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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Which Irish eyes will be smiling in 2016 – a look at next y
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Which Irish eyes will be smiling in 2016 – a look at next years Irish election by Richard Nabavi
2016 is set to be a bumper year for political betting, with the Holyrood, London Mayoral and US Presidential elections coming up. But first there is another contest which should provide some excellent betting opportunities: the Irish General Election. It’s time to start doing our homework.
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Edinburgh is Labour's only chance of salvaging any dignity in Scotland next year. It's the only part of the country with a substantial young English-born population (the Highlands and the Borders also have a lot of English-borns, but I think they tend to be wealthy retirees).
A government that is delivering 6% growth should be rebounding quickly in the polls, surely? And yet your graph indicates they are declining. Weird. It suggests to me that those looking at this from outside are unlikely to judge it right.
If that is so it utterly reveals the devastation in SLAB fortunes. It also raises the question of what happens if SLAB now divert from policies designed to appeal to south of the border voters. And SLAB now claiming to have autonomy/distinct policy/etc from London may actually be counterproductive.
Interesting.
AK looks like winning 310 seats out of 550.
On the other hand, it's notable that Ms Davidson is moving from Glasgow to Edinburgh to stand. Rather remarkable given she is (AFAIK) going to be on the list and isn't even standing for the constituency vote.
However, I do still stand by that, demographically, Edinburgh would not be a particularly good fit for the Tories these days even if it was in England, let alone in Scotland.
It all depends on how quick the SNP alienate the left wing vote vs whatever right wing vote is in scotland to coalesce around the Tories.
I do not know how much you know of Turkish politics but AKP is in the long line of parties called the Democrat Party of Adnan Menderes. They have always been the largest party since the 50's unless the Military prevented them by banning or overthrowing a legitimate government. It is fashionable to call Erdogan "Islamist". What the hell is he going to be with 98% of the population Muslims.
AKP can best be described as "Muslim Democrats"
Conflict News Retweeted Evrensel Gazetesi
#Turkey military shuts down road to #Lice due to “IED threat”, blocking ~200 from reaching polls - @HetavRojan
Conflict News @Conflicts 6h6 hours ago
Conflict News Retweeted cumhuriyet.com.tr
BREAKING: Electricity has been cut off in districts of Sur and Baglar in #Diyarbakır #TurkeyElections - @dilkocer
Conflict News @Conflicts 6h6 hours ago
Conflict News Retweeted Berîvan Aslan
TURKEY: Reports of foreign observers arrested in #Diyarbakir during #turkeyelections
Conflict News @Conflicts 8h8 hours ago
VIDEO: Armed special forces inside polling station in #Cizre. (Prohibited by law) #TurkeyElections - @EPalazzotto
Conflict News @Conflicts 8h8 hours ago
PHOTOS: Police presence in #Sur #Turkey #TurkeyElections - @Feleknasuca
Conflict News @Conflicts 9h9 hours ago
Voter in #Sur: We are uncomfortable by the presence of masked police. Were the ones raiding our neighbourhood few weeks ago @ConstanzeLetsch
Conflict News @Conflicts 9h9 hours ago
PHOTO: Voting conditions for Kurds in Şirnex #Turkey #TurkeyElections
http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-police-raid-tv-stations-of-government-critics-1446038925
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2015-10-10/turkeys-hdp-party-says-bombing-death-toll-has-risen-to-97/
Bombings, arrests, raids, using the military and police to prevent people in opposition areas to vote, all of course lead to the opposition being crushed.
"Shouts of "Allah u akbar" and anti-Israel chants in the hall as AK Party Istanbul chairman Selim Temurci thanks God for "this feast of democracy"."
Indeed, democracy was the main course.
If they fall bellow 10% then Erdogan can change the constitution by will.
To be frank, the presence of armed police at ballot boxes in some of these regions can be explained due to the security situation. I would never suggest that the government have helped create that security situation in the first place.
Hmmm. I need to be careful here.
http://secim.ntv.com.tr/
But CNN raised an interesting question which captures the nub of the debate argument - should it be a test of the candidates or an infomercial for them?
The consensus seems to be that tough questions are good - biased questions are not.
Harwood's 2 outright lies - that he didn't correct his NY Times article on the Tax Foundation's critique of Rubio's tax plan, and that the debate format was always to be 2 hours long - have people scratching their heads because they are so obviously and demonstrably false.
Becky Quick's entanglement with Trump, when she alleged (correctly) that he had criticized Zuckerberg's quest to increase the number of H1B visas, which he denied outright and she asked him where she had read that (it was on Trump's website) and she then apologized, was proof of lack of debate prep.
The candidates representatives meet tonight. They apparently have no set agenda but want to hash something out.
The NY Times asked readers to send in the most ridiculous statement from the Republican debate. They did no such thing after the Democratic debate.
The liberal bias of the mainstream media was on full display this week. Outright lies, bias and incompetence don't go down well when exposed. The GOP was the winner and the media the loser after that debate.
What happens from here will be interesting. If the candidates insist on opening and closing statements then these things will get tedious. For the first time the Republican debates (and to a lesser extent the Dems) are getting fabulous ratings, which is unprecedented. That means commercial revenue for the networks, hence the desire for a 3 hour format.
The Republicans have suspended their agreement with NBC for the February debate in Houston. The NBC debate partner is Telemundo. The Republicans need to reach out to Hispanics, so how this is resolved will be interesting.
The CNBC debate debacle could be a game changer after all. As always, time will tell.
Germany has proven it doesn't work though, as one country can take control of all the smaller ones to dominate over the whole structure. Germany would like it in purely because they have 3 million turks living in Germany that Merkel would like them to vote for her.
Erdogan would like to resurrect the Ottoman Empire rather than join the EU though.
On the Russian airliner yesterday, there is a rumour that ISIS big chief Baghdadi is going to pour forth on the issue. Suspect if they have a case to make they are going to wait until everyone else tells their story, then sow doubt.
So are we into explosive decompression caused by catastrophic structural failure due to an engine, structural fatigue, a bomb or a missile?
Unfortunately that rarely happens as journalists want to be active participants in the battle (CNBC, Megan Kelly) and incumbents like the format to be as constrained as possible (Cameron).
Well this is interesting... Daily Telegraph.
16.30
Russia's top aviation official says the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt had broken up at high altitude.
French experts believe Isil may have placed bomb on plane that crashed in Egypt on Saturday, with 17 children and 207 adults on board. Latest news here
Just a 3 mile debris field and broke up at high altitude? DT also reports that The French are also leaning towards a bomb at the moment
a) can't spell Megyn Kelly's name
b) Cameron isn't a participant
c) you put CNBC and Kelly on the same level
tell me you are not neutral on this - CNBC has been universally criticized for the debate, whereas the Fox debate and the CNN debate were generally praised.
Why should Erdogan surrender that power and absolute control over it to some supranational institution that has no positives to show for anyone much less to him?
Like most of us, they are not always liars and not always honest.
About b. Cameron restrained and made a boring mess of the GE leaders debates on purpose, I was referring to that as an example.
About c. Fox was after Trump and Kelly was counter-attacked by Trump as much as all the candidates were attacked by CNBC and counter-punched, both CNBC and Fox News did the same thing but Fox limited it to Trump only.
Surely the way to terrorise people would to have brought it down just before it was due to land in Berlin or something.
They clearly haven't reshot it.
Depending on the triggering mechanism, they might not get too much choice of where geographically it goes off, only at time and/or altitude. If it was on a timer (I don't know how common those are nowadays), than a delay to the flight could have set it off earlier.
ISTR there was one flight where a bomb went off whilst the plane was on the tarmac, as the flight had been delayed.
Cameron is not a factor in US debates. It's a ferret rouge. Let it go.
Fox - and to a slightly lesser extent CNN - asked detailed hard questions on major issues designed to get candidates out of their comfort zone and away from canned quotes. They were praised for that.
CNBC - Is this a clown campaign? Why don't you resign? Why are your numbers going down? Should the government regulate fantasy football? You closed a 401K and paid thousands in fees - are you equipped to run a $19 trillion economy? CNBC was universally panned. Not a single question on the major issues that people care about. All gotcha and biased questions designed to be mean-spirited and belittle. One moderator caught in 2 blatant lies and another exposed for lack of prep. The audience actively booed some questions.
Can you really not tell the difference?
IIRC there was some delay in take off
On December 12, 1981, an Aeronica Boeing 727 exploded while waiting at the Mexico City Airport. The bomb was timed to go off mid-air, but because of a 50-minute flight delay, it went off early, just before 150 passengers were about to board.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_attacks
And the ASN entry:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19811212-0
Orkney 67.2%
Borders 66.6
Dumfries & Galloway 65.7
Shetland 63.7
East Renfrewshire 63.2
East Lothian 61.7
East Dunbartonshire 61.2
then:
Edinburgh 61.1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611
But you cannot blame Iran as Libya was blamed for it and suitable scapegoats were put up. Incidentally, we still did business with Libya after one of their intelligence officers was convicted. Sounds a bit fishy, doesn't it ?
If it is the cause, there should be immediate inspections of the bulkheads and other items of all pressurised passenger airframes that have suffered tailstrikes.
But we're talking hypotheticals. It should be fairly obvious from the wreckage and data recorders if it was a bulkhead failure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTA_Flight_772
As an aside, that page mentions another terrorist bomb going off on the runway, this time on a DC8 after it had landed. It seems timers are not necessarily the most reliable method of setting off bombs on airliners.
As a further aside, UTA 772 has a rather sombre but spectacular memorial in the desert where it crashed.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/flight772.asp
As you say it should become clear within a couple of days what happened to cause this crash - they have all the wreckage and the black boxes are already recovered.
However, I think it's likely that there will be some swingback to both Fine Gael and Labour as the election approaches. The message of 'Don't wreck the recovery' is a potent one, and the very large share currently showing for independents and minor parties is probably fairly soft.
German Village of 102 Braces for 750 Asylum Seekers
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/europe/german-village-of-102-braces-for-750-asylum-seekers.html
1) They failed to win the Irish Civil War, a war they themselves had launched in a futile bid to get better peace terms out of the British government. However, in the meanwhile they had managed to kill or otherwise incapacitate all of Ireland's ablest politicians or administrators apart from Richard Mulcahy and de Valera himself (accepting for the moment that while he had many admirable qualities, Cosgrave was not really a first-rank politician) which severely retarded Ireland's political development;
2) They failed to gain Irish independence, although they took some fairly important steps towards it;
3) Their mere existence made the already slender chances of ending Partition absolutely zero.
Surely the SNP would want something better than that, both for themselves and for Scotland?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014
FF was formed by Dev in 1926, as he disagreed with the ongoing abstentionism (WRT the Dail) of the Anti-Treaty SF (as was).
There remain some questions over the health of the Irish economy - in particular, see this article from last year:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/morgan-kelly-warns-our-real-economic-crisis-will-begin-if-ecb-credit-stops-1.1724130
Although this seems very pessimistic and certainly didn't forecast the current spectacular rebound, it is worth pointing out that Morgan Kelly was the only Irish economist to predict the failure of the initial bank bailout, and the full extent of the housing crash (hence why an irritable Bertie Ahern invited him to 'commit suicide'). It is worth considering carefully for that reason alone.
PS - don't trust WP - it appears to have been edited by a SF fanatic.
I love them, and with a few 1970s safety procedures we had great fun.
I find it hard to believe that every night for a month is accurate.
Small parties should never ever enter coalitions, a coalition always allows the dominant party to get all the credit and the smaller one to get all the blame.
PS - there hasn't been a month yet - we've still got a week to go if my forecast is accurate.
I'd have a rescue kangaroo in an instant = they're called pinkies.