' We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1' Justin 124 said: 'An end to human decency and civilisation as we know it.Perhaps you are a member of the Arbeit Macht Frei wing of the Tory Party .'
David Herdson said:
'
Not in the context of the comments at which it was directed.
Not at all - and I made no assertion of any kind. My first word was 'Perhaps'.
.
Are you really seeking to deny what I have said re- Rothermere and the Monday Club? I could go further and refresh the memories of some who would prefer to forget the Likes of John Carlisle and his attitude to Apartheid.
Can I just add to the growing consensus that you are perhaps a complete twit? I suspect that you do not know what "Arbeit Macht Frei" actually means, but it certainly isn't an item of Nazi doctrine. POerhaps you should stop trying to sound clever.
I have studied German and am well acquainted with the phrase - the origins of which stem from 1933 not the Holocaust.
No they don't. Look it up. You also don't know what "in extremis" means - it doesn't mean "extremely." Look it up.
re- Arbeit Macht frei - 'In 1933 the first political prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges. They were held in a number of places in Germany. The slogan was first used over the gate of a "wild camp" in the city of Oranienburg, which was set up in an abandoned brewery in March 1933 (it was later rebuilt in 1936 as Sachsenhausen' From Wilkipedia
Now do you understand why it's disgraceful to claim that the Conservative party has such a tendency, let alone that any individual might belong to it?
I'd be very surprised if any element in the Conservatives wants to establish concentration camps.
Lord Salisbury's Tory Government actually introduced them!
' We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1' Justin 124 said: 'An end to human decency and civilisation as we know it.Perhaps you are a member of the Arbeit Macht Frei wing of the Tory Party .'
David Herdson said:
'
Not in the context of the comments at which it was directed.
Not at all - and I made no assertion of any kind. My first word was 'Perhaps'.
.
Are you really seeking to deny what I have said re- Rothermere and the Monday Club? I could go further and refresh the memories of some who would prefer to forget the Likes of John Carlisle and his attitude to Apartheid.
Can I just add to the growing consensus that you are perhaps a complete twit? I suspect that you do not know what "Arbeit Macht Frei" actually means, but it certainly isn't an item of Nazi doctrine. POerhaps you should stop trying to sound clever.
I have studied German and am well acquainted with the phrase - the origins of which stem from 1933 not the Holocaust.
No they don't. Look it up. You also don't know what "in extremis" means - it doesn't mean "extremely." Look it up.
re- Arbeit Macht frei - 'In 1933 the first political prisoners were being rounded up for an indefinite period without charges. They were held in a number of places in Germany. The slogan was first used over the gate of a "wild camp" in the city of Oranienburg, which was set up in an abandoned brewery in March 1933 (it was later rebuilt in 1936 as Sachsenhausen' From Wilkipedia
Now do you understand why it's disgraceful to claim that the Conservative party has such a tendency, let alone that any individual might belong to it?
I'd be very surprised if any element in the Conservatives wants to establish concentration camps.
Lord Salisbury's Tory Government actually introduced them!
The flaws in the voting system for failing to provide representation for parties with broad but non-geographical support are well known.
But in theory at least - and leaving aside memory of the coalition - the conditions for LibDem revival couldn't be better.
No, the conditions for a Lib Dem revival, in Parliament at any rate, do not exist.
1. Corbyn Labour is generally unpopular, but it generates a lot of enthusiasm from certain voter groups - including middle class progressives (the sort of people whose desertion to Labour and the Greens, in protest at the Coalition, caused the Lib Dems' left flank to fall off in the first place.) If Labour appeals to your instincts, then why would you desert it just because it is electorally hamstrung? At this stage, we must remember that the prospects of a Labour Government still look stellar relative to the completely non-existent chances of a Lib Dem one!
2. In any event. concentrating on stealing Labour votes is, on its own, a completely useless strategy for the Lib Dems. The key to a revival, if it is ever to come, lies in peeling the Yellow Tory vote back off the Conservatives. The point that I made in my previous post stands: why would anybody who voted Lib Dem in 2010, and then defected to the Tories in 2015, go back again to the yellows when (a) they have moved leftwards and (b) the risk is, vote Farron, get Corbyn (with Salmond as deputy PM and string puller in chief, and Caroline Lucas lobbying for a new economic strategy of zero growth and a phased return to living in Iron Age roundhouses?) I think that you also overestimate the salience of the Remain position. Most voters will have accepted the referendum result, and dying in a ditch fighting it is strictly a minority interest.
3. There is no reason to suppose that the Tory vote will collapse, provided that Theresa May herself does not attempt to subvert the referendum result and turbo-charges Ukip as a result. Whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, there is nothing to suggest that she will make the astonishing error of trying to stop it from happening altogether. Absent that scenario, where else do the 37% of voters who backed David Cameron go at the next election? Nobody who stuck with the Tories in 2015 is liable to defect to hard right Ukip, hard left Labour, or to the Lib Dems for reasons articulated above. The Tories have nominal control (after boundary change) of most of the very short list of realistic Lib Dem targets for 2020, and the yellows themselves start on four seats. They will be doing well just to bring their representation back up to the total of eight seats that matches what they currently have. A large scale improvement in fortunes appears highly improbable.
' We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1' Justin 124 said: 'An end to human decency and civilisation as we know it.Perhaps you are a member of the Arbeit Macht Frei wing of the Tory Party .'
David Herdson said:
' That's a disgraceful comment and says a great deal more about you and your perverted worldview than it does about politics.'
Not in the context of the comments at which it was directed.
Oh come off it. There was no justification for that disgraceful comment. You should gave a good long look in a mirror and be ashamed of yourself.
Not at all - and I made no assertion of any kind. My first word was 'Perhaps'.
Well perhaps you are a complete moron. Please don't take that as an insult because I have covered myself with the second word.
snip.
.
I have studied German and am well acquainted with the phrase - the origins of which stem from 1933 not the Holocaust.
No they don't. Look it up. You also don't know what "in extremis" means - it doesn't mean "extremely." Look it up.
re- Arbeit Macht frei - 'snip
Now do you understand why it's disgraceful to claim that the Conservative party has such a tendency, let alone that any individual might belong to it?
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
Do bugger off, you moron. The reaction of the Allies in 1944-5 at the discovery of the existence of the camps - of utter shock and incredulity - is historically beyond question. Why would the appearance of a trite phrase at the camps in 1940 imply a knowledge of their existence on the part of anyone in England? You are a revoltingly silly little man.
You will however find them performing advanced mental gymnastics after the little people have got it 'wrong', to explain why democracy isn't really about people voting for things.
"Populist" in this context means "perversely pretending to think that 52% is more than 48%."
What really upsets the remoaners is that they were defeated by the 'wrong' sort of people.
Namely working class people 'up north', coastal town 'chavs' and 'rustics' from poor farming areas. All places they have never been to or sometimes even head of before.
These were the top ten Leave areas in Britain:
Boston, South Holland, Castle Point, Thurrock, Yarmouth, Fenland, Mansfield, Bolsover, East Lindsey, NE Lincolnshire
The remoaners are having the same experience that the French and Russian aristocracies had in 1789 and 1917.
More leaver whinging. It's hilarious.
A note for you:
You won
Sorry, but it seems like you haven't noticed.
We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1
I can see your general point ie the UK ou
Abortion, yes I would criminalise again. If you accept that it is killing a very weak and vulnerable individual then there can be no compromise on that. Murder is murder.
Criminalising Homosexuality. That would be wrong. It was only criminalised in response to a Daily Mail like media hoohah in the late 19th century - a time where the state was just beginning to meddle in social affairs in the modern sense and gave a certain type of bullyboy policeman scope to ruin countless lives. Gay Marriage is going too far the other way but I didnt have a problem with civil parterships other than that siblings were and are discriminated against.
I don't think abortion or homosexuality will ever be recriminalised. However there may well be scope for raising the time limit an maybe even reversing gay marriage if it ends up being forced on churches and other religious places of worship. Interesting a recently poll showed the under 16s are more socially conservative than all generations above them other than pensioners!
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
So were three former Labour MPs - Mosley, Beckett and Forgan.
And of course ex-Liberal leader Lloyd George spoke admiringly of Hitler and on a visit to Germany in 1936 (?) was photographed giving the Nazi salute.
No party is clean when it comes to Fascism in the 1930s.
PS - a concentration camp, as put into practice by Salisbury's government (in practice the South African government, but that's another story) were as the name implies, merely designed to 'concentrate' a group of people in one place - in this case the non-combatants among the Boers to make it harder for the guerillas to fight or obtain supplies. The fact that they were badly run, ill supplied and with no proper sanitation, is what makes them notorious. The Nazi vision was of prison camps which were ill supplied and where prisoners had to undertake forced labour - but they were not called prison camps as that would have meant processing all the inmates through the courts.
This year was supposed to be one of Lib Dem revival. But apart from adding 45 councillors in May across the UK, they dropped to 1 member in Wales Assembly and 1 in the London Assembly. Barely hanging on. In Scotland they stayed at 5 MSPs. Which is no progress.
The regional strength that they used to have in Cornwall now has no MPs. Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
The Scottish performance was the highlight of a set of results which otherwise ranged from the disappointing to the disastrous. If we are to believe that the Farron strategy of gunning for the soft Left is to work then we should be seeing much bigger gains in rounds of local elections taking place largely in Labour-voting council areas. And Wales was bloody awful.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
' We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1' Justin 124 said: 'An end to human decency and civilisation as we know it.Perhaps you are a member of the Arbeit Macht Frei wing of the Tory Party .'
David Herdson said:
' That's a disgraceful comment and says a great deal more about you and your perverted worldview than it does about politics.'
Not in the context of the comments at which it was directed.
snip.
.
re- Arbeit Macht frei - 'snip
Now do you understand why it's disgraceful to claim that the Conservative party has such a tendency, let alone that any individual might belong to it?
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
Do bugger off, you moron. The reaction of the Allies in 1944-5 at the discovery of the existence of the camps - of utter shock and incredulity - is historically beyond question. Why would the appearance of a trite phrase at the camps in 1940 imply a knowledge of their existence on the part of anyone in England? You are a revoltingly silly little man.
I suggest you take your own advice. There was nothing trite aboutthe phrase which was used from 1933 - not 1940. Methinks you do protest too much.
You will however find them performing advanced mental gymnastics after the little people have got it 'wrong', to explain why democracy isn't really about people voting for things.
"Populist" in this context means "perversely pretending to think that 52% is more than 48%."
What really upsets the remoaners is that they were defeated by the 'wrong' sort of people.
The remoaners are having the same experience that the French and Russian aristocracies had in 1789 and 1917.
More leaver whinging. It's hilarious.
A note for you:
You won
Sorry, but it seems like you haven't noticed.
We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1
I can see your general point ie the UK ou
Abortion, yes I would criminalise again. If you accept that it is killing a very weak and vulnerable individual then there can be no compromise on that. Murder is murder.
Criminalising Homosexuality. That would be wrong. It was only criminalised in response to a Daily Mail like media hoohah in the late 19th century - a time where the state was just beginning to meddle in social affairs in the modern sense and gave a certain type of bullyboy policeman scope to ruin countless lives. Gay Marriage is going too far the other way but I didnt have a problem with civil parterships other than that siblings were and are discriminated against.
I don't think abortion or homosexuality will ever be recriminalised. However there may well be scope for raising the time limit an maybe even reversing gay marriage if it ends up being forced on churches and other religious places of worship. Interesting a recently poll showed the under 16s are more socially conservative than all generations above them other than pensioners!
Personally I don't think criminalising women who have abortions is feasible as there is too much doubt about mental state etc. other than perhaps very late abortions - criminalising those who perform them and profit from it is another matter entirely.
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
So were three former Labour MPs - Mosley, Beckett and Forgan.
And of course ex-Liberal leader Lloyd George spoke admiringly of Hitler and on a visit to Germany in 1936 (?) was photographed giving the Nazi salute.
No party is clean when it comes to Fascism in the 1930s.
PS - a concentration camp, as put into practice by Salisbury's government (in practice the South African government, but that's another story) were as the name implies, merely designed to 'concentrate' a group of people in one place - in this case the non-combatants among the Boers to make it harder for the guerillas to fight or obtain supplies. The fact that they were badly run, ill supplied and with no proper sanitation, is what makes them notorious. The Nazi vision was of prison camps which were ill supplied and where prisoners had to undertake forced labour - but they were not called prison camps as that would have meant processing all the inmates through the courts.
Mosley had also been a Tory MP. John Hamilton Mackie was another Tory MP with strong fascist sympathies.
I see the latest French presidential poll has Marine Le Pen leading the first round even if Juppe is UMP candidate once Macron (who has left the cabinet to pursue a centrist candidacy) is included.
For example, in a race including Juppe and Macron Le Pen is on 28.5%, Juppe 25%, Macron on 15%, Melenchon on 11.5% and Hollande on 11%. If Sarkozy is UMP candidate rather than Juppe, Le Pen is on 27%, Sarkozy on 22%, Macron on 18%, Melenchon and Hollande on 12%. Hollande also looks likely to come in 5th, behind even the Left Party's candidate Melenchon
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
So were three former Labour MPs - Mosley, Beckett and Forgan.
And of course ex-Liberal leader Lloyd George spoke admiringly of Hitler and on a visit to Germany in 1936 (?) was photographed giving the Nazi salute.
No party is clean when it comes to Fascism in the 1930s.
PS - a concentration camp, as put into practice by Salisbury's government (in practice the South African government, but that's another story) were as the name implies, merely designed to 'concentrate' a group of people in one place - in this case the non-combatants among the Boers to make it harder for the guerillas to fight or obtain supplies. The fact that they were badly run, ill supplied and with no proper sanitation, is what makes them notorious. The Nazi vision was of prison camps which were ill supplied and where prisoners had to undertake forced labour - but they were not called prison camps as that would have meant processing all the inmates through the courts.
Mosley had also been a Tory MP. John Hamilton Mackie was another Tory MP with strong fascist sympathies.
Yes, he hopped parties as often as he hopped beds (well, almost as often)!
I was going to add, he wasn't a minister under the Tories or spoken of as a future leader - but in fairness his age probably had quite a lot to do with that.
You will however find them performing advanced mental gymnastics after the little people have got it 'wrong', to explain why democracy isn't really about people voting for things.
"Populist" in this context means "perversely pretending to think that 52% is more than 48%."
What really upsets the remoaners is that they were defeated by the 'wrong' sort of people.
The remoaners are having the same experience that the French and Russian aristocracies had in 1789 and 1917.
More leaver whinging. It's hilarious.
A note for you:
You won
Sorry, but it seems like you haven't noticed.
We won Brexit, but that is just the first battle to win the war to roll back and reverse not just Blairs changes but Wilsons as well. I want to see everything the likes of Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and Tony Crosland stood for and fought for reduced to rubble.
In short, I want the state rolled back to the size it was prior to World War 1
I can see your general point ie the UK ou
Abortion, yes I would criminalise again. If you accept that it is killing a very weak and vulnerable individual then there can be no compromise on that. Murder is murder.
Criminalising Homosexuality. That would be wrong. It was only criminalised in response to a Daily Mail like media hoohah in the late 19th century - a time where the state was just beginning to meddle in social affairs in the modern sense and gave a certain type of bullyboy policeman scope to ruin countless lives. Gay Marriage is going too far the other way but I didnt have a problem with civil parterships other than that siblings were and are discriminated against.
I don't think abortion or homosexuality will ever be recriminalised. However there may well be scope for raising the time limit an maybe even reversing gay marriage if it ends up being forced on churches and other religious places of worship. Interesting a recently poll showed the under 16s are more socially conservative than all generations above them other than pensioners!
Personally I don't think criminalising women who have abortions is feasible as there is too much doubt about mental state etc. other than perhaps very late abortions - criminalising those who perform them and profit from it is another matter entirely.
To discuss a Liberal Democrat revival we need to define what we mean by revival. If it means no longer deteriorating or growth of any sort then two indicators show revival. #1 Party membership. Massively increased since polling day 2015. #2 the total of Principal Local Aurhority councillors which appears to have flatlined and is now ticking up. But that it. No other indicator is showing revival. Indeed London and Wales in May showed significant fall backs even a year after coalition. Of course we'll have Witney soon enough. If revival really is taking place moving into second place with mid or upper tennis % should be perfectly doable. There's a reasonable Green and Labour vote to squeeze and.a slightly above average Remain vote.
I see the latest French presidential poll has Marine Le Pen leading the first round even if Juppe is UMP candidate once Macron (who has left the cabinet to pursue a centrist candidacy) is included.
For example, in a race including Juppe and Macron Le Pen is on 28.5%, Juppe 25%, Macron on 15%, Melenchon on 11.5% and Hollande on 11%. If Sarkozy is UMP candidate rather than Juppe, Le Pen is on 27%, Sarkozy on 22%, Macron on 18%, Melenchon and Hollande on 12%.
If le Pen and Trump both win - or even come close - then notwithstanding his utter uselessness we will have to revise the conventional wisdom that Corbyn can't win while humans breathe air. Something very ugly is brewing across the world and the likes of Corbyn, Trump, le Pen, Hofer and to a lesser extent* Tsipras are benefiting from it.
Mind you, if the established parties can only put up candidates of the quality of Clinton, Sarkozy/Juppe, that random idiot who came third in Austria and whose name I have forgotten and Papandreou, it's not that surprising that they're struggling.
*in the sense that he's less a beneficiary of whatever these guys are surfing and more a product of local problems in Greece.
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
So were three former Labour MPs - Mosley, Beckett and Forgan.
And of course ex-Liberal leader Lloyd George spoke admiringly of Hitler and on a visit to Germany in 1936 (?) was photographed giving the Nazi salute.
No party is clean when it comes to Fascism in the 1930s.
PS - a concentration camp, as put into practice by Salisbury's government (in practice the South African government, but that's another story) were as the name implies, merely designed to 'concentrate' a group of people in one place - in this case the non-combatants among the Boers to make it harder for the guerillas to fight or obtain supplies. The fact that they were badly run, ill supplied and with no proper sanitation, is what makes them notorious. The Nazi vision was of prison camps which were ill supplied and where prisoners had to undertake forced labour - but they were not called prison camps as that would have meant processing all the inmates through the courts.
Apparently in the early days most who went in - mainly trade unionists lefties etc came out a year or two later having been 're-educated' and they apparently had some popular support, which was used to propaganda effect when they became rather more murderous
I see the latest French presidential poll has Marine Le Pen leading the first round even if Juppe is UMP candidate once Macron (who has left the cabinet to pursue a centrist candidacy) is included.
For example, in a race including Juppe and Macron Le Pen is on 28.5%, Juppe 25%, Macron on 15%, Melenchon on 11.5% and Hollande on 11%. If Sarkozy is UMP candidate rather than Juppe, Le Pen is on 27%, Sarkozy on 22%, Macron on 18%, Melenchon and Hollande on 12%.
If le Pen and Trump both win - or even come close - then notwithstanding his utter uselessness we will have to revise the conventional wisdom that Corbyn can't win while humans breathe air. Something very ugly is brewing across the world and the likes of Corbyn, Trump, le Pen, Hofer and to a lesser extent* Tsipras are benefiting from it.
Mind you, if the established parties can only put up candidates of the quality of Clinton, Sarkozy/Juppe, that random idiot who came third in Austria and whose name I have forgotten and Papandreou, it's not that surprising that they're struggling.
*in the sense that he's less a beneficiary of whatever these guys are surfing and more a product of local problems in Greece.
Indeed, though Corbyn is really closer to Sanders and Melenchon than Le Pen and Trump who are closer to UKIP. Clearly the mainstream centre right and centre left and especially the European centre left are losing more and more votes every day it seems to populists on the right campaigning against immigration and on the left campaigning against austerity.
You are also right that with the establishment parties continuing to rehash the same names and families (you can add the Bushes for the GOP too) it is easy for radical populists to present themselves as the only alternatives for change.
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Now do you understand why it's disgraceful to claim that the Conservative party has such a tendency, let alone that any individual might belong to it?
Not at all - the term had already appeared at concentration camps by the time Rothermere and others were advocating a deal with Hitler. A Tory MP - Archibald Ramsay - was actually locked up in 1940 for his fascist sympathies.
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Recorded crime went up, actual crime went down. So much for massaging the figures...
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Recorded crime went up, actual crime went down. So much for massaging the figures...
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
I was referring to the trend falls in the police crime figures - which have been going down for years. Yes, there is a bump at the moment. "improved crime recording practices and processes" - sounds like someone has realised the implications of actually signing off on false stats.
Mr. Sandpit, my stake on this is smaller. I'm still at the pre-wealthy phase of the Four Yorkshiremen
It's all relative. A pint in my local is £9 now, thanks to the devaluation of Sterling. So if I watch at home rather than in the pub, and don't have two pints and a taxi, there's the betting money.
£9! Blimey. Are you hobnobbing with Roger in Monte Carlo or somewhere?
It could be worse. Singapore is about £12 a pint now, for those lucky enough to be there watching the F1 this weekend. The way I think of it is that I'm not paying 40% in income tax, so it the beer is more expensive then so be it. The taxi home is much cheaper here, so it balances out.
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Recorded crime went up, actual crime went down. So much for massaging the figures...
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
I was referring to the trend falls in the police crime figures - which have been going down for years. Yes, there is a bump at the moment. "improved crime recording practices and processes" - sounds like someone has realised the implications of actually signing off on false stats.
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Recorded crime went up, actual crime went down. So much for massaging the figures...
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
I was referring to the trend falls in the police crime figures - which have been going down for years. Yes, there is a bump at the moment. "improved crime recording practices and processes" - sounds like someone has realised the implications of actually signing off on false stats.
Yeah, it looks like the fall in recorded crime is also due to a fall in criminal behaviour.
The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
Mr. Sandpit, my stake on this is smaller. I'm still at the pre-wealthy phase of the Four Yorkshiremen
It's all relative. A pint in my local is £9 now, thanks to the devaluation of Sterling. So if I watch at home rather than in the pub, and don't have two pints and a taxi, there's the betting money.
£9! Blimey. Are you hobnobbing with Roger in Monte Carlo or somewhere?
It could be worse. Singapore is about £12 a pint now, for those lucky enough to be there watching the F1 this weekend. The way I think of it is that I'm not paying 40% in income tax, so it the beer is more expensive then so be it. The taxi home is much cheaper here, so it balances out.
Small beer to you then!
Different places have different prices for different things. It,s not surprising that a Muslim country taxes highly things like alcohol. Petrol is 25p a litre though!
The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
OK, but you sounded so sure when you said "The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking"..." when you in fact meant "we can't actually be sure".
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
In Cornwall at least it is the Conservative ( and UKIP ) vote that is as soft as butter , with an almost complete clean sweep of Lib Dem victories this year and giving the Lib Dems an outside chance of outright control next May despite the substantial block of Independents . Quite why the voters of Cornwall have such remorse at voting in the Conservatives in 2015 is hard to say .
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
In Cornwall at least it is the Conservative ( and UKIP ) vote that is as soft as butter , with an almost complete clean sweep of Lib Dem victories this year and giving the Lib Dems an outside chance of outright control next May despite the substantial block of Independents . Quite why the voters of Cornwall have such remorse at voting in the Conservatives in 2015 is hard to say .
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Recorded crime went up, actual crime went down. So much for massaging the figures...
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
I was referring to the trend falls in the police crime figures - which have been going down for years. Yes, there is a bump at the moment. "improved crime recording practices and processes" - sounds like someone has realised the implications of actually signing off on false stats.
Yeah, it looks like the fall in recorded crime is also due to a fall in criminal behaviour.
The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
The reporting rate for murder is very high and difficult to fudge though! Statistics on verbal abuse 'crime' are much more difficult to collect and open to much more interpretation.
The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
OK, but you sounded so sure when you said "The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking"..." when you in fact meant "we can't actually be sure".
The "gun decking" has been used to massage figures down. In the past it was used to massage figures up. The result is that serious attempts at crime surveys try to use non-police stats. Think about what that means in terms of trust.
The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
OK, but you sounded so sure when you said "The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking"..." when you in fact meant "we can't actually be sure".
The "gun decking" has been used to massage figures down. In the past it was used to massage figures up. The result is that serious attempts at crime surveys try to use non-police stats. Think about what that means in terms of trust.
I am quite certain the stats have been fiddled. :-)
Well, following Brexit, presumably prices will rise as Eastern European immigrants will no longer be competing with indigenous prostitutes.
SeanT can probably tell us more.
We should not forget that it was the Thatcher government that ( by accident ) introduced regulations that meant women would lose benefits if they did not become prostitutes .
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
thats good for hilary i would have thought? early voters are normally dems and african american. the birther stuff and msm calling trump a racist, violent liar also helps her
What's interesting is Republican turnout up 234% but Dem is up over 300%! Trump is certainly driving turnout higher.
Do you have a linky for that?
I would be concerned about the unaffiliated. If they are breaking for Trump (as polls have shown) then it is not good news for Clinton.
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
US early voting rate has increased over the years but stabilised between 08 and 12 at around 30 percent. Don't know NC trends but the interesting thing from the graph for 2012 is that while the Dems voted early in the end the Pubs votes more often when it came to postal votes.
Don't know what it all means but it is fascinating.
This year was supposed to be one of Lib Dem revival. But apart from adding 45 councillors in May across the UK, they dropped to 1 member in Wales Assembly and 1 in the London Assembly. Barely hanging on. In Scotland they stayed at 5 MSPs. Which is no progress.
The regional strength that they used to have in Cornwall now has no MPs. Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
The Scottish performance was the highlight of a set of results which otherwise ranged from the disappointing to the disastrous. If we are to believe that the Farron strategy of gunning for the soft Left is to work then we should be seeing much bigger gains in rounds of local elections taking place largely in Labour-voting council areas. And Wales was bloody awful.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
The constituency results for the LibDems in Scotland were actually very impressive. They had previously won two constituency seats (Orkney... and... errr... Shetland). They held both those with big increases in their share:
Orkney 67.4% +31.6% Shetland 67.7% +19.9%
(Result that - I would suggest - make it unlikely that the parliamentary constituency of O&S will be lost in 2020.)
They also gained: North East Fife 43.8% +15.4% Edinburgh Western 41.9% +14.1%
Both the last two map extremely well onto the NE Fife and Edinburgh West parliamentary constituencies, although obviously the boundary review will affect that somewhat. The previous Holyrood elections were an extremely close analog to the 2015 elections, so I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that - if the boundary commission leaves NE Fife and Edinburgh West relatively alone - then the LDs stand a good chance of making gains in Scotland. (Of these two, the latter is almost exactly the right size already, although NE Fife will need to gain voters, or be split up, so that makes it a much harder proposition).
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
This does look like the Democrat ground game working well. NC may be an exception though because of the publicity of how the state government was hindering Democrat postal votes.
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
This does look like the Democrat ground game working well. NC may be an exception though because of the publicity of how the state government was hindering Democrat postal votes.
Is the y-axis thousands? Or are we actually talking about 500 votes here?
This year was supposed to be one of Lib Dem revival. But apart from adding 45 councillors in May across the UK, they dropped to 1 member in Wales Assembly and 1 in the London Assembly. Barely hanging on. In Scotland they stayed at 5 MSPs. Which is no progress.
The regional strength that they used to have in Cornwall now has no MPs. Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
The Scottish performance was the highlight of a set of results which otherwise ranged from the disappointing to the disastrous. If we are to believe that the Farron strategy of gunning for the soft Left is to work then we should be seeing much bigger gains in rounds of local elections taking place largely in Labour-voting council areas. And Wales was bloody awful.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
The constituency results for the LibDems in Scotland were actually very impressive. They had previously won two constituency seats (Orkney... and... errr... Shetland). They held both those with big increases in their share:
Orkney 67.4% +31.6% Shetland 67.7% +19.9%
(Result that - I would suggest - make it unlikely that the parliamentary constituency of O&S will be lost in 2020.)
They also gained: North East Fife 43.8% +15.4% Edinburgh Western 41.9% +14.1%
Both the last two map extremely well onto the NE Fife and Edinburgh West parliamentary constituencies, although obviously the boundary review will affect that somewhat. The previous Holyrood elections were an extremely close analog to the 2015 elections, so I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that - if the boundary commission leaves NE Fife and Edinburgh West relatively alone - then the LDs stand a good chance of making gains in Scotland. (Of these two, the latter is almost exactly the right size already, although NE Fife will need to gain voters, or be split up, so that makes it a much harder proposition).
The Lib Dem camapign for Holyrood Edinburgh West was run on an anti Michelle Thompson ticket. They won't be able to run that trick again although they have marked themselves out as the obvious anti-SNP Unionist vote next hit out.
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
In Cornwall at least it is the Conservative ( and UKIP ) vote that is as soft as butter , with an almost complete clean sweep of Lib Dem victories this year and giving the Lib Dems an outside chance of outright control next May despite the substantial block of Independents . Quite why the voters of Cornwall have such remorse at voting in the Conservatives in 2015 is hard to say .
Local council elections ≠ Parliamentary elections
Obviously not.
But if the LibDems do get 15-18% in local elections in the next four years, it will (a) refresh their activist base; (b) create a narrative of them making gains; and (c) 'train' people into believing that voting LD is not the end of the world.
I'd say it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a recovery.
(I count a recovery as 10-14 seats on 10-14% vote share. Other may have different definitions.)
This year was supposed to be one of Lib Dem revival. But apart from adding 45 councillors in May across the UK, they dropped to 1 member in Wales Assembly and 1 in the London Assembly. Barely hanging on. In Scotland they stayed at 5 MSPs. Which is no progress.
The regional strength that they used to have in Cornwall now has no MPs. Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
The Scottish performance was the highlight of a set of results which otherwise ranged from the disappointing to the disastrous. If we are to believe that the Farron strategy of gunning for the soft Left is to work then we should be seeing much bigger gains in rounds of local elections taking place largely in Labour-voting council areas. And Wales was bloody awful.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
The constituency results for the LibDems in Scotland were actually very impressive. They had previously won two constituency seats (Orkney... and... errr... Shetland). They held both those with big increases in their share:
Orkney 67.4% +31.6% Shetland 67.7% +19.9%
(Result that - I would suggest - make it unlikely that the parliamentary constituency of O&S will be lost in 2020.)
They also gained: North East Fife 43.8% +15.4% Edinburgh Western 41.9% +14.1%
Both the last two map extremely well onto the NE Fife and Edinburgh West parliamentary constituencies, although obviously the boundary review will affect that somewhat. The previous Holyrood elections were an extremely close analog to the 2015 elections, so I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that - if the boundary commission leaves NE Fife and Edinburgh West relatively alone - then the LDs stand a good chance of making gains in Scotland. (Of these two, the latter is almost exactly the right size already, although NE Fife will need to gain voters, or be split up, so that makes it a much harder proposition).
The Lib Dem camapign for Holyrood Edinburgh West was run on an anti Michelle Thompson ticket. They won't be able to run that trick again although they have marked themselves out as the obvious anti-SNP Unionist vote next hit out.
The SNP are likely to reinstate her; could she be the candidate next time out?
When I was on a Police Authority the quarterly ' Hate Crime ' figures were always presented as good news on Performance. When they went up it was because of increased reporting due to awareness and increased confidence in the force amongst " the X community '. When they went down it was good news as it showed the force was cutting crime. The same ACPO rank officer would present the quarterly figures making completely different arguments according to taste without a hint of shame.
The recent falls in crime were not actually due to falls in ....er... criminal behaviour. But were largely due to "gun decking" - the word went out in the police service that a fall in crime was the "politic" thing to do. So alot of minor stuff got shifted to the we-will-ignore-that column.
Recorded crime went up, actual crime went down. So much for massaging the figures...
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
I was referring to the trend falls in the police crime figures - which have been going down for years. Yes, there is a bump at the moment. "improved crime recording practices and processes" - sounds like someone has realised the implications of actually signing off on false stats.
Yeah, it looks like the fall in recorded crime is also due to a fall in criminal behaviour.
I suspect that the fall in crime is in part due to an ageing population, and in part due to less alcohol being drunk (particularly by the young). Other demographic changes such as lower unemployment and the change in ethnicity of the youth population too.
This year was supposed to be one of Lib Dem revival. But apart from adding 45 councillors in May across the UK, they dropped to 1 member in Wales Assembly and 1 in the London Assembly. Barely hanging on. In Scotland they stayed at 5 MSPs. Which is no progress.
The regional strength that they used to have in Cornwall now has no MPs. Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
The Scottish performance was the highlight of a set of results which otherwise ranged from the disappointing to the disastrous. If we are to believe that the Farron strategy of gunning for the soft Left is to work then we should be seeing much bigger gains in rounds of local elections taking place largely in Labour-voting council areas. And Wales was bloody awful.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
The constituency results for the LibDems in Scotland were actually very impressive. They had previously won two constituency seats (Orkney... and... errr... Shetland). They held both those with big increases in their share:
Orkney 67.4% +31.6% Shetland 67.7% +19.9%
(Result that - I would suggest - make it unlikely that the parliamentary constituency of O&S will be lost in 2020.)
They also gained: North East Fife 43.8% +15.4% Edinburgh Western 41.9% +14.1%
Both the last two map extremely well onto the NE Fife and Edinburgh West parliamentary constituencies, although obviously the boundary review will affect that somewhat. The previous Holyrood elections were an extremely close analog to the 2015 elections, so I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that - if the boundary commission leaves NE Fife and Edinburgh West relatively alone - then the LDs stand a good chance of making gains in Scotland. (Of these two, the latter is almost exactly the right size already, although NE Fife will need to gain voters, or be split up, so that makes it a much harder proposition).
The Lib Dem camapign for Holyrood Edinburgh West was run on an anti Michelle Thompson ticket. They won't be able to run that trick again although they have marked themselves out as the obvious anti-SNP Unionist vote next hit out.
Michelle Thompson was not the SNP Holyrood candidate , she may well be the SNP Parliamentary candidate at the next GE
This year was supposed to be one of Lib Dem revival. But apart from adding 45 councillors in May across the UK, they dropped to 1 member in Wales Assembly and 1 in the London Assembly. Barely hanging on. In Scotland they stayed at 5 MSPs. Which is no progress.
The regional strength that they used to have in Cornwall now has no MPs. Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
The Scottish performance was the highlight of a set of results which otherwise ranged from the disappointing to the disastrous. If we are to believe that the Farron strategy of gunning for the soft Left is to work then we should be seeing much bigger gains in rounds of local elections taking place largely in Labour-voting council areas. And Wales was bloody awful.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
The constituency results for the LibDems in Scotland were actually very impressive. They had previously won two constituency seats (Orkney... and... errr... Shetland). They held both those with big increases in their share:
Orkney 67.4% +31.6% Shetland 67.7% +19.9%
(Result that - I would suggest - make it unlikely that the parliamentary constituency of O&S will be lost in 2020.)
They also gained: North East Fife 43.8% +15.4% Edinburgh Western 41.9% +14.1%
to suggest that - if the boundary commission leaves NE Fife and Edinburgh West relatively alone - then the LDs stand a good chance of making gains in Scotland. (Of these two, the latter is almost exactly the right size already, although NE Fife will need to gain voters, or be split up, so that makes it a much harder proposition).
The Lib Dem camapign for Holyrood Edinburgh West was run on an anti Michelle Thompson ticket. They won't be able to run that trick again although they have marked themselves out as the obvious anti-SNP Unionist vote next hit out.
The SNP are likely to reinstate her; could she be the candidate next time out?
Not if they wanted to win the seat in my opinion.
difference there is the turnout difference, 64% vs 76% to consider as well.
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
This does look like the Democrat ground game working well. NC may be an exception though because of the publicity of how the state government was hindering Democrat postal votes.
Is the y-axis thousands? Or are we actually talking about 500 votes here?
600 per day, about 3 x the 2012 rate. Whether this is the same voters voting earlier and it will tail off or a very effective ground game is not yet certain.
I think it unlikely to be Trumpites as the number of Republican and undeclared are not so far ahead of last time.
< The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
Legalise posession and sale (under licence to over 18s) of all illegal drugs and impose an excise duty as high as possible without encouraging bootlegging, then introduce a new imprisonable offence of causing a nuisance or hazard while under the influence of specific drugs.
Then crime will collapse, lots of police and associated things like probation officers cwn be made redundant, saving a fortune and the treasury will get extra taxes from the excise duties.
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Wacky @NYTimesDowd, who hardly knows me, makes up things that I never said for her boring interviews and column. A neurotic dope!
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
This does look like the Democrat ground game working well. NC may be an exception though because of the publicity of how the state government was hindering Democrat postal votes.
Is the y-axis thousands? Or are we actually talking about 500 votes here?
600 per day, about 3 x the 2012 rate. Whether this is the same voters voting earlier and it will tail off or a very effective ground game is not yet certain.
I think it unlikely to be Trumpites as the number of Republican and undeclared are not so far ahead of last time.
Would be interesting to put the day of the week on there rather than number of days until election for both 2012 and 16.
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
In Cornwall at least it is the Conservative ( and UKIP ) vote that is as soft as butter , with an almost complete clean sweep of Lib Dem victories this year and giving the Lib Dems an outside chance of outright control next May despite the substantial block of Independents . Quite why the voters of Cornwall have such remorse at voting in the Conservatives in 2015 is hard to say .
Maybe it's the fact that the Tories have pied-pipered them into voting away all the EU grants that the West Country benefits from?
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
I suspect that the fall in crime is in part due to an ageing population, and in part due to less alcohol being drunk (particularly by the young). Other demographic changes such as lower unemployment and the change in ethnicity of the youth population too.
Prison governors love TVs in their guests' cells. Pacifies the inmates - reduces them to a square-eyed and supine zombie state.
When I look around me in towns and cities, I wonder whether the smaller screen has just neutralised our younger generation in much the same way. They all seem glued to their phones and tablets. Bit less hanging round on street corners "cos there's nothing to do, innit?" when they're all addicted to their WhatsApp and they've got Angry Birds* to throw and selfies to filter.
* (Is that still a thing? I don't think they play Snake anymore.)
< The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
Legalise posession and sale (under licence to over 18s) of all illegal drugs and impose an excise duty as high as possible without encouraging bootlegging, then introduce a new imprisonable offence of causing a nuisance or hazard while under the influence of specific drugs.
Then crime will collapse, lots of police and associated things like probation officers cwn be made redundant, saving a fortune and the treasury will get extra taxes from the excise duties.
With you on that, current Western drugs policy is a mess. Choose either the Portugal/Amsterdam approach of decriminalisation, or the Thailand/Singapore/Dubai approach of zero tolerance.
That way at least everyone knows where they stand, the current mishmash doesn't help anyone except the police, who use possession as an excuse to detain someone for other things/to have a word with them/as leverage.
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
It is posts like this that make it worth wading thru Paul_Bedfordshire's onanism. Thank you, sir. Is this dems voting early to defeat Trump, the disaffected voting early to defeat Clinton, or just wider acceptance of postal votes? Thoughts?
US early voting rate has increased over the years but stabilised between 08 and 12 at around 30 percent. Don't know NC trends but the interesting thing from the graph for 2012 is that while the Dems voted early in the end the Pubs votes more often when it came to postal votes.
Don't know what it all means but it is fascinating.
Definitely. This is definitely worth watching. Is there a site that collates them nationally?
< The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
Legalise posession and sale (under licence to over 18s) of all illegal drugs and impose an excise duty as high as possible without encouraging bootlegging, then introduce a new imprisonable offence of causing a nuisance or hazard while under the influence of specific drugs.
Then crime will collapse, lots of police and associated things like probation officers cwn be made redundant, saving a fortune and the treasury will get extra taxes from the excise duties.
With you on that, current Western drugs policy is a mess. Choose either the Portugal/Amsterdam approach of decriminalisation, or the Thailand/Singapore/Dubai approach of zero tolerance.
That way at least everyone knows where they stand, the current mishmash doesn't help anyone except the police, who use possession as an excuse to detain someone for other things/to have a word with them/as leverage.
Zero tolerance wouldnt work, the sort of authoritarian police state needed to enforce it would be unacceptable - and now we are sovereign again - unelectable
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
thats good for hilary i would have thought? early voters are normally dems and african american. the birther stuff and msm calling trump a racist, violent liar also helps her
What's interesting is Republican turnout up 234% but Dem is up over 300%! Trump is certainly driving turnout higher.
Do you have a linky for that?
I would be concerned about the unaffiliated. If they are breaking for Trump (as polls have shown) then it is not good news for Clinton.
I also think the unaffiliated are breaking for Trump, but when you say "as polls have shown", which polls are you referring to?
Seems like Trump guessed the new password on his Twitter account. Last few tweets have been the real Donald.
Someone should acquaint him with Johann Hari. It seems he's accusing a NY Times journalist of the same kind of thing.
I think Jayston Blair would be enough for the NYT to blush over still!
What is the egregious liar, forger and Wikipedia addict doing these days, anyway?
His website now redirects to the his 2015 opus he's trying to flog "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs". Cover recommendations from Noam Chomsky, Elton John, Naomi Klein, Stephen Fry and Glenn Greenwald. (I reckon I'd tend to avoid a book endorsed by one of those names, and certainly one that had achieved the double, but all five is a bit far for me to stomach!)
Don't recall the book bursting into the best-sellers list. Suspect if it did then it would be being splashed all over his website.
He has another book in the works, according to his Twitter.
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
Their Europhilia will see the LibDems making no progress at all in the South West.
I suspect that the fall in crime is in part due to an ageing population, and in part due to less alcohol being drunk (particularly by the young). Other demographic changes such as lower unemployment and the change in ethnicity of the youth population too.
Prison governors love TVs in their guests' cells. Pacifies the inmates - reduces them to a square-eyed and supine zombie state.
When I look around me in towns and cities, I wonder whether the smaller screen has just neutralised our younger generation in much the same way. They all seem glued to their phones and tablets. Bit less hanging round on street corners "cos there's nothing to do, innit?" when they're all addicted to their WhatsApp and they've got Angry Birds* to throw and selfies to filter.
* (Is that still a thing? I don't think they play Snake anymore.)
I think that you are right.
There is evidence that the biggest cause for the reduction in teenage smoking is smartphones. Something better to do with the hands and money of teenagers, probably part of the reduction in teen pregnancies too. Sexting rather than sex!
< The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
Legalise posession and sale (under licence to over 18s) of all illegal drugs and impose an excise duty as high as possible without encouraging bootlegging, then introduce a new imprisonable offence of causing a nuisance or hazard while under the influence of specific drugs.
Then crime will collapse, lots of police and associated things like probation officers cwn be made redundant, saving a fortune and the treasury will get extra taxes from the excise duties.
With you on that, current Western drugs policy is a mess. Choose either the Portugal/Amsterdam approach of decriminalisation, or the Thailand/Singapore/Dubai approach of zero tolerance.
That way at least everyone knows where they stand, the current mishmash doesn't help anyone except the police, who use possession as an excuse to detain someone for other things/to have a word with them/as leverage.
Zero tolerance wouldnt work, the sort of authoritarian police state needed to enforce it would be unacceptable - and now we are sovereign again - unelectable
Agreed. Zero tolerance works in a small place with strongly policed communities. For the UK, US and Europe the legalisation and taxation option is preferable on a whole number of levels.
< The real point is that due to the games that have been played over the years with the reporting and the stats, we can't be sure of much. The figures for serious crimes (murder etc) have definitely fallen. On the lower level - you can make an argument....
Legalise posession and sale (under licence to over 18s) of all illegal drugs and impose an excise duty as high as possible without encouraging bootlegging, then introduce a new imprisonable offence of causing a nuisance or hazard while under the influence of specific drugs.
Then crime will collapse, lots of police and associated things like probation officers cwn be made redundant, saving a fortune and the treasury will get extra taxes from the excise duties.
With you on that, current Western drugs policy is a mess. Choose either the Portugal/Amsterdam approach of decriminalisation, or the Thailand/Singapore/Dubai approach of zero tolerance.
That way at least everyone knows where they stand, the current mishmash doesn't help anyone except the police, who use possession as an excuse to detain someone for other things/to have a word with them/as leverage.
Zero tolerance wouldnt work, the sort of authoritarian police state needed to enforce it would be unacceptable - and now we are sovereign again - unelectable
If you really believe " we are now Soveriegn again " in a way we weren't on 22nd of June can I float the following compromise ? #1 We never invoke A50. #2 We all promise never to mention our EU membership again. We all just pretend ?
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
thats good for hilary i would have thought? early voters are normally dems and african american. the birther stuff and msm calling trump a racist, violent liar also helps her
What's interesting is Republican turnout up 234% but Dem is up over 300%! Trump is certainly driving turnout higher.
Do you have a linky for that?
I would be concerned about the unaffiliated. If they are breaking for Trump (as polls have shown) then it is not good news for Clinton.
They broke for Romney 55/45 nationally, didn't do Obama any harm
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
Their Europhilia will see the LibDems making no progress at all in the South West.
I doubt that statement. Wait until the end of CAP hits.
Most Parliamentary seats are won on less than 48% of the vote too.
If we had AV, and everyone were as obsessed with Europe as the frothers, then you might have a point.
Bad, bad week for Hilary timed with the start of early voting in North Carolina so not good news for Hilary. Two interesting trends. Early voting rates massively higher than last election, Dem votes returning at much higher rate.
thats good for hilary i would have thought? early voters are normally dems and african american. the birther stuff and msm calling trump a racist, violent liar also helps her
What's interesting is Republican turnout up 234% but Dem is up over 300%! Trump is certainly driving turnout higher.
Do you have a linky for that?
I would be concerned about the unaffiliated. If they are breaking for Trump (as polls have shown) then it is not good news for Clinton.
They broke for Romney 55/45 nationally, didn't do him any harm
CNN had him leading 49/29 nationally among independents before the recent surge.
I suspect that the fall in crime is in part due to an ageing population, and in part due to less alcohol being drunk (particularly by the young). Other demographic changes such as lower unemployment and the change in ethnicity of the youth population too.
Prison governors love TVs in their guests' cells. Pacifies the inmates - reduces them to a square-eyed and supine zombie state.
When I look around me in towns and cities, I wonder whether the smaller screen has just neutralised our younger generation in much the same way. They all seem glued to their phones and tablets. Bit less hanging round on street corners "cos there's nothing to do, innit?" when they're all addicted to their WhatsApp and they've got Angry Birds* to throw and selfies to filter.
* (Is that still a thing? I don't think they play Snake anymore.)
Yes phones are definitely responsible for a lot of the credit. Combined with the rise and rise of CCTV to quickly identify and prosecute offenders. Technology has mollified the bored and taken out serial offenders.
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump Wacky @NYTimesDowd, who hardly knows me, makes up things that I never said for her boring interviews and column. A neurotic dope!
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
Their Europhilia will see the LibDems making no progress at all in the South West.
I doubt that statement. Wait until the end of CAP hits.
Most Parliamentary seats are won on less than 48% of the vote too.
If we had AV, and everyone were as obsessed with Europe as the frothers, then you might have a point.
What happened after New Zealand ended subsidies for their farmers?
Seems like Trump guessed the new password on his Twitter account. Last few tweets have been the real Donald.
Someone should acquaint him with Johann Hari. It seems he's accusing a NY Times journalist of the same kind of thing.
I think Jayston Blair would be enough for the NYT to blush over still!
What is the egregious liar, forger and Wikipedia addict doing these days, anyway?
Anyhow, I do think your review of the lad is a trifle unfair, my good doctor. David Rose is a splendid writer of ethnic psychological horror. How can anyone who has read it forget How my little brother learned to be a whore ever forget just how disturbing it is, not least for its racial connotations?
The thing to note is in the US in person early voting is way more common than postal voting
So which are we looking at in this graph, and how can they be broken down by party at this stage- are they opened and counted as soon as they are received?
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
Their Europhilia will see the LibDems making no progress at all in the South West.
I doubt that statement. Wait until the end of CAP hits.
Most Parliamentary seats are won on less than 48% of the vote too.
If we had AV, and everyone were as obsessed with Europe as the frothers, then you might have a point.
I hope you know more about medicine than you do about farming! Lambs are currently making £80, up from £70 before Brexit. The farmers I am talking to in the SW are as happy as Larry on his holidays about Brexit....
The thing to note is in the US in person early voting is way more common than postal voting
So which are we looking at in this graph, and how can they be broken down by party at this stage- are they opened and counted as soon as they are received?
Mail in votes. There is some kind of verification as there are stats on spoiled ballots - at this stage people who send spoiled ballots get a new one sent out.
I now have a vision of the A50 notification written on vellum being carried on the relaunched Britannia ( by either Miranda Richardson or Theresa May dressed up as Elizabeth the First at Tilbury Docks ) across the channel in a flotilla of oligarchs superyachts. It will then be transfered to a Spitfire then dropped in a bouncing bomb along the River before crashing into the European Commission building.
Yet we will be hearing Lib Dem revival claims at their Conference. Delusional.
Saw tweet from Farron earlier saying West Country would be their revival...
Do the Lib Dems have an offer which will particularly and specifically appeal to the kinds of voters found in the West Country - something that will give them an offer that is inherently more attractive than that of any other party, amongst a large slice of the electorate and for a long period of time? In other words, can they do what the Conservatives have in most of the South, or Labour in the inner cities: command such a huge proportion of the total electorate that they can make most of the their seats virtually invulnerable, and continue to hold them by reduced majorities even when hit by huge swings? Well, what do we think?
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
Their Europhilia will see the LibDems making no progress at all in the South West.
I doubt that statement. Wait until the end of CAP hits.
Most Parliamentary seats are won on less than 48% of the vote too.
If we had AV, and everyone were as obsessed with Europe as the frothers, then you might have a point.
I hope you know more about medicine than you do about farming! Lambs are currently making £80, up from £70 before Brexit. The farmers I am talking to in the SW are as happy as Larry on his holidays about Brexit....
About 60% of British Lamb is exported to the EU.
The benefit that they are seeing is devaluation plus access to the single market. While devaluation is likely to continue, tha latter may well end. If you combine that with the end of restrictions on cheap imports of Australian and NZ lamb then their salad days may be coming to an end.
I now have a vision of the A50 notification written on vellum being carried on the relaunched Britannia ( by either Miranda Richardson or Theresa May dressed up as Elizabeth the First at Tilbury Docks ) across the channel in a flotilla of oligarchs superyachts. It will then be transfered to a Spitfire then dropped in a bouncing bomb along the River before crashing into the European Commission building.
I prefer the use of a numbering system for Boris Johnson's Telegraph columns. Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, Article 3.1, Article 3.1.1, Article 3.2 etc.
I now have a vision of the A50 notification written on vellum being carried on the relaunched Britannia ( by either Miranda Richardson or Theresa May dressed up as Elizabeth the First at Tilbury Docks ) across the channel in a flotilla of oligarchs superyachts. It will then be transfered to a Spitfire then dropped in a bouncing bomb along the River before crashing into the European Commission building.
Well, it wouldn't be in accordance with our constitutional requirements otherwise.
I now have a vision of the A50 notification written on vellum being carried on the relaunched Britannia ( by either Miranda Richardson or Theresa May dressed up as Elizabeth the First at Tilbury Docks ) across the channel in a flotilla of oligarchs superyachts. It will then be transfered to a Spitfire then dropped in a bouncing bomb along the River before crashing into the European Commission building.
Well, it wouldn't be in accordance with our constitutional requirements otherwise.
I now have a vision of the A50 notification written on vellum being carried on the relaunched Britannia ( by either Miranda Richardson or Theresa May dressed up as Elizabeth the First at Tilbury Docks ) across the channel in a flotilla of oligarchs superyachts. It will then be transfered to a Spitfire then dropped in a bouncing bomb along the River before crashing into the European Commission building.
I now have a vision of the A50 notification written on vellum being carried on the relaunched Britannia ( by either Miranda Richardson or Theresa May dressed up as Elizabeth the First at Tilbury Docks ) across the channel in a flotilla of oligarchs superyachts. It will then be transfered to a Spitfire then dropped in a bouncing bomb along the River before crashing into the European Commission building.
We'd have to have a whole batch of duplicates made up, since every true Brit knows that it is only the last bouncing bomb that actually breaches the target
Comments
1. Corbyn Labour is generally unpopular, but it generates a lot of enthusiasm from certain voter groups - including middle class progressives (the sort of people whose desertion to Labour and the Greens, in protest at the Coalition, caused the Lib Dems' left flank to fall off in the first place.) If Labour appeals to your instincts, then why would you desert it just because it is electorally hamstrung? At this stage, we must remember that the prospects of a Labour Government still look stellar relative to the completely non-existent chances of a Lib Dem one!
2. In any event. concentrating on stealing Labour votes is, on its own, a completely useless strategy for the Lib Dems. The key to a revival, if it is ever to come, lies in peeling the Yellow Tory vote back off the Conservatives. The point that I made in my previous post stands: why would anybody who voted Lib Dem in 2010, and then defected to the Tories in 2015, go back again to the yellows when (a) they have moved leftwards and (b) the risk is, vote Farron, get Corbyn (with Salmond as deputy PM and string puller in chief, and Caroline Lucas lobbying for a new economic strategy of zero growth and a phased return to living in Iron Age roundhouses?) I think that you also overestimate the salience of the Remain position. Most voters will have accepted the referendum result, and dying in a ditch fighting it is strictly a minority interest.
3. There is no reason to suppose that the Tory vote will collapse, provided that Theresa May herself does not attempt to subvert the referendum result and turbo-charges Ukip as a result. Whatever the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, there is nothing to suggest that she will make the astonishing error of trying to stop it from happening altogether. Absent that scenario, where else do the 37% of voters who backed David Cameron go at the next election? Nobody who stuck with the Tories in 2015 is liable to defect to hard right Ukip, hard left Labour, or to the Lib Dems for reasons articulated above. The Tories have nominal control (after boundary change) of most of the very short list of realistic Lib Dem targets for 2020, and the yellows themselves start on four seats. They will be doing well just to bring their representation back up to the total of eight seats that matches what they currently have. A large scale improvement in fortunes appears highly improbable.
https://twitter.com/theipaper/status/777204412502728704
And of course ex-Liberal leader Lloyd George spoke admiringly of Hitler and on a visit to Germany in 1936 (?) was photographed giving the Nazi salute.
No party is clean when it comes to Fascism in the 1930s.
PS - a concentration camp, as put into practice by Salisbury's government (in practice the South African government, but that's another story) were as the name implies, merely designed to 'concentrate' a group of people in one place - in this case the non-combatants among the Boers to make it harder for the guerillas to fight or obtain supplies. The fact that they were badly run, ill supplied and with no proper sanitation, is what makes them notorious. The Nazi vision was of prison camps which were ill supplied and where prisoners had to undertake forced labour - but they were not called prison camps as that would have meant processing all the inmates through the courts.
It's been pointed out to me that the Holyrood constituency results suggest that a tiny number of gains could be possible against the SNP come 2020, but of course the behaviour of voters in Westminster and devolved elections is different so even that isn't exactly a gimme. And, in any event, I do mean a tiny number of gains. As things stand, the yellows are going nowhere fast.
The Lib Dems built up a lot of popularity and a strong party membership base in the South West, but they never achieved a position of dominance with a big cohort of natural supporters. Hence the fact that their large vote turned out to be as soft as butter, and the Tories (and, actually, Labour to a lesser but still significant extent) were able to melt great chunks off of it.
There's a reason why the West Country Lib Dems were all wiped out by Tories, yet a handful of Labour holdouts (in Exeter, and all three seats in Bristol) survived. The Tories and Labour both command mass voter loyalty. The Lib Dems simply don't.
John Hamilton Mackie was another Tory MP with strong fascist sympathies.
For example, in a race including Juppe and Macron Le Pen is on 28.5%, Juppe 25%, Macron on 15%, Melenchon on 11.5% and Hollande on 11%. If Sarkozy is UMP candidate rather than Juppe, Le Pen is on 27%, Sarkozy on 22%, Macron on 18%, Melenchon and Hollande on 12%. Hollande also looks likely to come in 5th, behind even the Left Party's candidate Melenchon
http://www.tns-sofres.com/sites/default/files/2016.09.07-presi2017-ivt1.pdf
I was going to add, he wasn't a minister under the Tories or spoken of as a future leader - but in fairness his age probably had quite a lot to do with that.
Mind you, if the established parties can only put up candidates of the quality of Clinton, Sarkozy/Juppe, that random idiot who came third in Austria and whose name I have forgotten and Papandreou, it's not that surprising that they're struggling.
*in the sense that he's less a beneficiary of whatever these guys are surfing and more a product of local problems in Greece.
You are also right that with the establishment parties continuing to rehash the same names and families (you can add the Bushes for the GOP too) it is easy for radical populists to present themselves as the only alternatives for change.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/17/its-race-and-immigration-stupid?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/crimeinenglandandwales/yearendingmar2016
"Latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), the best measure of crime trends for the population and offences it covers, showed a 6% fall in the number of incidents against adults for the survey year ending March 2016 (6.3 million, compared with 6.8 million in the previous survey year)."
"The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an annual rise of 8%. However, this series is not considered a reliable indicator of trends in crime; most of the latest rise is thought to be due to improved crime recording practices and processes leading to a greater proportion of reports of crime being recorded in the last year than in the previous year."
A pity @gilescoren's column is behind a paywall because the reaction on here would have been a sight to behold https://t.co/j9s8aARYFS
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/figure3_tcm77-349680.png
Yeah, it looks like the fall in recorded crime is also due to a fall in criminal behaviour.
SeanT can probably tell us more.
Don't know what it all means but it is fascinating.
Orkney 67.4% +31.6%
Shetland 67.7% +19.9%
(Result that - I would suggest - make it unlikely that the parliamentary constituency of O&S will be lost in 2020.)
They also gained:
North East Fife 43.8% +15.4%
Edinburgh Western 41.9% +14.1%
Both the last two map extremely well onto the NE Fife and Edinburgh West parliamentary constituencies, although obviously the boundary review will affect that somewhat. The previous Holyrood elections were an extremely close analog to the 2015 elections, so I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that - if the boundary commission leaves NE Fife and Edinburgh West relatively alone - then the LDs stand a good chance of making gains in Scotland. (Of these two, the latter is almost exactly the right size already, although NE Fife will need to gain voters, or be split up, so that makes it a much harder proposition).
But if the LibDems do get 15-18% in local elections in the next four years, it will (a) refresh their activist base; (b) create a narrative of them making gains; and (c) 'train' people into believing that voting LD is not the end of the world.
I'd say it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a recovery.
(I count a recovery as 10-14 seats on 10-14% vote share. Other may have different definitions.)
difference there is the turnout difference, 64% vs 76% to consider as well.
I think it unlikely to be Trumpites as the number of Republican and undeclared are not so far ahead of last time.
Crazy Maureen Dowd, the wacky columnist for the failing @nytimes, pretends she knows me well--wrong!
Then crime will collapse, lots of police and associated things like probation officers cwn be made redundant, saving a fortune and the treasury will get extra taxes from the excise duties.
Wacky @NYTimesDowd, who hardly knows me, makes up things that I never said for her boring interviews and column. A neurotic dope!
What is the egregious liar, forger and Wikipedia addict doing these days, anyway?
When I look around me in towns and cities, I wonder whether the smaller screen has just neutralised our younger generation in much the same way. They all seem glued to their phones and tablets. Bit less hanging round on street corners "cos there's nothing to do, innit?" when they're all addicted to their WhatsApp and they've got Angry Birds* to throw and selfies to filter.
* (Is that still a thing? I don't think they play Snake anymore.)
That way at least everyone knows where they stand, the current mishmash doesn't help anyone except the police, who use possession as an excuse to detain someone for other things/to have a word with them/as leverage.
Don't recall the book bursting into the best-sellers list. Suspect if it did then it would be being splashed all over his website.
He has another book in the works, according to his Twitter.
There is evidence that the biggest cause for the reduction in teenage smoking is smartphones. Something better to do with the hands and money of teenagers, probably part of the reduction in teen pregnancies too. Sexting rather than sex!
http://www.oldnorthstatepolitics.com/2016/09/voting-is-underway-for-2016-election-in.html?m=1
Should the header really be "LIB DEMS WINNING HERE" ?
Most Parliamentary seats are won on less than 48% of the vote too.
If we had AV, and everyone were as obsessed with Europe as the frothers, then you might have a point.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/06/_politics-zone-injection/trump-vs-clinton-presidential-polls-election-2016/
The benefit that they are seeing is devaluation plus access to the single market. While devaluation is likely to continue, tha latter may well end. If you combine that with the end of restrictions on cheap imports of Australian and NZ lamb then their salad days may be coming to an end.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/17/eu-countries-rush-steal-uk-based-research-projects?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
Lancaster, not Spitfire
(pedant-mode-off)