politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Harry Hayfield: 2013 Q1 Local by election results summary
Wollaston and Stourbridge Town on Dudley (from Con), Rutherglen South on South Lanarkshire (from SNP), Pensby and Thingwall on Wirral (from Con), Junction on Islington (from Lib Dem)
Thanks for this summary, Mr. Hayfield. Obviously can't be taken as a general reflection of the whole country, but it's interesting that the Lib Dems are gaining.
Thanks for this summary, Mr. Hayfield. Obviously can't be taken as a general reflection of the whole country, but it's interesting that the Lib Dems are gaining.
True. But the LDs were absolutely hammered in 2011 and to a lesser extent 2012. The result is that they start from from a low base.
Mr. Smithson, that's a good point, but if dislike of the Lib Dems remained as high now as it had been in earlier years of the Coalition they should be treading water at the bottom of the barrel [to mix metaphors horribly].
Interesting stats. Clearly the LDs are off the canvas, Labour are back in the winning habit and the Tories have some questions to answer. Not just mid term blues.
Mr. Smithson, that's a good point, but if dislike of the Lib Dems remained as high now as it had been in earlier years of the Coalition they should be treading water at the bottom of the barrel [to mix metaphors horribly].
But a lot with local by-elections is where they occur and in the past quarter that has helped the party.
What really stands out is Labour's poor performance.
Obviously it's an incredibly small data set and we need to be careful drawing conclusions from it but I don't see how Labour with 40% can't be described as poor performance? It's bang inline with their national polling and the kind of number that gives them a massive national majority.
If anything stands out, it's the Tories on 22%, they are noticeably under performing their national polling
If my sums are right, that is 37 seats in all. Does anyone know how many of those were contested by UKIP? If the answer is that most of them were, the 9% total vote share looks much lower than I would have expected.
What really stands out is Labour's poor performance.
Obviously it's an incredibly small data set and we need to be careful drawing conclusions from it but I don't see how Labour with 40% can't be described as poor performance? It's bang inline with their national polling and the kind of number that gives them a massive national majority.
If anything stands out, it's the Tories on 22%, they are noticeably under performing their national polling
asj
I have a cousin who is a psephologist but I am merely ignorant in matters electoral.
I just look at who are the surprise winners. They are UKIP and the Lib Dems (otherwise known to the moderator as "Xxxxx"). UKIP is easy to explain. Lib Dems more difficult. It seems the electorate is confused about the latter. They don't see the Lib Dems as "the government" and prefer them as a vehicle of protest to the official opposition.
As for Labour, yes, they are getting 40% but they should be getting a much higher share of the vote in mid term, as the only official national opposition party and under a new leader. Their performance is nowhere near where Blair was in the mid term of the 1992 Labour government.
Labour's woes are shown in the results to subsidiary questions in polls and in unmeasured indicators such as the reaction of the QT audience to Emily Thornberry's suggestion that a 2015 Labour government under Ed Milband will be necessary to "clean up the economic mess left by Cameron and Osborne". She was greeted with universal and non-partisan derision.
The real mood of the electorate is that voters hate austerity but believe it is the only credible option. They will protest against Cameron and Osborne but not vote, when it matters, to replace them.
Oh God, it's a miserable winter. Turnout will change come the May elections.
With a unexciting economy and a hostile media the Blues will have to get-out their vote to maintain their high-level of representation in local government: Containment should be their goal. My vote will be gifted to UKIP.
Prediction: CY2013Q1 election figures will differ from May Local-Elections.
If my sums are right, that is 37 seats in all. Does anyone know how many of those were contested by UKIP? If the answer is that most of them were, the 9% total vote share looks much lower than I would have expected.
Runnymade 40.2% Havering 39% Arun 29.7% Fenland, Parson Drove 24.6% West Lindsay 24.2% Wirral Heswall 21.6% Chelmsford 19.7% Ashford 18.8% Forest of Dean 18.4% North Norfolk 18.2% Telford 17.6% Dacorum 17.3% Wakefield 17.1% Wirral Pensby 11.6% Dudley: 10.5% Stockton 10.3% West Harrow 7.8% Kingston Berrylands 7.1% Lewisham 7% Hammersmith Wormholt 5.8% Wirral Leasowe 4.6% Rutherglen South 3.3% Lambeth Brixton 2.5% Coatbridge West 1.2%
Fenland Hill: no candidate Sedgemore: no candidate Herefordshire: no candidate South Staffordshire: no candidate Oldham: no candidate Camden: no candidate Dorset Stours: no candidate Dorset Lodbourne: no candidate Islington St George's no candidate Islington Junction: no candidate Tendring: no candidate Moray: no candidate Bridgend: no candidate
unless David Cameron can sort out his women problem and the Tories can sort out their UKIP/old men problem the George Osborne and David Cameron will be forcibly retired.
tim
By 2015 the women will be far too busy decorating their state guaranteed newbuilds and the old men will be building train sets in their spare rooms for their grandchildren.
Congratulations Cllr Denis Allen Posted on March 28, 2013 by UKIP Telford & Wrekin — 5 Comments ↓ UKIP Telford & Wrekin Chairman, Denis Allen, has won tonight’s by-election for the Dothill ward of Wellington Town Council.
Denis secured a whopping 46.25% of the vote, not just beating the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem candidates but taking more than double the votes of the second placed Labour candidate.
The results were:
Denis Allen UKIP 303 (46.25%) Margaret Malcolm Labour 151 (23%) Ed Bird Conservative 108 (16.5%) David Holloway Lib Dem 90 (13.75%)
Harry considered just by-elections from Districts upwards
Town/Parish contests are much more difficult to track down. Sometimes there are barely notices of elections. And in the not policized parish - towns, elections straight fights between Local Wife vs Housewive.
If we are including District elections upwards, wasn't there a light contest in Eastleigh?
Clearly LDs have learnt to fight bye-elections again in Government, and theTories have never been at their strongest at by-elections, even in opposition.
But can the Lib Dems turn the GE into 75 bye-elections, and fight in the same way in May? Big prizes on offer if they can.
@AndreaParma_82 Thanks for the figures, Andrea. That makes 23 seats which UKIP contested with an average vote share of 15.4%, which is more in line with what one might expect. Of course the sample is hard to interpret because it is small and partly self-selecting.
Those PBers wanting to vote Blue will find themselves in a quandary. Cameron changed conservative BLUE to TURQUOISE in a move to find favour with the ecological greens and the earth warmers, I believe.
The only true Blue party is now Purple. I will be voting UKIP in May and see how it goes.
@tim - Whatever the number, it will be smaller than the number of Labour supporters upset by the big betrayal, when they discover that the two Eds don't have the faintest intention of reversing a single saving put in place by young George.
If Labour form the next government they'll probably have to stick to most of the spending cuts the coalition has initiated which will annoy most of their supporters of course.
How many Tories will be upset by George and Dave resigning after the next election - 15-25%?
The next election will be fought on confidence in the abilities and intent of the two main parties to manage the economy.
By any measure the performance of Cameron and Osborne will be superior to that of Brown and Darling. Not difficult to achieve, I agree, but the progress made towards full recovery will be sufficient for voters not to want to risk a backward move with Gordon's henchmen back in control.
If the voters don't see the difference the markets will help clear the mist.
I am not predicting a Thatcherite landslide, more a vote of confidence and continuation of a Tory led government.
If this doesn't happen then Tories will revert to the time honoured principle of "The King is dead. Long live the King."
It is policy and commitment to agreed goals that are important, tim, not personalities.
When the pre-election scrutiny comes, there is reason to suspect Labour will withstand it even less well than the Tories did in 2010. The personal limitations of Ed Miliband, the opposition leader, and Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, are aired often enough. But the problem runs deeper. Labour – its front bench and back rooms alike – is now led by people who spent a decade believing that Tony Blair was a problem and Gordon Brown was the answer. When they eventually seized the premiership in 2007, the Brownites squandered it inside three months with a snap election fiasco that ranks with any unforced error in postwar political history. They then took their party to its second-worst electoral showing since 1918. For all this government’s tragicomic haplessness – the U-turns, the nice-but-dim culture behind the scenes – its opponents are hardly the heirs to Metternich either.
"SNP leader Alex Salmond faces referendum rethink as sun sets on alliance with Rupert Murdoch's News International Failure to win NI backing comes as major blow to SNP leader's Scottish independence campaign"
It's been a lovely sunny day, here, 75 degrees, and opening day for Atlanta Braves baseball. My daughter was given free tickets and parking in the gold lot, she and a girl friend are at Turner Field for the 7pm start.
I told my wife that Rolf Harris got arrested, and her comment was that the way it was going, anyone who had a Saturday night variety show on BBC 1 in the 60s to 80s could be in trouble,
"SNP leader Alex Salmond faces referendum rethink as sun sets on alliance with Rupert Murdoch's News International Failure to win NI backing comes as major blow to SNP leader's Scottish independence campaign"
Cam on down: PM David Cameron backs Rangers and Celtic move to England
"“Rangers fans are squarely behind the unionist cause and will always wave the flag. But if Celtic were to be playing in England it might prove to their fans that they should be British. This may sound strange to people in England but there are hundreds of thousands of votes here – and football is at the middle of a lot of debates up here.”
I'm really not sure if this is real. i suppose its possible there is a scottish resident who has never met a celtic fan in their entire life...
Didn't someone write a thread about this on here a while back? from pb thread to cameron policy in months...
it could be an april fool? but dated 30th March...
I've no idea if there's any truth in it or not, but at the very least that's a very muddled piece by the Independent. The Sun's position at the last Holyrood election was that it supported the SNP but explicitly opposed independence. If they were to support a No vote in the referendum it would be entirely consistent with that position - but by the sounds of it they're not going to do that. They're going to be neutral instead.
Still, in Carlotta-world, that's a blow for the SNP and yet another "triumph for Dave!!!"
I've no idea if there's any truth in it or not, but at the very least that's a very muddled piece by the Independent. The Sun's position at the last Holyrood election was that it supported the SNP but explicitly opposed independence. If they were to support a No vote in the referendum it would be entirely consistent with that position - but by the sounds of it they're not going to do that. They're going to be neutral instead.
Still, in Carlotta-world, that's a blow for the SNP and yet another "triumph for Dave!!!"
With so much of the English owned MSM vehemently against independence, even the newsnewspaper calling itself the Independent has had a go, perhaps they should re-brand themselves "The Separated" as that is where they are in relation to reality.
Cusick's abstract comment in that esteemed comic that the debate is 36 to 46%, (so 44% against 56% on actual voters) is in reality a poor position and the Yes campaign needs 60% to get over the inevitable scare tactics fear campaign late in 2014 was illuminating. There will be the kitchen sink thrown at the issue, just as happened in Quebec in the last two weeks of the campaign, when YES was in front. Does anyone doubt the Tories in London and their ermine robed allies will throw money at the campaign to maintain the status quo?
Majority of men in Scotland support independence even today, hardly a poor position, and if Sturgeon took over in late 2103/early 2014, as I would like, to show continuity then women would support her en masse and the gap would I suspect be bridged.
Women will vote for women, at least once, as Gillard and Clinton showed. Lamont might be poor and a puppet for London labour but she assuredly has some of the female vote solely based on her gender.
Being from the West it would improve votes from that part of the country and avoid the YES campaign through the SNP being seen as a party of the North and North East.
Finally, I think there are more people going from NO to YES than YES to NO, perhaps going through the" don't know" stage as they await for facts from an MSM keen to avoid specifics and instead write headlines on passport issues and pension threats or threats to the monarchy or the danger of sharing oil wealth between only 5 million people instead of the stability of sharing with 70 million as the price is so volatile.
If you keep your money to yourself instead of sharing with 13 others it may be volatile but there is a damn good chance you will get more than you had before. And it is whether people are better off that will decide this. Talking down the value of oil when the industry and its investment is growing hugely will be a hard sell even for a complicit MSM.
I've no idea if there's any truth in it or not, but at the very least that's a very muddled piece by the Independent....
The Scottish media's reports on the independence referendum have been a disgrace whether or not you support a 'Yes' vote and the Scotsman has been the worse.
I stand by the comments below that a sensible debate with the facts instead of fear and scaremongering would be far better. Google "SNP accused Scotsman" and see how many stories come up. Then google "Labour accused Scotsman" and count the number of articles.
Having read that article, I suspect that the contents might not bear close scrutiny. In fact, the irony of the last Labour government removing the spare room subsidy from private rentals is totally missed by the Mirror..............
I stand by the comments below that a sensible debate with the facts instead of fear and scaremongering would be far better. Google "SNP accused Scotsman" and see how many stories come up. Then google "Labour accused Scotsman" and count the number of articles.
Sorry, but the SNP accusing the Scotsman of disagreeing with them or their facts is hardly a basis for suggesting that fear and scaremongering isn't a problem for both sides of the Independence argument.
@fitalass Two wrongs do not make a right as far as the bedroom tax goes.
It was also the policy of many councils in the Central Belt to build 2 bed flats and up so that people did not have to move if they got married etc.
Do not forget that land for building costs the square root of b--gg-r all in those parts.
These savings will only materialise if there are smaller properties to which people can move.
They are very thin on the ground and it is revolting to me that people who have moved back to care for elderly parents are being penalised when that elderly parent dies.
They are being told in effect, "You have done your duty and now that it is finished, you can eff off".
@fitalass Two wrongs do not make a right as far as the bedroom tax goes.
It was also the policy of many councils in the Central Belt to build 2 bed flats and up so that people did not have to move if they got married etc.
Do not forget that land for building costs the square root of b--gg-r all in those parts.
These savings will only materialise if there are smaller properties to which people can move.
They are very thin on the ground and it is revolting to me that people who have moved back to care for elderly parents are being penalised when that elderly parent dies.
They are being told in effect, "You have done your duty and now that it is finished, you can eff off".
Sorry, but I know enough about the housing problem in Scotland to know that we have a situation where we can have a family of five squashed into a two bed flat while a single person can end up living alone in a three bed Council house after moving in with an elderly relative!! Social housing isn't just about those already safely tucked up in the system with more rooms than they need, its about all those families who don't even have social housing that meets their immediate emergency needs!!!!!!
@ fitalassfitalass I have always been old_labour since I signed up to politicalbetting.com and use the same name when i comment on other sites via disqus. I get mixed up because avatars have changed since the site has begun using the vanilla system at times.
@fitalass Should those families be expected to move like itinerants if one kid leaves to go to college, or someone in that household dies? And moving and re=decoration costs are damned expensive.
Sorry, but I know enough about the housing problem in Scotland to know that we have a situation where we can have a family of five squashed into a two bed flat while a single person can end up living alone in a three bed Council house after moving in with an elderly relative!! Social housing isn't just about those already safely tucked up in the system with more rooms than they need, its about all those families who don't even have social housing that meets their immediate emergency needs!!!!!!
@JamesKelly - I suspect all Murdoch is doing is covering his bets - the Sun will want to be on the winning side - which at the moment does not look like separation - but could of course change. After Murdoch's first flush of enthusiasm I would not be surprised if someone had pointed out to him the polling evidence....
"which at the moment does not look like separation"
Agreed. The polls show zero support for "separation". They do, however, show growing support for independence, which must be a matter of some concern to you, Carlotta, and is doubtless why Murdoch's primary publication has moved from opposing independence to neutrality over such a short space of time.
Comments
Voters want to protest against governing parties but prefer the Xxxxx and closet racists to candidates from the official opposition.
Very strange.
If anything stands out, it's the Tories on 22%, they are noticeably under performing their national polling
If my sums are right, that is 37 seats in all. Does anyone know how many of those were contested by UKIP? If the answer is that most of them were, the 9% total vote share looks much lower than I would have expected.
I have a cousin who is a psephologist but I am merely ignorant in matters electoral.
I just look at who are the surprise winners. They are UKIP and the Lib Dems (otherwise known to the moderator as "Xxxxx"). UKIP is easy to explain. Lib Dems more difficult. It seems the electorate is confused about the latter. They don't see the Lib Dems as "the government" and prefer them as a vehicle of protest to the official opposition.
As for Labour, yes, they are getting 40% but they should be getting a much higher share of the vote in mid term, as the only official national opposition party and under a new leader. Their performance is nowhere near where Blair was in the mid term of the 1992 Labour government.
Labour's woes are shown in the results to subsidiary questions in polls and in unmeasured indicators such as the reaction of the QT audience to Emily Thornberry's suggestion that a 2015 Labour government under Ed Milband will be necessary to "clean up the economic mess left by Cameron and Osborne". She was greeted with universal and non-partisan derision.
The real mood of the electorate is that voters hate austerity but believe it is the only credible option. They will protest against Cameron and Osborne but not vote, when it matters, to replace them.
I hope there's a market, I should get on that one immediately! It sounds a dead cert.
With a unexciting economy and a hostile media the Blues will have to get-out their vote to maintain their high-level of representation in local government: Containment should be their goal. My vote will be gifted to UKIP.
Prediction: CY2013Q1 election figures will differ from May Local-Elections.
Runnymade 40.2%
Havering 39%
Arun 29.7%
Fenland, Parson Drove 24.6%
West Lindsay 24.2%
Wirral Heswall 21.6%
Chelmsford 19.7%
Ashford 18.8%
Forest of Dean 18.4%
North Norfolk 18.2%
Telford 17.6%
Dacorum 17.3%
Wakefield 17.1%
Wirral Pensby 11.6%
Dudley: 10.5%
Stockton 10.3%
West Harrow 7.8%
Kingston Berrylands 7.1%
Lewisham 7%
Hammersmith Wormholt 5.8%
Wirral Leasowe 4.6%
Rutherglen South 3.3%
Lambeth Brixton 2.5%
Coatbridge West 1.2%
Fenland Hill: no candidate
Sedgemore: no candidate
Herefordshire: no candidate
South Staffordshire: no candidate
Oldham: no candidate
Camden: no candidate
Dorset Stours: no candidate
Dorset Lodbourne: no candidate
Islington St George's no candidate
Islington Junction: no candidate
Tendring: no candidate
Moray: no candidate
Bridgend: no candidate
Next you will be telling us that your entire life savings were banked with Laiki.
I know it is April 1st and all that but the jokes were meant to stop at midday.
By 2015 the women will be far too busy decorating their state guaranteed newbuilds and the old men will be building train sets in their spare rooms for their grandchildren.
George has it sorted.
@Morris_Dancer
"... border collies are especially delightful hounds"
Point of order, Mr. Chairman, border collies are dogs and not hounds.
Congratulations Cllr Denis Allen
Posted on March 28, 2013 by UKIP Telford & Wrekin — 5 Comments ↓
UKIP Telford & Wrekin Chairman, Denis Allen, has won tonight’s by-election for the Dothill ward of Wellington Town Council.
Denis secured a whopping 46.25% of the vote, not just beating the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem candidates but taking more than double the votes of the second placed Labour candidate.
The results were:
Denis Allen
UKIP
303 (46.25%)
Margaret Malcolm
Labour
151 (23%)
Ed Bird
Conservative
108 (16.5%)
David Holloway
Lib Dem
90 (13.75%)
What else is he leaving out?
A local election thread on a Monday??
Harry considered just by-elections from Districts upwards
Town/Parish contests are much more difficult to track down. Sometimes there are barely notices of elections. And in the not policized parish - towns, elections straight fights between Local Wife vs Housewive.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21995400
Must be costing a fortune
Tory Simon Hart reselected last week.
You are putting me off voting Tory.
Thanks for that info. I'll take note of that and stand corrected.
Updated candidates list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At91c3wX1Wu5dFkzTjFrRmJRN3F6ODBTTEs4NGFhcUE#gid=0
"You are putting me off voting Tory."
Don't worry Avery I think he's telling porkies.
Some Parish/Town councils are politicized (like Wellington) and see contests between all parties.
In other places, you get elections like this
http://www.newforest.gov.uk/media/adobe/9/k/Brockenhurst_(Brockenhurst).pdf
forester vs retired farmer vs lots of no decription
http://buckshawvillage.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/spneuxne.pdf
Clearly LDs have learnt to fight bye-elections again in Government, and theTories have never been at their strongest at by-elections, even in opposition.
But can the Lib Dems turn the GE into 75 bye-elections, and fight in the same way in May? Big prizes on offer if they can.
The only true Blue party is now Purple. I will be voting UKIP in May and see how it goes.
By any measure the performance of Cameron and Osborne will be superior to that of Brown and Darling. Not difficult to achieve, I agree, but the progress made towards full recovery will be sufficient for voters not to want to risk a backward move with Gordon's henchmen back in control.
If the voters don't see the difference the markets will help clear the mist.
I am not predicting a Thatcherite landslide, more a vote of confidence and continuation of a Tory led government.
If this doesn't happen then Tories will revert to the time honoured principle of "The King is dead. Long live the King."
It is policy and commitment to agreed goals that are important, tim, not personalities.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/503c3804-96da-11e2-a77c-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2PFlJHAYl
When the pre-election scrutiny comes, there is reason to suspect Labour will withstand it even less well than the Tories did in 2010. The personal limitations of Ed Miliband, the opposition leader, and Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, are aired often enough. But the problem runs deeper. Labour – its front bench and back rooms alike – is now led by people who spent a decade believing that Tony Blair was a problem and Gordon Brown was the answer. When they eventually seized the premiership in 2007, the Brownites squandered it inside three months with a snap election fiasco that ranks with any unforced error in postwar political history. They then took their party to its second-worst electoral showing since 1918. For all this government’s tragicomic haplessness – the U-turns, the nice-but-dim culture behind the scenes – its opponents are hardly the heirs to Metternich either.
https://twitter.com/RealRadioScot/status/318829786971648000/photo/1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21993582
Failure to win NI backing comes as major blow to SNP leader's Scottish independence campaign"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/snp-leader-alex-salmond-faces-referendum-rethink-as-sun-sets-on-alliance-with-rupert-murdochs-news-international-8556199.html
I told my wife that Rolf Harris got arrested, and her comment was that the way it was going, anyone who had a Saturday night variety show on BBC 1 in the 60s to 80s could be in trouble,
http://news.sky.com/story/1072541/the-harsh-reality-of-britains-welfare-reform
meanwhile:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/prime-minister-david-cameron-backs-1794754
Cam on down: PM David Cameron backs Rangers and Celtic move to England
"“Rangers fans are squarely behind the unionist cause and will always wave the flag. But if Celtic were to be playing in England it might prove to their fans that they should be British. This may sound strange to people in England but there are hundreds of thousands of votes here – and football is at the middle of a lot of debates up here.”
I'm really not sure if this is real. i suppose its possible there is a scottish resident who has never met a celtic fan in their entire life...
Didn't someone write a thread about this on here a while back? from pb thread to cameron policy in months...
it could be an april fool? but dated 30th March...
Still, in Carlotta-world, that's a blow for the SNP and yet another "triumph for Dave!!!"
Cusick's abstract comment in that esteemed comic that the debate is 36 to 46%, (so 44% against 56% on actual voters) is in reality a poor position and the Yes campaign needs 60% to get over the inevitable scare tactics fear campaign late in 2014 was illuminating. There will be the kitchen sink thrown at the issue, just as happened in Quebec in the last two weeks of the campaign, when YES was in front. Does anyone doubt the Tories in London and their ermine robed allies will throw money at the campaign to maintain the status quo?
Majority of men in Scotland support independence even today, hardly a poor position, and if Sturgeon took over in late 2103/early 2014, as I would like, to show continuity then women would support her en masse and the gap would I suspect be bridged.
Women will vote for women, at least once, as Gillard and Clinton showed. Lamont might be poor and a puppet for London labour but she assuredly has some of the female vote solely based on her gender.
Being from the West it would improve votes from that part of the country and avoid the YES campaign through the SNP being seen as a party of the North and North East.
Finally, I think there are more people going from NO to YES than YES to NO, perhaps going through the" don't know" stage as they await for facts from an MSM keen to avoid specifics and instead write headlines on passport issues and pension threats or threats to the monarchy or the danger of sharing oil wealth between only 5 million people instead of the stability of sharing with 70 million as the price is so volatile.
If you keep your money to yourself instead of sharing with 13 others it may be volatile but there is a damn good chance you will get more than you had before. And it is whether people are better off that will decide this. Talking down the value of oil when the industry and its investment is growing hugely will be a hard sell even for a complicit MSM.
Having read that article, I suspect that the contents might not bear close scrutiny. In fact, the irony of the last Labour government removing the spare room subsidy from private rentals is totally missed by the Mirror..............
Two wrongs do not make a right as far as the bedroom tax goes.
It was also the policy of many councils in the Central Belt to build 2 bed flats and up so that people did not have to move if they got married etc.
Do not forget that land for building costs the square root of b--gg-r all in those parts.
These savings will only materialise if there are smaller properties to which people can move.
They are very thin on the ground and it is revolting to me that people who have moved back to care for elderly parents are being penalised when that elderly parent dies.
They are being told in effect, "You have done your duty and now that it is finished, you can eff off".
I have always been old_labour since I signed up to politicalbetting.com and use the same name when i comment on other sites via disqus. I get mixed up because avatars have changed since the site has begun using the vanilla system at times.
Should those families be expected to move like itinerants if one kid leaves to go to college, or someone in that household dies? And moving and re=decoration costs are damned expensive.
Sorry, but I know enough about the housing problem in Scotland to know that we have a situation where we can have a family of five squashed into a two bed flat while a single person can end up living alone in a three bed Council house after moving in with an elderly relative!! Social housing isn't just about those already safely tucked up in the system with more rooms than they need, its about all those families who don't even have social housing that meets their immediate emergency needs!!!!!!
It believes a strong performance by Britain's service industries during the first three months of the year has kept the economy growing."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21998652
Agreed. The polls show zero support for "separation". They do, however, show growing support for independence, which must be a matter of some concern to you, Carlotta, and is doubtless why Murdoch's primary publication has moved from opposing independence to neutrality over such a short space of time.