I see that Natalie Bennett's Christmas card features a map of the UK with proper county boundaries. If their reinstatement is official party policy, I might have to defect...
Another reason not to vote Green. Ted Heath's second greatest achievement was taking Middlesbrough out of Yorkshire.
If only he'd've nuked it... (Middlesbrough, not GOC)
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
Believe what you like, it's voters that decide. Colour and race is clearly more important to you than me, I couldn't care less about it.
* Panel polling is problematic: it's not a random sample, it gets disproportionate response from the politically engaged, and it is difficult to accurately weight for propensity to vote * Phone polling is problematic: it's massively affected by disproportionate response and the sample frame (the list of all possible respondents from which the sample is drawn) is massively fucked (unless you know of an accurate up-to-date register of mobile phone users. Which you don't)
But both of these techniques are recent-ish innovations: back in the 1940's you had to use different techniques, involving meeting people in the flesh and asking them. They're not used these days because they're pretty expensive, but they still work. I think if we raised about £50K we could get an old-school sample (say ten students in each of the twelve countries/regions asking questions and a couple of weekends to collate) done and actually get our own data instead of chewing other people's food. Does this sound good?
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
OGH has found the key difference between the phone polls and online ones with the referendum. Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers. Come polling day though the online polls will be more accurate, since people will start paying attention to the EU to make their minds on the issue.
On the GOP debate, Rubio is cooked. His opponents merged immigration with terrorism, so now if you are weak on immigration you are also weak on terrorism , and Rubio was crushed. Where will Rubio's support go now that he's finished (since he's weak on both immigration and terrorism now), I guess some will go back to Bush, a few to Christie and Kasich.
Also about last nights live commentary, although it has spelling errors due to me trying to write them as fast as possible to keep up with the pace, they are accurate. As you can see from the transcript, they really talked a lot of nonsense:
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
I agree Lab win at Croydon Central at 6/4 is a value bet but Lab most seats at 4/1 is a MUCH higher value bet. I simply don't understand it. What am I missing?
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
I agree Lab win at Croydon Central at 6/4 is a value bet but Lab most seats at 4/1 is a MUCH higher value bet. I simply don't understand it. What am I missing?
US to support Russian position of leaving Assad in place.
It does now seem that we are on our own in wanting to remove him. I think we are also on our own in supporting this new Sunni army coalition. Philip Hammond has to rethink this and so does Dave. Our position is becomng more and more isolates wrt to Assad.
OGH has found the key difference between the phone polls and online ones with the referendum. Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers. Come polling day though the online polls will be more accurate, since people will start paying attention to the EU to make their minds on the issue.
On the GOP debate, Rubio is cooked. His opponents merged immigration with terrorism, so now if you are weak on immigration you are also weak on terrorism , and Rubio was crushed. Where will Rubio's support go now that he's finished (since he's weak on both immigration and terrorism now), I guess some will go back to Bush, a few to Christie and Kasich.
Also about last nights live commentary, although it has spelling errors due to me trying to write them as fast as possible to keep up with the pace, they are accurate. As you can see from the transcript, they really talked a lot of nonsense:
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
I agree Lab win at Croydon Central at 6/4 is a value bet but Lab most seats at 4/1 is a MUCH higher value bet. I simply don't understand it. What am I missing?
Barnesian's comments were based on opinion polls. Also, very few believed the Lib Dems staggering collapse. I did not fall for the 25 - 30 seats but even I thought they will get close to 15.
On topic But both of these techniques are recent-ish innovations: back in the 1940's you had to use different techniques, involving meeting people in the flesh and asking them. They're not used these days because they're pretty expensive, but they still work. I think if we raised about £50K we could get an old-school sample (say ten students in each of the twelve countries/regions asking questions and a couple of weekends to collate) done and actually get our own data instead of chewing other people's food. Does this sound good?
If telephone polling is susceptible to 'shy x' issues then face to face - where you actually have to look someone in the eye as you say it - may be just as bad or possibly even worse.
Worth staying up all night to see, though the hour of resignations was quite fun as well.
However, Balls will be amazed at the fine mess Labour are in thanks to Ed's departure and Corbyn's arrival. I doubt that he would have lost to Corbyn in the same way as his wife.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
I agree Lab win at Croydon Central at 6/4 is a value bet but Lab most seats at 4/1 is a MUCH higher value bet. I simply don't understand it. What am I missing?
OT I think the phone polls are more reliable than the online polls especially on single issues. The Booers are almost certainly more active on online forums of all kinds and I feel this suggests the race is closer than it is. Having said that I accept that the outcome of the negotiations will be crucial in swaying the middle of the road vote. Nothing will impact on the Booers who increasingly display all the symptoms of the Nats at their worst.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
I agree Lab win at Croydon Central at 6/4 is a value bet but Lab most seats at 4/1 is a MUCH higher value bet. I simply don't understand it. What am I missing?
Barnesian's comments were based on opinion polls. Also, very few believed the Lib Dems staggering collapse. I did not fall for the 25 - 30 seats but even I thought they will get close to 15.
To be fair, 6/4 on Croydon Central was a value bet, the Tory maj was 153. And anyone can look back through anybody (who's ever had the cojones to tip anything)'s comments and find lots of losers. But Barnesian, whose contributions I do value, projecting himself as some sort of "cold objective" observer is one of the more risible things I've seen on here!
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
I agree Lab win at Croydon Central at 6/4 is a value bet but Lab most seats at 4/1 is a MUCH higher value bet. I simply don't understand it. What am I missing?
Barnesian's comments were based on opinion polls. Also, very few believed the Lib Dems staggering collapse. I did not fall for the 25 - 30 seats but even I thought they will get close to 15.
Indeed - and they proved almost as useless as his interpretations of the significance of PMQs
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Yes, he was - a very dignified, gracious and well-judged speech.
More generally, I think he was by far the leading senior Labour politician of those standing for re-election in 2015. If he hadn't been defeated in Morley & Outwood he'd probably be Labour leader now - and Labour would be in a massively better place.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
No comment - just enjoyed seeing those LD figures.
Whilst detesting Ed Balls, he knew his trade down to his fingertips. I honestly think that Labour wouldn't be where it is today if he hadn't lost his seat.
If I were Sensible Labour - I'd be seeking his council, a lot. That he's been invisible post GE2015 is fascinating.
Worth staying up all night to see, though the hour of resignations was quite fun as well.
However, Balls will be amazed at the fine mess Labour are in thanks to Ed's departure and Corbyn's arrival. I doubt that he would have lost to Corbyn in the same way as his wife.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
Personally, I can't forgive the LibDems for failing to get to 10 seats. I would be several thousand pounds richer if they'd made it :-)
OGH has found the key difference between the phone polls and online ones with the referendum. Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers.....
Could the problem with this type of phone polling be the fact that a very large % of the senior citizens have TPS and call blocking systems in place so the available pool of people does not provide a good demographic sample and is instead skewed by those senior folk unable or unwilling to put in blocking measures. The very elderly, frail and infirm may dominate the sample for that age range.
''But Barnesian, whose contributions I do value, projecting himself as some sort of "cold objective" observer is one of the more risible things I've seen on here!''
The brash confidence of posters whose predictions were completely exposed by May 2015 is one of the more interesting aspects of PB.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
That 'savaging' started almost as soon as Clegg left the Rose Garden with Cameron winking at Tory attacks on the AV referendum and setting up the LD's .... who admittedly walked into the trap .... over tuition fees. I don't suppose at my age that I'll live to the see the Tories get the come-uppence royally due to them, but I really hope I do.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
Personally, I can't forgive the LibDems for failing to get to 10 seats. I would be several thousand pounds richer if they'd made it :-)
Don't get upset at this but for me that was one of the most interesting things about the election.
You were possibly the most pessimistic PBer on the Lib Dems chances, and you still overestimated the Lib Dems.
Could the problem with this type of phone polling be the fact that a very large % of the senior citizens have TPS and call blocking systems in place so the available pool of people does not provide a good demographic sample and is instead skewed by those senior folk unable or unwilling to put in blocking measures. The very elderly, frail and infirm may dominate the sample for that age range.
TPS doesn't apply to polls, as far as I know, and very few people have call-blocking systems.
Don't we have an NHS Winter Crisis every year? It certainly seems that way.
I'm surprised the organisation hasn't been officially rebranded NHSinWC
You'd think after years of practice, they'd have dealt with the problem by now. "Oh look Winter's approaching, shall we do some planning, or just wait until the last minute and have a good old fashioned crisis?"
LOL!!!!
A tremendous amount of planning goes into winter preparedness. The vast, vast majority of people are still being seen, treated and shown the door within 4 hours of arriving at A&E despite historic levels of demand. Unless you think the answer is to build and recruit extra hospitals, nurses, doctors and GPs to only operate in the winter, we are always going to have to put measures in place and you can't stop respiratory illnesses in the elderly. The only solutions are to try and make the system more slick, and commissioners are throwing the kitchen sink at it.... but if you are going to slice and dice Social Care of course you are going to have delayed discharges (of which there are also record numbers).
Delayed discharges equals full hospitals equals queuing ambulances equals people waiting hours after a 999 call.
Of course if the NHS was really as dire as PB Tories say, the vulnerable elderly wouldn't be around to be admitted - and that would take the edge off winter....
Great to hear that the NHS is operating to plan, as one assumes.
So why do Labour continually bang on about a health service in crisis?
It could be better and it could be worse.
More money (over the long term, not the short term) could turn things around but there are no quick fixes.
However, slashing social care will see things go south fairly quickly
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
That 'savaging' started almost as soon as Clegg left the Rose Garden with Cameron winking at Tory attacks on the AV referendum and setting up the LD's .... who admittedly walked into the trap .... over tuition fees. I don't suppose at my age that I'll live to the see the Tories get the come-uppence royally due to them, but I really hope I do.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
Personally, I can't forgive the LibDems for failing to get to 10 seats. I would be several thousand pounds richer if they'd made it :-)
Don't get upset at this but for me that was one of the most interesting things about the election.
You were possibly the most pessimistic PBer on the Lib Dems chances, and you still overestimated the Lib Dems.
Well, I had a covering bet on 0-9 at 16/1 so I didn't lose money :-)
More seriously, I put out a forecast of LibDem seat numbers at various national vote shares.At 8% they were forecast to get 9 seats.
US to support Russian position of leaving Assad in place.
It does now seem that we are on our own in wanting to remove him. I think we are also on our own in supporting this new Sunni army coalition. Philip Hammond has to rethink this and so does Dave. Our position is becomng more and more isolates wrt to Assad.
The policy of getting rid of Assad is quite antiquated now, it was formed at a time when Cameron was down in the polls and thought that he needed to appear strong to reverse his polling decline. Sarkozy also had the same problem, so they ganged up on Obama to force him to militarily intervene with them in Libya and Syria.
Cameron doesn't need to appear macho now, but France has traded one unpopular President for another, and Hollande is as desperate as Sarkozy was. And Obama seems to be getting bored with following the British-French line in the middle east, especially since the problems are mounting.
My guess was always that the americans would ditch Cameron and Hollande in the end, due to internal politics mattering more than the opinion of the british PM or the french President. The Libyan and Syrian policies are a disaster and the Republicans are constantly using it against Obama and Hillary, Obama would not like to give them further ammunition in an election year.
Don't we have an NHS Winter Crisis every year? It certainly seems that way.
I'm surprised the organisation hasn't been officially rebranded NHSinWC
You'd think after years of practice, they'd have dealt with the problem by now. "Oh look Winter's approaching, shall we do some planning, or just wait until the last minute and have a good old fashioned crisis?"
LOL!!!!
A tremendous amount of planning goes into winter preparedness. The vast, vast majority of people are still being seen, treated and shown the door within 4 hours of arriving at A&E despite historic levels of demand. Unless you think the answer is to build and recruit extra hospitals, nurses, doctors and GPs to only operate in the winter, we are always going to have to put measures in place and you can't stop respiratory illnesses in the elderly. The only solutions are to try and make the system more slick, and commissioners are throwing the kitchen sink at it.... but if you are going to slice and dice Social Care of course you are going to have delayed discharges (of which there are also record numbers).
Delayed discharges equals full hospitals equals queuing ambulances equals people waiting hours after a 999 call.
Of course if the NHS was really as dire as PB Tories say, the vulnerable elderly wouldn't be around to be admitted - and that would take the edge off winter....
What we really need is cross-border A&E doctors, who work the winters in both the UK and New Zealand.
I was going to suggest a EU A&E Doctor Force that can cross borders and fix A&E backlogs without asking the relevant government for permission, since we know that the nasty baby eating Tories wouldn't do it any other way...
OGH has found the key difference between the phone polls and online ones with the referendum. Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers.....
Could the problem with this type of phone polling be the fact that a very large % of the senior citizens have TPS and call blocking systems in place so the available pool of people does not provide a good demographic sample and is instead skewed by those senior folk unable or unwilling to put in blocking measures. The very elderly, frail and infirm may dominate the sample for that age range.
TPS does not block calls from opinion pollsters.
(I know because I use TPS and I've been called.)
However, the phone pollsters are skewed towards people who have home phone lines.
Sums up human beings perfectly. Quite how we can rear and then kill and eat fellow sentient mammals is quite perverse too.
If some higher intelligence pops along and then decides to treat us completely appallingly we would get our just deserts. More likely that we would have wiped ourselves out long before then though because we are such egotistical, selfish, horribly invasive, greedy things that have little regard for anything other than our selves.
The site selling the board game, dudeiwantthat.com, reads: "Cat-Opoly is a Monopoly for people who really, really, really like cats. And cat videos, cat memes, cat selfies, cat forums, cat Reddit threads..." The aim of the game is to buy as many cats as you can.
What a ridiculous idea. You can't buy a cat. You can invite a cat into your home, and, if on inspection the premises are of satisfactory quality and the staff are suitable, then the cat may decide to accept the invitation.
As a dog person I find it slightly surreal that one can buy a dog just like a kettle.
Don't we have an NHS Winter Crisis every year? It certainly seems that way.
I'm surprised the organisation hasn't been officially rebranded NHSinWC
You'd think after years of practice, they'd have dealt with the problem by now. "Oh look Winter's approaching, shall we do some planning, or just wait until the last minute and have a good old fashioned crisis?"
LOL!!!!
A tremendous amount of planning goes into winter preparedness. The vast, vast majority of people are still being seen, treated and shown the door within 4 hours of arriving at A&E despite historic levels of demand. Unless you think the answer is to build and recruit extra hospitals, nurses, doctors and GPs to only operate in the winter, we are always going to have to put measures in place and you can't stop respiratory illnesses in the elderly. The only solutions are to try and make the system more slick, and commissioners are throwing the kitchen sink at it.... but if you are going to slice and dice Social Care of course you are going to have delayed discharges (of which there are also record numbers).
Delayed discharges equals full hospitals equals queuing ambulances equals people waiting hours after a 999 call.
Of course if the NHS was really as dire as PB Tories say, the vulnerable elderly wouldn't be around to be admitted - and that would take the edge off winter....
What we really need is cross-border A&E doctors, who work the winters in both the UK and New Zealand.
I was going to suggest a EU A&E Doctor Force that can cross borders and fix A&E backlogs without asking the relevant government for permission, since we know that the nasty baby eating Tories wouldn't do it any other way...
That doesn't solve the issue with seasonality unfortunately. You need to have sick people in warm places in winter; or doctors in cold places.
PoliticsHome @politicshome 2m2 minutes ago Philip Hammond on Syrian opposition groups meeting: “The gender balance in the Riyadh meeting was, frankly, disappointing.”
PoliticsHome @politicshome 2m2 minutes ago Philip Hammond on Syrian opposition groups meeting: “The gender balance in the Riyadh meeting was, frankly, disappointing.”
PoliticsHome @politicshome 2m2 minutes ago Philip Hammond on Syrian opposition groups meeting: “The gender balance in the Riyadh meeting was, frankly, disappointing.”
What about the transgender community?
I believe Caitlin Janner was there. (S)he's bloody everywhere at the moment.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Given how delighted you must be with your Corbyn winnings let's hope it consoles you for future GE defeats. Oh and the result - spin it how you like, but you lost. End of.
I can't see any likelihood to vote measure in the Comres EU poll.
I find it very hard to believe that it will draw a turnout like the SIndy Referendum, and the overwhelming support to remain seems heavily built into the votes of the relatively young, who are notoriously unreliable and unregistered. London will be loaded with lots of ineligible voters as well.
I wish people wouldn't talk so much about predictions. I'm going to have to review my predictions for last year and they aren't going to make pretty reading for me.
OGH has found the key difference between the phone polls and online ones with the referendum. Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers.....
Could the problem with this type of phone polling be the fact that a very large % of the senior citizens have TPS and call blocking systems in place so the available pool of people does not provide a good demographic sample and is instead skewed by those senior folk unable or unwilling to put in blocking measures. The very elderly, frail and infirm may dominate the sample for that age range.
TPS does not block calls from opinion pollsters.
(I know because I use TPS and I've been called.)
However, the phone pollsters are skewed towards people who have home phone lines.
Yes, what I would add is that the mentality of people with TPS is to treat attempts at such calls as unwelcome and not to respond helpfully. Others just use Caller ID and do not answer numbers that they do not recognise.
Could the problem with this type of phone polling be the fact that a very large % of the senior citizens have TPS and call blocking systems in place so the available pool of people does not provide a good demographic sample and is instead skewed by those senior folk unable or unwilling to put in blocking measures. The very elderly, frail and infirm may dominate the sample for that age range.
TPS doesn't apply to polls, as far as I know, and very few people have call-blocking systems.
doesn't everyone have a display which shows the number the call is coming from? I don't answer unless it's a number I want to hear from. The rest can leave a message
I wish people wouldn't talk so much about predictions. I'm going to have to review my predictions for last year and they aren't going to make pretty reading for me.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
The Tories won 27 seats off the Liberals. That gave them the majority.
OGH has found the key difference between the phone polls and online ones with the referendum. Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers.....
Could the problem with this type of phone polling be the fact that a very large % of the senior citizens have TPS and call blocking systems in place so the available pool of people does not provide a good demographic sample and is instead skewed by those senior folk unable or unwilling to put in blocking measures. The very elderly, frail and infirm may dominate the sample for that age range.
TPS does not block calls from opinion pollsters.
(I know because I use TPS and I've been called.)
However, the phone pollsters are skewed towards people who have home phone lines.
Yes, what I would add is that the mentality of people with TPS is to treat attempts at such calls as unwelcome and not to respond helpfully. Others just use Caller ID and do not answer numbers that they do not recognise.
There are clearly lots of factors at work. Is it a nice Polish 23 year old girl on the phone? If so, that might skew responses towards stay.
I suspect caller ID blocking is a very, very minor factor.
''I'm going to have to review my predictions for last year and they aren't going to make pretty reading for me. ''
But that's the point. You are prepared to be self-critical. Others who have been spectacularly wrong, aren't. Moreover, they consider their opinions carry as much weight on here as they did before May.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
Don't we have an NHS Winter Crisis every year? It certainly seems that way.
I'm surprised the organisation hasn't been officially rebranded NHSinWC
You'd think after years of practice, they'd have dealt with the problem by now. "Oh look Winter's approaching, shall we do some planning, or just wait until the last minute and have a good old fashioned crisis?"
LOL!!!!
A tremendous amount of planning goes into winter preparedness. The vast, vast majority of people are still being seen, treated and shown the door within 4 hours of arriving at A&E despite historic levels of demand. Unless you think the answer is to build and recruit extra hospitals, nurses, doctors and GPs to only operate in the winter, we are always going to have to put measures in place and you can't stop respiratory illnesses in the elderly. The only solutions are to try and make the system more slick, and commissioners are throwing the kitchen sink at it.... but if you are going to slice and dice Social Care of course you are going to have delayed discharges (of which there are also record numbers).
Delayed discharges equals full hospitals equals queuing ambulances equals people waiting hours after a 999 call.
Of course if the NHS was really as dire as PB Tories say, the vulnerable elderly wouldn't be around to be admitted - and that would take the edge off winter....
What we really need is cross-border A&E doctors, who work the winters in both the UK and New Zealand.
I was going to suggest a EU A&E Doctor Force that can cross borders and fix A&E backlogs without asking the relevant government for permission, since we know that the nasty baby eating Tories wouldn't do it any other way...
That doesn't solve the issue with seasonality unfortunately. You need to have sick people in warm places in winter; or doctors in cold places.
Rather my point, the EU Border Force isn't going to solve anything either, that's not the point of it. Control will be extended to another area of national government and bugger sovereignty or subsidiarity, today borders, tomorrow emergency healthcare.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
The DUP have the same number of MPs. And they are all white blokes
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
The DUP have the same number of MPs. And they are all white blokes
Their new leader is set to be a woman - Arlene Foster.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost some of its leading figures and ended up with an unelectable, anti-Western, far left leader who is in the process of driving the party off a cliff. Imagine if you had predicted, a year ago, that Jeremy Corbyn would today be Labour leader.
At PMQs today he was of dire, which shows how low expectations are. with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
The Tories won 27 seats off the Liberals. That gave them the majority.
I see that the twitterer with the first embedded tweet has decided to have even more mischief with it. Social media is a dangerous game for newspapers.
Angela Merkel has told David Cameron that she will not give in to his demands for a ban on in-work benefits for EU migrants.
In a direct threat on the eve of the European Council, she said it cannot be done.
Mrs Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament: "We don't want to, and we won't, call into question the core principles of European integration. These include in particular the principle of free movement and the principle of non-discrimination between European citizens."
Sums up human beings perfectly. Quite how we can rear and then kill and eat fellow sentient mammals is quite perverse too.
If some higher intelligence pops along and then decides to treat us completely appallingly we would get our just deserts. More likely that we would have wiped ourselves out long before then though because we are such egotistical, selfish, horribly invasive, greedy things that have little regard for anything other than our selves.
The site selling the board game, dudeiwantthat.com, reads: "Cat-Opoly is a Monopoly for people who really, really, really like cats. And cat videos, cat memes, cat selfies, cat forums, cat Reddit threads..." The aim of the game is to buy as many cats as you can.
What a ridiculous idea. You can't buy a cat. You can invite a cat into your home, and, if on inspection the premises are of satisfactory quality and the staff are suitable, then the cat may decide to accept the invitation.
As a dog person I find it slightly surreal that one can buy a dog just like a kettle.
Turkey ok at Christmas but beef is off your table?
If only Mr Allen could have encouraged Tony and Gordon to step up and introduce PR when they had the chance.
What flavour of system produced those "results"? How can you take the votes cast under a non-proportional system and munge them into a completely different system and claim that the results are anything other than tripe?
If the last GE had been held under a proportional system, my vote could have been cast differently.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost
At PMQs today he was on the just okay side of dire, which shows how low expectations are. He had a decent issue in concerns about the NHS but he did nothing with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for lt?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
The Tories won 27 seats off the Liberals. That gave them the majority.
Well if Labour hadn't lost eight seats to the Tories, it would have deprived the Tories of a majority.
No, it demonstrates that a Party is inclusive in word and deed about being blind to race - picking the best candidate for the seat. The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I'm increasing noticing at PMQs that one can't assume they're Labour MPs. Ranil Jayawardena was very good - Tory for Hants NE. Very media friendly and eloquent.
What is BME?
Black / Minority Ethnic
Thanks, no idea why anybody thinks it's relevant to anything other than ghastly quotas I suppose.
No women, No blacks, No Asian, No Irish.... Lib Dem MPs.
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
That's a bit harsh. They only have eight MPs.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
The DUP have the same number of MPs. And they are all white blokes
Their new leader is set to be a woman - Arlene Foster.
But she's not at Westminster - Nigel Dodds is the leader in Parliament.
...If the last year has been difficult for UKIP, it has been disastrous for the Labour party. Not only did it lose the general election in May heavily (by two million votes) and get almost wiped out in Scotland, it lost
At with it. Cameron, the victor of 2015, swatted him away time and again.
At PMQs Cameron was red-faced, shouty, aggressive, repetitive and didn't answer the questions. Not a good look. Very off putting except to dedicated Tories.
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for lt?
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
The Tories won 27 seats off the Liberals. That gave them the majority.
Well if Labour hadn't lost eight seats to the Tories, it would have deprived the Tories of a majority.
If only Mr Allen could have encouraged Tony and Gordon to step up and introduce PR when they had the chance.
Look at all those bonus seats the Tories get. What a sensible voting system.
Look carefully - It's FPTP that gave the Tories the "bonus seats"
What a splendid system! Oh, we already use it? How convenient
Luke: You don't believe in PR, do you? Han: Kid, I've flown from one side of this constituency to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful PR controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical Electoral Reform controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Angela Merkel has told David Cameron that she will not give in to his demands for a ban on in-work benefits for EU migrants.
In a direct threat on the eve of the European Council, she said it cannot be done.
Mrs Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament: "We don't want to, and we won't, call into question the core principles of European integration. These include in particular the principle of free movement and the principle of non-discrimination between European citizens."
@ScottyNational: Rally: Scotland's poor spontaneously take to the streets to thank Swinney for not raising taxes - 'We're just fine as well are.' #scotbudget
''I'm going to have to review my predictions for last year and they aren't going to make pretty reading for me. ''
But that's the point. You are prepared to be self-critical. Others who have been spectacularly wrong, aren't. Moreover, they consider their opinions carry as much weight on here as they did before May.
@HTScotPol: Fancy that. @JohnSwinney announces Scottish income tax in 2016-17 will match that in UK
Swinney is agreeing GO is a genius and he cannot improve upon his income tax rates.
Hmm....The Scottish Rate Of Income Tax (SRIT) is an economic stinker but a political wonder. All UK income tax rates (basic, standard, high) are reduced in Scotland by 10%. The Scottish finance minister then has the right to nominate ONE AND ONLY ONE alternative rate to replace the lost 10%. He may not be more or less progressive by band - it's 'choose one number'. So...if he chose 9% then Scotland would get a tax cut (hooray) but also a significant spending cut (boo). If he chose 11% Scotland would pay more tax (boo) but get more spending (hooray). Either way he would be choosing deliberately to make some better off and some worse off in Scotland vs the rest of the UK. That will inevitably cause a big backlash whatever he chose. He can't win! Osborne is a cunning so and so / political genius - take your pick. He has all but forced Scotland to undermine the case for its own financial independence.
Comments
In contrast Corbyn was dignified, respectful and asked detailed pertinent questions.
Dedicated Corbynistas would say Corbyn won hands down, but I suspect uncommitted voters would also say Corbyn came out the more attractive, whether you agree with his policies or not.
We must have been watching a different programme.
The LDs have a very poor record for a Party that until May had lots of white men as MPs.
I don't believe that you didn't know what BME means. Not in a month of Sundays.
* Panel polling is problematic: it's not a random sample, it gets disproportionate response from the politically engaged, and it is difficult to accurately weight for propensity to vote
* Phone polling is problematic: it's massively affected by disproportionate response and the sample frame (the list of all possible respondents from which the sample is drawn) is massively fucked (unless you know of an accurate up-to-date register of mobile phone users. Which you don't)
But both of these techniques are recent-ish innovations: back in the 1940's you had to use different techniques, involving meeting people in the flesh and asking them. They're not used these days because they're pretty expensive, but they still work. I think if we raised about £50K we could get an old-school sample (say ten students in each of the twelve countries/regions asking questions and a couple of weekends to collate) done and actually get our own data instead of chewing other people's food. Does this sound good?
We see what we want to see. Human nature. But if one wants to bet successfully one has to take off one's coloured glasses and observe in a cold objective light.
.@FrankLuntz panelists on why they switched support from Trump to Cruz after last night's #GOPdebate
https://t.co/FXEAblELza
Do they have any LGBT LD MPs either? Just male WASPs?
Indeed - that's why you won't be betting on Labour or Corbyn unless you believe the garbage you wrote about Cameron. His style was criticised in much the same way for 5 years against Miliband - you need to be reminded of the result?
Personally I think the phone ones are more accurate with the present picture, as the people online tend to be more informed of daily events and how the "renegotiation" is going, those on the phone are probably not paying attention to the EU stuff and they revert to default answers.
Come polling day though the online polls will be more accurate, since people will start paying attention to the EU to make their minds on the issue.
On the GOP debate, Rubio is cooked.
His opponents merged immigration with terrorism, so now if you are weak on immigration you are also weak on terrorism , and Rubio was crushed.
Where will Rubio's support go now that he's finished (since he's weak on both immigration and terrorism now), I guess some will go back to Bush, a few to Christie and Kasich.
Also about last nights live commentary, although it has spelling errors due to me trying to write them as fast as possible to keep up with the pace, they are accurate.
As you can see from the transcript, they really talked a lot of nonsense:
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/676951493845585921
US to support Russian position of leaving Assad in place.
It does now seem that we are on our own in wanting to remove him. I think we are also on our own in supporting this new Sunni army coalition. Philip Hammond has to rethink this and so does Dave. Our position is becomng more and more isolates wrt to Assad.
However, Balls will be amazed at the fine mess Labour are in thanks to Ed's departure and Corbyn's arrival. I doubt that he would have lost to Corbyn in the same way as his wife.
(Or five, post boundary changes.)
To be fair, 6/4 on Croydon Central was a value bet, the Tory maj was 153. And anyone can look back through anybody (who's ever had the cojones to tip anything)'s comments and find lots of losers. But Barnesian, whose contributions I do value, projecting himself as some sort of "cold objective" observer is one of the more risible things I've seen on here!
Indeed - and they proved almost as useless as his interpretations of the significance of PMQs
I did bet on Corbyn for leader at 160/1.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
If I were Sensible Labour - I'd be seeking his council, a lot. That he's been invisible post GE2015 is fascinating.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Labour took 2 seats net from the Tories.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
The brash confidence of posters whose predictions were completely exposed by May 2015 is one of the more interesting aspects of PB.
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
That 'savaging' started almost as soon as Clegg left the Rose Garden with Cameron winking at Tory attacks on the AV referendum and setting up the LD's .... who admittedly walked into the trap .... over tuition fees.
I don't suppose at my age that I'll live to the see the Tories get the come-uppence royally due to them, but I really hope I do.
You were possibly the most pessimistic PBer on the Lib Dems chances, and you still overestimated the Lib Dems.
More money (over the long term, not the short term) could turn things around but there are no quick fixes.
However, slashing social care will see things go south fairly quickly
I don't suppose at my age that I'll live to the see the Tories get the come-uppence royally due to them, but I really hope I do.
More seriously, I put out a forecast of LibDem seat numbers at various national vote shares.At 8% they were forecast to get 9 seats.
At 10%, they would have gotten 14 seats.
I thought the LDs would get 10% not 8%.
Don;t lose heart. It might happen next year if Cameron loses the referendum.
Sarkozy also had the same problem, so they ganged up on Obama to force him to militarily intervene with them in Libya and Syria.
Cameron doesn't need to appear macho now, but France has traded one unpopular President for another, and Hollande is as desperate as Sarkozy was.
And Obama seems to be getting bored with following the British-French line in the middle east, especially since the problems are mounting.
My guess was always that the americans would ditch Cameron and Hollande in the end, due to internal politics mattering more than the opinion of the british PM or the french President.
The Libyan and Syrian policies are a disaster and the Republicans are constantly using it against Obama and Hillary, Obama would not like to give them further ammunition in an election year.
(I know because I use TPS and I've been called.)
However, the phone pollsters are skewed towards people who have home phone lines.
Quite how we can rear and then kill and eat fellow sentient mammals is quite perverse too.
If some higher intelligence pops along and then decides to treat us completely appallingly we would get our just deserts. More likely that we would have wiped ourselves out long before then though because we are such egotistical, selfish, horribly invasive, greedy things that have little regard for anything other than our selves. As a dog person I find it slightly surreal that one can buy a dog just like a kettle.
Philip Hammond on Syrian opposition groups meeting: “The gender balance in the Riyadh meeting was, frankly, disappointing.”
What about the transgender community?
Cameron is a smart guy and I suspect he knows his flashman look is not appealing, particularly against Corbyn. No doubt he tries to control it but it comes so naturally to him.
The "result" you refer to was a combination of the Tories savaging their coalition partners (which will take a generation to forgive) and the SNP savaging Labour. Labour took seats (net) off the Tories even though Miliband made many mistakes and looked odd.
Given how delighted you must be with your Corbyn winnings let's hope it consoles you for future GE defeats. Oh and the result - spin it how you like, but you lost. End of.
Disgraced paedophile broadcaster Stuart Hall has been released from prison ahead of his 86th birthday next week - PA
I find it very hard to believe that it will draw a turnout like the SIndy Referendum, and the overwhelming support to remain seems heavily built into the votes of the relatively young, who are notoriously unreliable and unregistered. London will be loaded with lots of ineligible voters as well.
Are there many lauded paedophile broadcasters out there?
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
The Tories won 27 seats off the Liberals. That gave them the majority.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGRDzm3Ho4U
I suspect caller ID blocking is a very, very minor factor.
But that's the point. You are prepared to be self-critical. Others who have been spectacularly wrong, aren't. Moreover, they consider their opinions carry as much weight on here as they did before May.
Ta.
Which is a shockingly bad performance consider the Lib Dems fell by 16% since 2010
PS - The Tories would still have a majority, even if Labour had taken every seat in North Britain
Ilford North
https://twitter.com/GrahamAllenMP/status/677130451648139264/photo/1
If only Mr Allen could have encouraged Tony and Gordon to step up and introduce PR when they had the chance.
Can you fix it for me.
Jeremy.
That's a great advert !
Although of course if Cameron recommended Brexit and we voted to stay in...............
That WOULD mean champagne with the muesli at breakfast in the Cole household!
Thought 1: What am I looking at?
Thought 2*: Actually, I couldn't care less.
*following 35 milliseconds after Thought 1.
A LibDem conspiracy!!
just had my first email from TeamBackZac asking for help this weekend.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12052929/eu-referendum-brexit-fears-ahead-of-david-cameron-jeremy-corbyn-pmqs-live.html
.@scotgov has just handed out totally blacked out section on tax from @JohnSwinney #budget - happening now https://t.co/Jn22uYsteh
How can you take the votes cast under a non-proportional system and munge them into a completely different system and claim that the results are anything other than tripe?
If the last GE had been held under a proportional system, my vote could have been cast differently.
I doubt whether voting OUT would actually result in an exit.
Well if Labour hadn't lost eight seats to the Tories, it would have deprived the Tories of a majority.
You can't pin it all on the Lib Dems.
You can't pin it all on the Lib Dems.
And that's without the debacle in Scotland
Lovely.
#doingalltheycantoresistausterity
Han: Kid, I've flown from one side of this constituency to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen *anything* to make me believe that there's one all-powerful PR controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical Electoral Reform controls *my* destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
[more powers granted]
[decide not to use new powers after all]
There's nothing wrong with being wrong - pretending you're always right is just daft.