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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » “It’s the switcher’s wot won it” – will that be the verdict on Owen Smith’s victory?
I surprised a few friends in a previous posting when I declared I was a bit of a fan of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. I will surprise a few more when I say I am admirer of my former BBC boss John Birt. My enthusiasm stems in part from the fact that I was a Father of the Chapel for National Union of Journalists in Television News.
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The 10 factors driving US polarisation. From Jonathan Haidt's speech https://t.co/u263U5BoUp https://t.co/f66eTotinM
I say I am admirer of my former BBC boss John Birt. My enthusiasm stems in part from the fact that I was a Father of the Chapel for National Union of Journalists in Television News. Under the Birt regime there were lots of extra journalist jobs and progressive policies on equality and diversity
Well, quite. How else would you measure the quality of a BBC boss?
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm
This leadership election feels like it's been going on for far too long.
No, it's to be expected in that party. The Lib Dems and Tories seemed to manage to hold leadership contests without that sort of atmosphere.
FPT @ John_M
Hereabouts, we get a related issue. Townies buy up land and build their McMansions in the middle of nowhere, then demand that a shopping mall be built to service their needs. Locals ask WTF did you move here? We like the isolation and want to keep it that way.
That said, I type this from a farm within the agricultural preserve that has Fios and up to 500Mbs/500Mbs should I be prepared to pay for it.
Such things should be made clear on all relevant threads IMHO
@asabenn: Hearing Ukip's National Executive Committee has rejected @mickmcgough & @VAylingUKIP's bid to unresign after they quit in pro-Woolfe protest
UKIP are at risk of utterly squandering a fantastic opportunity to hammer Labour in the north.
Electing Jez last year has had, for me, the desired effect of reigniting a socialist zeal within the party. Now, with that established, it is time to move on to the next stage in the process - convincing the voters, not just the party membership. To do that, we need a new leader; not necessarily Owen - there is nothing so stop him resigning the day after he is elected, after all.
Ed West
The ratio is now 5:1, with figures of between 10 and 40 to 1 in the social sciences https://t.co/rNYZ7U37qC
The focus should be on becoming electable - not trying to sell something for which the electorate has never voted.
Next Thread : By Rod Crosby
"Donald Trump - Black Votes Matter - He'll Win DC In A Landslide"
1. There needs to be an awful lot of them. Corbyn won nearly 60% of the vote in a four-way contest last year. Had it gone to 2PP, as they do in Australia, it would probably have been something like 65-35. All else being equal, Smith would need to win over one in four 2015 Corbyn votes.
2. Not all else is equal. We know that today's Labour party is to the left of that which formed last year's electorate. We know that from the one poll that there has been and we can strongly suspect it from the natural flow that left-wing protest activists have been attracted and centrist ones have drifted off in non-renewals. Some may have rejoined in order to vote but the net effect will be to Corbyn's benefit.
3. The electorate is hugely bigger than it was. It's hard to believe that these are all people who joined in order to stop Corbyn. Far more likely is that they're 38-degreers and the like who've joined to protect him. Certainly the Saving Labour site believes that it's signed up a lot. has it though? It seems counter-intuitive to me that people would join a party that they weren't previously a member of in order to save it.
4. We have the CLP nominations. These are a very imperfect guide and are a representation of those who are motivated to turn out and discuss in meetings, not the membership / selectorate as a whole. All the same, Corbyn enjoyed a substantial majority of both CLPs and votes.
Having said all that, much of the above argument is supposition and circumstantial. We have no first-grade hard facts. That which we do have is partial, old or unreliable. Perhaps most of the supporters who signed up did do so to stop Corbyn. Perhaps there has been a big swing. Perhaps these last few weeks have convinced tens of thousands of members that Owen Smith is the man to lead Labour to victory. Perhaps - but I think probably not.
At the risk of sound like a pound-shop Alistair Meeks, if you've decide to immure yourself in the boonies, you cannot expect services to be on par with NW1.
That said, the challenge of Internet access in remote places is being tackled by the private sector even if sometimes it's merely a bycatch. It really does not need state intervention.
Where I agree with Don is that those switching from Corbyn to Smith won't make a lot of noise because of fear of being abused on social media and also the natural human instinct of not wanting to admit you have made an error. But Corbyn's inbuilt lead is such that he near as damn it is unbeatable in the circumstances. Owen Smith will have done very well to reduce the Corbyn percentage from the 59.5% he received last time.
Actually a bigger issue is how slow BT / Virgin have been to roll out modern broadband bandwidth in areas that are well populated. The government targets talk about upto 10Mbs, which is aiming far too low, we really need ability for any location within a reasonable distance of a populated area should be able to get 100Mbs.
We can't have the situation where as business located 2-3 miles from a town centre can't get 50-100Mbs+. That is a big limiting factor on where a modern business might locate.
Since the never-ending reshuffle she now has two jobs - Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Brexit Secretary.
Details matter...(and I know it takes a lot of effort to keep up with the ever-changing Shadow team)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/08/30/apple-ordered-to-pay-11bn-after-european-union-tax-investigation/
Whoever wins on the 24th is there for the rest of this Parliament - anything else is unthinkable.
It is quite incredible how much turmoil there has been...
There have been 2 or 3 polls of Labour Party members carried out in the past month by yougov. However, it would seem that those who commissioned these polls do not want to make the results public.
One has to wonder why.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/19/politics/donald-trump-apple-boycott/
- it expands markets for companies, expands flexible working conditions for employees and generally grows the economy. There is far more notional capacity for growth in BH20 than NW1...
- this, and the fact that it presents a more equal society, is in the interest of all in our polity because it decreases the chance of sectional protest groups developing.
Rural broadband Luddism is on par with these hilarious London independence movements. Selfish and pretty short sighted
In Britain, those who are winning pay more to help those that are losing. Some might not like it, and want all those who voted Leave to be somehow penalised for metropolitan displeasure, but this is how we progress.
There won't be enough switchers. And the membership added between last year's election and the freeze date will significantly vote for Corbyn having largely been registered supporters last year.
As for electability you miss the key belief of Jezbollah members - conspiracy. Corbyn IS electable IS inspiring IS honest and transparent.; Polls suggesting he isn't are either produced by Tory firms like YouGov or biased due to being commissioned by hostile Tory papers like The Guardian and in any case once voters hear about His ideas via The Canary, they'll soon change their mind.
The Labour Party membership reminds me of the Only Fools and Horses episode where Trigger gets an award from the mayor for his long service and for having the same broom for 20 years. Only later does Trigger explain in the pub his broom has had 17 heads and 14 handles but insists it's the same broom. Labour membership has gone through a hell of a lot of heads and handles in the last year but it's apparently the same party.
And on #wearehismedia we will see the twitter and facebook feeds flooded with Jezbollah militia denouncing Owen, Owen supporters, the BBC, the media, Dimbleby and other posters for their obvious bias against Him. You can spot people biased against Him - they're the people not denouncing people for bias.
And people are complaining that they are being suspended. The Labour Party has turned into a nasty spiteful paranoid place under His leadership. Another reason he needs to go
There are always opportunity costs. It was quite expensive to arrange broadband provision to the end of the Olchon valley (total population: 5 households). Would that money have been better spent improving access elsewhere? It's all about the tradeoffs.
I went into a bit more detail on my adventures and travails with the various rural broadband projects on the previous thread. I shan't repeat those here.
Smith's bloody awful.
Where's Benn? Cooper? Johnson?
Hillary Benn has superior oratory skills to the other runners but was afraid to put his head above the parapet this time round I think.
She's not great but acquitted herself reasonably well at PMQs and has a certain authenticity that Smith seems (to me anyway) to lack. He just seems to me to be an oily opportunist.
What convenient timing for us
Not if they IRexit...
This article was amended on 30 August 2016. An earlier version said glass feet on the fire lookout’s wooden chair would help it conduct electricity if struck by lightning. In fact glass acts as an insulator so that the chair does not conduct electricity in the event of a strike.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/30/us-national-parks-fire-lookout-forest-wildfire
I read somewhere 700 US companies have Irish operations for tax efficiency.
Has Ireland done many other similar sweetheart deals with other companies?
I am all green on the race, but some candidates are more green than others.
Any PB kippers fancy a summary of the candidates and prospects? Is Jarvis as nailed on as the prices suggest?
Where else in the EU to go ?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/30/france-manuel-valls-breasts-headscarf-burkini-ban-row
Even if Ireland were made to enforce its headline rate of Corporation tax across the board, its still pretty low though, right? and very few companies get Apple's deal.