Survation. @Survation 14m14 minutes ago "Only" is CNBC's word not mine. 5-10 seats would be impressive under FPTP. Keep in mind the number of SNP seats in 2010.
Best wishes for tomorrow Mike, I will remember to toast your good health
17% is the absolute max Con will get in Scotland. 16.5% is where I think they will be. So the only way they can beat Lab is by Lab falling below them rather than Con adding any more.
Not unlikely, as things stand. What's Labours min?
One thought as a long-standing supporter of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform - if the SNP get nearly all the seats in Scotland on roughly half the vote, I think that might give some of my colleagues pause for thought.
One thought as a long-standing supporter of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform - if the SNP get nearly all the seats in Scotland on roughly half the vote, I think that might give some of my colleagues pause for thought.
Indeed. Especially given some of the fervent opponents of reform have come from 'safe' seats.
Ruth Davidson is proving to be a great appointment - rather sooner than I expected. I thought it'd take another GE for the Tories to get back on the front foot - it seems to be accelerating due to SNP bulldozing and chronically weak SLAB.
One thought as a long-standing supporter of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform - if the SNP get nearly all the seats in Scotland on roughly half the vote, I think that might give some of my colleagues pause for thought.
Will Labour also be inclined to drop its self-serving opposition to EVEL (or any other answer to the WLQ)? Presumably the troughers would have to lose Wales as well for that.
17% is the absolute max Con will get in Scotland. 16.5% is where I think they will be. So the only way they can beat Lab is by Lab falling below them rather than Con adding any more.
Not unlikely, as things stand. What's Labours min?
I don't know but I think we will find out on May 8th!
Labour paying the heaviest of all prices in Scotland and rightly so.
Too many MPs sat on fat majorities for too long doing diddly squat to improve people's lives.
Unless the Tories can scrabble together another dozen seats against current polling (Labour I think are near enough out the game) the British constitution is 8 days away from a big crisis - something of which everyone seems in denial.
Mind you, I'll be bloody annoyed if my bet on a tie in Scotland between the Conservatives and Labour loses because the Conservatives win.
On these figures, it's hard to identify a single Scottish Labour seat that would be held.
Murphy was guest on Radio Scotland this morning and did not have a good time of it , heard only one person being nice, rest were not happy and Jim got real snappy with them but got put in his place many times. Showed the mood very clearly.
Precisely, and it is this statistic that shows UKIP are indeed just ignorant, authoritarian bigots. The people who actually live among immigrants are fine with them. UKIPpers know nothing of them, they just hate them anyway and think others should hate them too.
We can be likewise pretty sure that the UKKKIPer who has "a problem with negroes" doesn't know any black people, and that the UKIPper who thought gay marriage caused floods didn't know any gay people.
Proportionately, more UKIP MEPs have been imprisoned than Romanian immigrants to the UK. My worst nightmare would be if a family of UKIPpers moved in next door.
To be honest Bond any neighbourhood that has you living in it has already stooped as low as it is possible to go.
One thought as a long-standing supporter of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform - if the SNP get nearly all the seats in Scotland on roughly half the vote, I think that might give some of my colleagues pause for thought.
Yes only interested when it is to save their own skins, kind of sums up why they are getting a good thrashing in Scotland.
There is not going to be a grand coalition under any circumstances. It is inconceivable in the UK parliamentary system. Quite apart from anything else, why on earth would either party want it?
What we might see is a 'grand confidence and supply', but even that is highly unlikely. More likely would be an informal arrangement where one of the two big parties decided to abstain on a confidence vote in order temporarily to keep the other in as a minority government. They would do this if they thought it was better, from a purely party-political viewpoint, to let things fester for a bit, heaping unpopularity on the poor saps trying to hold things together. They might also do this if they thought they needed more time themselves before provoking an election - for example, because funds were short or if they wanted to change leader first.
But a grand coalition is for the birds.
Yes: see Spain for exactly how this might work.
There the presence of regional (Basque, Catalan) parties has meant that the (historic) big two parties only very rarely got absolute majorities. Rather than be blackmailed at the mercy of regional parties to form a government, there was a gentleman's agreement between the big parties to allow the largest party to form a minority government.
Of course, to pass laws required a degree of compromise with smaller parties, or required individual representatives to be willing to ignore their party bosses, but - by and large - the system worked fairly well.
Labour paying the heaviest of all prices in Scotland and rightly so.
Too many MPs sat on fat majorities for too long doing diddly squat to improve people's lives.
Unless the Tories can scrabble together another dozen seats against current polling (Labour I think are near enough out the game) the British constitution is 8 days away from a big crisis - something of which everyone seems in denial.
A crisis for whom? Westminster and self serving MPs? Outside the bubble, life will likely continue as normal. Belgium was a pleasant enough place to be whilst the politicians squabbled and traded.
PoliticsHome @politicshome 2h2 hours ago 65% of new households since 1997 were headed by a foreign national, MigrationWatch report says http://polho.me/1QI5jhL
Says it all really. The truth is even more troublesome for the UK than even UKIP darkest's forecasts.
Anyone in the gambling game will know about the awful FOBT machines that are social menace particularly for the working class.. bookmakers are opening up shops in poor areas specifically to house these machines, known as the "crack cocaine of the gambling industry"
It seems UKIP have committed to reducing the max stake per spin to £2 from £100 .. hopefully whoever is PM will copy this idea
Agree; I'd love to see more emphasis on this. It's not an area I know a massive amount about, but on the face of it UKIP's proposal seems good.
Absolutely agree.
If the firms don't like it, then Betting Shops can be closed. These days they are populated almost exclusively by hopeless losers and wouldn't be missed.
When they were introduced, they served a useful social purpose and took illegal betting off the street. They have long outlived their usefulness though and serve only to provide lazy bookies with easy money from gaming machines.
FOBT's are an area I would like to read up on a little. Do you, Sam or anyone else have link(s) to somewhere I can read up more on it? There were articles a couple of years ago, but I haven't seen much recently.
(This may not be a popular thing to say on this betting website, but I see the legalisation of gambling adverts by the last government as being a rather retrograde step).
Have mailed you something on the subject
Thanks. Have just skimmed it (I haven't had the time to do it full justice), and your proposed idea seems interesting, especially as you seem to have considered the downsides and come up with a to remedy one of them.
Ruth Davidson is proving to be a great appointment - rather sooner than I expected. I thought it'd take another GE for the Tories to get back on the front foot - it seems to be accelerating due to SNP bulldozing and chronically weak SLAB.
Scottish Con vote does seem the only one in Scotland resistant to the charms of Ms Sturgeon.
Why would they be, they have a sensible alternative and a very decent leader. They are competing for a completely different constituency than the SNP.
If you count coming a very very distant second with ZERO MP's being an improvement
However in Scotland the Tories are moribund and going nowhere. Their only chance was to become a Scottish party but they chose to remain a London regional sockpuppet hoping a few could get up the greasy pole. As long as they are run from London with no real Scottish policies they are also rans.
Precisely, and it is this statistic that shows UKIP are indeed just ignorant, authoritarian bigots. The people who actually live among immigrants are fine with them. UKIPpers know nothing of them, they just hate them anyway and think others should hate them too.
We can be likewise pretty sure that the UKKKIPer who has "a problem with negroes" doesn't know any black people, and that the UKIPper who thought gay marriage caused floods didn't know any gay people.
Proportionately, more UKIP MEPs have been imprisoned than Romanian immigrants to the UK. My worst nightmare would be if a family of UKIPpers moved in next door.
To be honest Bond any neighbourhood that has you living in it has already stooped as low as it is possible to go.
That's not really Bond's fault. His mum and dad decide where he lives.
My understanding is that he took quite a pay cut when entering Parliament in 1997. Not sure if he has a family but if he does they certainly weren't evident while I was working with him up in Broxtowe recently. Nor was there much evidence of work being done by ZHC interns. It seemed to be mostly in the hands of unpaid volunteers like me, and of course himself. One reason I would expect him to beat Anna Soubry is precisely the high reputation he enjoyed amongst his former constituents as a hard-working backbench MP.
Of course not all MPs are like that. It's partly because I wish more MPs were that I was prepared to give up two days of my precious time to give him a hand. I am not a Party member and haven't voted Labour since 1997, but will probably do so this time.
[This was a Party Election Broadcast on behalf of CREEP - the Campaign for the Reelection of Palmer.]
ISTR NP saying he used to be on £90k then went to the HoC on £65k.
The trouble with this sort of comparison is the ensuing claim, that to become an MP was to be worse off. We hear it from many MPs, so I'm not saying this against NPxMP personally or specifically, and it isn't honest.
The £65k excludes all manner of allowances for which no receipts are required, they're just paid regardless of whether the corresponding expense was actually incurred. So the food allowance of ~£4000 is effectively £7000 of gross salary. Ditto all the other allowances. Ditto the tax-free capital gain on taxpayer funded hime flipping - which still continues because now they just rent each other their BTLs.
The final salary scheme vests at 1/40 per year - even when private sector jobs had final salary schemes 1/60th or 1/80th was more normal. The five-year contract under the FTPA is in fact a 62-month contract because defeated MPs get 2 months' pay, and on top of that, they get a capital sum by way of a redundancy. How many people do you know on a 62-month contract? How many contractors are paid redundo by their client? These are benefits whose value is basically incalculable because you simply could not get them any other way.
An MP's package is thus probably worth about £200k to £300k if properly valued, i.e. you would need that sort of headline gross salary to end up, as a private oik and net of tax, where MPs end up. This is for a job that an 18-year-old could do (we must presume so, as Labour has put up 18-year-olds as candidates).
Mr Bond says ..''This is for a job that an 18-year-old could do (we must presume so, as Labour has put up 18-year-olds as candidates).'' Yes. Being an MP is not a bad job and in my opinion its not for an 18 year old. Its an uncertain one and requires maintaining two - possibly 3 - homes. So the allowances are not totally unfair. But it is not a badly paid job and offers the prospect of actually running the country.
If my football promotion/relegation thingy has any validity, then incumbents should get a bit of a boost from civic pride in Watford and Burton. Being in the play-offs should boost Ipswich, Norwich, Milton Keynes and Swindon.
Getting a poorer result would be the LibDems in Yeovil, Colchester, Cheltenham, Burnley and Bermondsey (Millwall) and the Tories in Blackpool and Crawley.
How on earth can David Cameron promise a law to stop rises in tax raising powers...what if the economy slows down? - where will the shortfall come from? How can he expect Parliament to vote on that without being able to see whether or not it's even viable?
Comments
It all goes in cycles - some longer than others.
Too many MPs sat on fat majorities for too long doing diddly squat to improve people's lives.
Unless the Tories can scrabble together another dozen seats against current polling (Labour I think are near enough out the game) the British constitution is 8 days away from a big crisis - something of which everyone seems in denial.
There the presence of regional (Basque, Catalan) parties has meant that the (historic) big two parties only very rarely got absolute majorities. Rather than be blackmailed at the mercy of regional parties to form a government, there was a gentleman's agreement between the big parties to allow the largest party to form a minority government.
Of course, to pass laws required a degree of compromise with smaller parties, or required individual representatives to be willing to ignore their party bosses, but - by and large - the system worked fairly well.
I believe Ed also has a midnight rendezvous planned with Billy Connolly, - should even things up a bit.
65% of new households since 1997 were headed by a foreign national, MigrationWatch report says
http://polho.me/1QI5jhL
Says it all really. The truth is even more troublesome for the UK than even UKIP darkest's forecasts.
BTW, that was quite well written IMO.
One has to laugh dammit!
The trouble with this sort of comparison is the ensuing claim, that to become an MP was to be worse off. We hear it from many MPs, so I'm not saying this against NPxMP personally or specifically, and it isn't honest.
The £65k excludes all manner of allowances for which no receipts are required, they're just paid regardless of whether the corresponding expense was actually incurred. So the food allowance of ~£4000 is effectively £7000 of gross salary. Ditto all the other allowances. Ditto the tax-free capital gain on taxpayer funded hime flipping - which still continues because now they just rent each other their BTLs.
The final salary scheme vests at 1/40 per year - even when private sector jobs had final salary schemes 1/60th or 1/80th was more normal. The five-year contract under the FTPA is in fact a 62-month contract because defeated MPs get 2 months' pay, and on top of that, they get a capital sum by way of a redundancy. How many people do you know on a 62-month contract? How many contractors are paid redundo by their client? These are benefits whose value is basically incalculable because you simply could not get them any other way.
An MP's package is thus probably worth about £200k to £300k if properly valued, i.e. you would need that sort of headline gross salary to end up, as a private oik and net of tax, where MPs end up. This is for a job that an 18-year-old could do (we must presume so, as Labour has put up 18-year-olds as candidates).
Yes. Being an MP is not a bad job and in my opinion its not for an 18 year old. Its an uncertain one and requires maintaining two - possibly 3 - homes. So the allowances are not totally unfair. But it is not a badly paid job and offers the prospect of actually running the country.