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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Don’t expect a Street Coronation in the West Midlands Mayoral
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Don’t expect a Street Coronation in the West Midlands Mayoral election
‘The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny.’
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Edited extra bit: and who is this Pushkin fellow, anyway? Why didn't Simon use a classical analogy like a normal person?
My parents live in the area and they say he has already been busy with the leaflets.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-21/bmw-reviewing-u-k-plant-options-post-brexit-amid-trade-threats?utm_content=brexit&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid==socialflow-facebook-brexit
Then again, Fillon doesn't have the populist appeal - Trump is more of a rock & roll swindler...
"Why I left my liberal London tribe
As a divided Britain prepares for Brexit, David Goodhart reveals why he broke up with the metropolitan elite"
https://www.ft.com/content/39a0867a-0974-11e7-ac5a-903b21361b43
There's a risk in wishful punting in these things - some punters are fond of Galloway because he's colourful, and some here dislike Simon with remarkable venom. Don't bet what you want, bet where the odds look right!
Gut feel is that Labour are doing exceptionally badly in the midlands and that the Tories must be in with a shout there. Manchester is at least one and probably two bridges too far.
Govt Borrowing YTD £47.8bn
Gross Interest YTD £47.5bn
I wish you luck on your bet but I'm not tempted at 7-4. I think the West Midlands will swing heavily to May post Brexit.
Next.
The government has over-estimated borrowing by tens of billions over the course of the year, when comparing the initial estimate of any given month with what it is now believed to have been.
This months' revision was more than £3bn.
It also implies that the budget forecasts two weeks ago were overly pessimistic again.
From the BBC: "Annual borrowing £51.7bn in 2016-17, £16.4bn lower than forecast"
Looking at last March's deficit and the current trend, I'd guess that borrowing will be down another £3bn compared to the latest forecast and will show as closer to £49bn for the full year when reported next month.
The government deficit as a proportion of GDP is likely to be something like 2.5% or 2.6%. That's the best in fifteen years.
They are guessing.
What the ONS have systematically got wrong is the PAST.
* with 25% exhibiting elements of both
@Casino_Royale and other PBers keen on an Article 50 celebration. How about next Wednesday in Town?
I'll be around and either poor but happy or flush but unhappy after what promises to be the best auction of the YTD.
Any venue prefs?
Let's face it: the Conservatives have done a bloody good job on the economy, aided by sensible Liberal Democrats in the early years.
So Galloway has thrown his trilby into the ring. He's stunned Labour once, but the markets are skeptical about him doing so twice. Gorton isn't as good for him demographically, and his star doesn't shine as bright generally as it once did.
But surely a 15-20% performance is entirely plausible, probably not even the upper bounds of his probabilities. What were the LDs expected to get before today's excitement? I'd guess about the same.
We're starting from a very low base, and without any councillors. Our record there is good circa 2010, but that was a different time. And we killed it in Witney and Richmond Park, but did disappointingly in Copeland and Stoke. Sure, Gorton is a Remain seat. But it's also an opposition seat, a student seat, and a very very Labour seat.
What if the LDs do a bit disappointingly again? 15% seems plausible there without us underperforming that much, and 15% for Galloway seems plausible without him overperforming that much.
But the odds on LDs second are 1/6, and 6/1 on Galloway. I'll buy the LDs as favourite, but surely no more than 1/2. 1/3 max.
(I've laid LDs at 1/6 for a modest sum.)
The moaning Tory minnies on the backbenches still won't do what needs doing (cf NI rise and Tax credit changes - both entirely sensible); wheras the orange bookers seized the mantle
Greater Manchester
Con 211,500
Lab 208,924
LibD 153,281
Oth 70,450
West Midlands
Con 241,960
Lab 184,097
LibD 104,511
Oth 93,380
Striking how well the LibDems used to do.
Mais après May, le déluge...
Privately? Already happened.
I find it interesting how friends have abandoned him, walked out on him in social situations and deployed the "R" word at him, even in his own family/extended family.
I have experienced much of the same.
I mean, as a card carrying Tory I've always been looked upon with suspicion by my largely Anywhere mates, but the numerous attempts to close down debates on immigration when I mention any negative effects is both hilarious and somewhat worrying at the same time.
It isn't meant to be in any way exclusive - it was just mooted a month or so back to coincide with the triggering.
Sometimes you have to do deals with bad people and McGuinness – eventually – played his part in trying to sort out the mess he created. But let's not imagine virtues that did not exist. Whatever he did in the peace process did not involve saying sorry for what the IRA did. Nor did it involve justice for the dead and wounded and the widows and widowers and orphans and all those deprived of people they loved. They should not be forgotten, today of all days.
Making this simple point somehow seems controversial. As if it is somehow not done to look past the cheery smile. All that killing and pain. And for what? A NI still in the UK and what has been achieved could have been achieved decades ago if the men of peace had been as celebrated and fawned over and supported as much as the men of violence.
We live in a meritocracy where people with no experience or knowledge whatsoever can be appointed to senior jobs and where any notion that man is a moral animal and can make a choice between good and evil and be held accountable for his/her choices is seen as something quaintly old-fashioned if not downright perverse.
There. I have got that off my chest.
Sorry.
Off to have my dinner now.
https://youtu.be/yuTMWgOduFM
There was also a 6-point swing to the Tories in Bethnal Green and Bow (another former Galloway haunt, of course) for a similar reason. Oona King's Conservative opponent was a Choudhury.
He is bang on the money.
The Prime Minister's words were spot on.