming. The only multicore coding I've been involved with was where each core performed a discrete task such as running a UI and demultiplexing.
When I was at QMW I used to go into the VLSI lab and chat to the Gods who were learning to design chips. My maths was never good enough to join them.
Tristram gets some pocket money whilst working for Harriet's dad, and she gets the same whilst working for his.
I have always voted LD but if I were to openly support the conservatives then I would get derided by my friends. It has been bad enough supporting the coalition. There does seem to be a much more open view of the Tories at student level. When I was a student in the 90s they didn't even bother with a young Tories society as they would not have had enough for the official positions.
UKIP HOLD Daily Mail commentors.
The 2008 crisis is long gone, the enormous, eye-watering debt accrued by Labour pre-2008 is still with us.
"I do think we may be nearing the point when the Tories/Conservatives have to admit that their brand is effectively Ratnered and they have to launch an entirely new party under an entirely new name..."
They could call themselves 'New Conservatives' but wouldn't that be an oxymoron?
(Before anyone starts squealing about the Dutch auction on 'lighter' regulation prior to 2007, I hadn't forgotten it. However, the problem was not the laws themselves but the fact that they were being systematically and wilfully broken by no fewer than seven major banks with the active connivance of the FSA and at best the passive assistance of the Treasury and BoE.)
If you are convinced the low polls are correct ( and a lot of people will think that as it's been their argument all along) then fair enough.. If like me you think it's a general polling mess (7-19% range in a week is basically less helpful that inventing numbers) then backing Ukip overs in seats is an obvious bet
Anyone who wants to lay bookie best price overs in any market up to 9.5 level i will take it
Merely changing a name doesn't make any meaningful positive difference to the way things are perceived (sometimes it can work negatively - e.g. calling Labour 'Socialist' in the 1950s). What the Tories need to do is stop campaigning on things that look helpful for the rich, and start ONLY talking about those things that benefit others (e.g. higher tax thresholds, greater chance of employment).
And they need to do that for 20 years without respite to make it as hard as possible for Labour, who after all buy into exactly the same fiscal structure as the Tories, to hypocritically claim that the Tories are on the side of the rich and Labour are on the side of the poor.
"I can see the Tories falling to 30% in the polls over the weekend, if not below that floor."
Incidentally, if the Tories do fall to 30% in the general election it's hard to see Miliband not winning a majority in his own right.
"What a surprise, a pair of old lefties like OGH and John Curtice agree with one another. I see Stephen Fisher has in this morning's projection increased the Tory lead over Labour by 9 seats.
Those of us who were politically active before 1983 when the LibDems were pretty much irrelevant remember that the entire government changed either way on a relatively small number of votes and both Tories and Labour tended to score within a very narrow range."
I can't find your original post of the above comment anywhere on this thread - has it perchance been edited out - surely not?
Suffice it to say that the latest Fisher projection is most encouraging for the Blue Team and has cheered me up considerably after feeling very low about their chances last night.
Both notions: that UKIP appeal to those on the right and are thus a threat to the Conservatives, and at the same time draw upon substantial support from the working class, are to some degree true. What we show not to be true is the assumption that most working-class defection to UKIP is working-class defection from Labour.
http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/16/pa.gsv005.full
UKIP returners (or not) decide the next PM.
For all the rhetoric, people eventually use their heads when away from the puffing of political policies perpetually produced by political parties.
How crap must the other brands be?
I agree entirely about a change of policy and outlook too....
The People's Party is better- but unBritish I guess.
No further questions.
I haven't written it down, could you email me the details please?
Btw I am talking about 9.5 seats in today's post
It might have the unintended benefit of improving their London polling.
That figure has now been exceeded but it's useful to note the internals of my ARSE are fully functional.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3041886/South-Africa-woman-latest-victim-rioting-sparked-anti-immigrant-protests.html
If the Conservatives do end up losing they should perhaps look back and consider they were not bold enough. Their main failing has to be the inability to rid the deficit, in reality they have tinkered around the edges of Public Sector cuts, barely even scraping the surface in dealing with the huge inefficiency and bloated ineffective management structures.
Nowhere has the disappointment been more acute than in Eduction, all the promise of Gove that there would be huge change, I have three teenagers and I see no improvement, quite the opposite.
Economically this government has a lot to shout about, also they have kept the taxes most of us hate paying down unlike Labour. Labour though seem so much more effective getting their message across, whether it be Bedroom Tax, or Tax Cuts for Millionaires, they get their slogans out to make full advantage.
Personally as an average earner I fully expect to be hit badly in the pocket with a Miliband led government, as will most people the Tories though don't get that message out, they really should have done and starting now may be too late.
I don't believe Miliband has done enough in opposition to deserve the chance to run the country, frankly as a Labour voter in the past he and his shadow cabinet have been hugely weak. However to under estimate him as many Conservatives have is totally wrong, mainly because he really wants power, to do what he did to win the Labour leadership totally demonstrates that, also in a staged campaign away from the Commons hothouse he is very capable of projecting himself in a positive manner, as he has done. Anybody who thought he was going to make a fool of himself like Brown is living in cloud cuckoo land.
A really poor campaign for the Conservatives again, if the right-wing press sense defeat and go towards UKIP, it could yet end up a very grim night for the Tories. They really need to buck up and fight for the best position they can muster, even in opposition.
I'm looking at possible black swans.
People do get more right wing with age but there is a strong inbuilt dislike of the Conservatives to overcome, and not just in Scotland. The strong dislike of Blair and Brown will work its way through in time too, but the Dave Detox has never really worked for the Nasty party.
https://twitter.com/stephentall/status/588993322393456640
https://twitter.com/stephentall/status/588994035546718208
On past form, the most accurate prediction may be the one that has in-built mistakes that are in the opposite direction to the errors of the pollsters!
telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/11544186/Finance-world-in-the-dark-as-Bloomberg-terminals-go-offline.html
That was always clearly nonsense.
"How many times can the IMF praise the UK's economic performance, and how distant a memory does the recession have to become before those people who "enjoyed" half a generation of profligacy begin to believe that naught percent finance and self-certifying mortgages is not the route to happiness and wealth?"
I think it was David Frost who wrote a book about the peculiar foibles of the British called "England Dear England".
Where else he said would you see a sign which simply said "Anyone throwing stones at this sign will be prosected". Or where else would describing someone as a "Fun Seeker" be an insult?
The English just don't trust it when things are going well. One of the biggest political mistakes of his lifetime he said was Harold Macmillan saying "You've never had it so good".
because when voters thought about it and realized what he'd said was correct they voted in a Labour government
"Are online political polling panels full of political nerds/saddos?"
Remember 20% of the YouGov panel watched the Paxman interviews, when only 5% of the public did
Telegraph Politics (@TelePolitics)
April 17
Nigel Farage repeats claim that BBC debate audience was biased tgr.ph/1EPPFfJ
http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-lib-dem-battleground-in-april-2015.html
So i guess cameron got it right.
This election hasn't caught fire. Ive hardly seen a single billboard or poster, no-one i knows talking about it. its boring most everyone else apart from a few of us on here.
Will it ignite? Or don't people care? Must admit I've wondered if i can be bothered to vote & I like politics.