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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Growing a beard: How male supporters of the main parties di
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Growing a beard: How male supporters of the main parties divide
The choice of questions for the weekly Sunday Times YouGov poll is a good indication of what’s been going on in the previous week and today a large part of the poll is devoted to beards – sparked off by Jeremy Paxman.
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34046 Braunstone heading Torbay Express is passing Dawlish at around 11 28 It can be seen on the live Dawlish Railcam
Grew a beard as a rag week stunt - shaved part of it off - raised large amount for charidee...was worth looking silly for a few days.
Interesting that the more rightwing you are the more likely you are to be clean-shaven.
http://metro.co.uk/2012/03/16/ed-miliband-asks-bearded-man-if-hes-a-lady-355135/
I hate to point it out, but, it may effect the leadership ratings, but leadership rating don't win elections .. it's people who vote that win elections and Labours vote is steady.
One of the main benefactors for Labour is the fact that the Lib Dems who crossed over to Labour in 2010 after the coalition was formed are now limpet like with Labour. ... they are sticking with Labour no matter what.
It may not be a resounding endorsement for Ed Miliband, but he doesn't need endorsements, he needs voters, and the most important set of voters at the moment(Lib Dem switchers) are saying the are going to vote Labour.......and they have now said that for three years.
I think that is the key point.
The next election is going to be a fascinating exercise in divided loyalties and human psychology. Roughly speaking, from right to left:
UKIP: committed Kippers or NOTA?
UKIP/Tory waverers: Will they hold their nose and vote to keep Labour out?
Tory: Are they enthused enough?
LD 2010 defectors: Can betrayal be forgiven?
Lab: Does Ed enthuse voters?
SLAB: Was Brown's Scottishness a factor?
My guess is that, ultimately, we will see a lot of people not voting in this election, as happened to the Tories in 1997. People forget that while Blair added 2m votes, Major lost 4.5m. And the issue for the Tories has been, once people get out of the habit of voting, they realise it doesn't change very much and life goes on. So they are harder to get to the polls next time.
I also don't think that 2015 will be seen as an "existential" election in the same way as 2010 was a competing world view (in perception at least). The Tory theme will be "we've made a good start but need more time" while Labour will be "we're nicer than those horrible Tories"
To which the public will respond: MEH!
For those remotely interested , There are 4 live rail cams round the country , Dawlish , Euxton on WCML , Cramlington on ECML and Todmorden .
The website realtimetrains.co.uk gives live up to date running information on all trains in the UK , passenger , freight and specials .
'We're talking loud and we'll be turning up the volume,' says Chuka Umunna. Is it so bad that channeling IDS is seen as the answer!?
Have you
a) Never had a beard,
b) Ever had a beard
c) Have a beard now
I wonder what the results per party would have been.
(For the record: active Lib in 70-80. Had a beard some of that time. Now clean-shaven, at least in part due to wife's strongly expressed views!
How do you define a beard? Does it have to be deliberately cultivated or can it be the product of not being bothered about shaving for a few days? If the latter I have spent quite a bit if time with a beard (got one now, in fact); if the former I've never had one.
Then there are issues like widows, LBGT etc.
You learn something new every day on PB.
noun
North American informal
a fit of rage or hysterics:
his client was having conniptions on the phone
Origin:
mid 19th century: probably an invented word
I always find it advantageous to check first, before accusing SeanT of ‘making up words’ – He’s usually right…!
So you're 'Turning up the volume' @ChukaUmunna worked out well for me back in the day x
"Don't know, or don't know enough about this person"
Balls: 25
Harman: 32
Cooper: 45
Burnham: 48
Umunna: 61
To add insult to injury, YouGov spelled his name "Umanna"....maybe they were thinking "Obama"...
Chuka Umunna says Labour will be turning up the volume.... In Walworth on Weds, Ed M insisted Labour was already talking enough
Perhaps Neil might know ;-)
Excellent stuff
YouGov Net Leadership Ratings (amongst own supporters)- Cameron 87 Clegg 35 Miliband 6
I'm becoming increasingly of the opinion that EdM is unelectable, in the way that many of us knew instantly IDS was.
Lord Michael Dobbs retweeted
PlatoSays @PlatoSays
MT @ShippersUnbound @dobbs_michael must be thrilled by Charles' attempts to subvert the political process. Predicted in To Play The King
Owen Eoins @OwenEoins84
Diverse menu including: lentil soup, lentil casserole, lentil dhal, lentil burger, lentil mash & lentilbockerglory #YUM #Balcombe #FoodTent
(please pass the salt)
@Len4Untie is another great one as is of course @IDS_MP who convinces an enormous number of Outrage Bus passengers.
Even if he delivers another Speech of a Lifetime - he's got a shedload of self inflicted problems as a result of Falkirk - the planned bun-fight over funding, the internecine war in the run up to it and fall-out after.
It's a mess. It's far too close to GE2015 to be fannying about like this, and with a pitiful soft lead of mid-single figures.
And he's got yet another reshuffle on the cards as if that'll turn him into Superman. He's got little talent and has already done this how many times already? Deckchairs on the Titanic.
Oh...
http://www.skynews.com.au/topstories/article.aspx?id=897835&vId=
Oh and picking a fight with your own biggest donors?
Still, its all just a flesh wound - and voters will be flocking to Labour in 2015. Goodness me.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BR9BakBCYAEevYG.jpg:large
@TimMontgomerie
10% tell @YouGov that Ed Miliband has been a strong leader of the Labour Party; 51% say he's been weak http://twitpic.com/d8z14f
Luckily we have OGH and Farmer tim to interpret this polling for us.
Ed is strong, swift, decisive, ruthless, right?
When they feel the need to tweet me that XXX is on BBC24 NOW just in case I miss the Lesser Spotted Shadow Minister it just shows how risible this has become. They tweeted me at about 1AM - yes 1AM to tell me about Hilary Benn doing something.
The LOOK WE'RE OVER HERE!!! pleading just smacks of a party who the media are ignoring unless they're being rude about each other. It's reminiscent of the Tory infighting under Hague when the media only wanted to hear rubbishing.
They smell a bigger problem that we're currently seeing.
@Sun_Politics: EXC: Mili-banned - desperate Labour leader tries to ditch Welfare Party tag http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/5080666/Labour-bid-to-ditch-Welfare-Party-tag.html
You posted about Jeremy Hunt's resignation for 18 months.
You have posted incessantly, and expensively, about Osborne for over 3 years.
If you want to be taken seriously...
Oh, never mind.
That's a very effective strategy if you're measuring desperation.
This is because most voters don't give a damn about whether Ed was egged and probably couldn't place Falkirk on a map.
We vote for parties, not presidents.
I better shave lest I be mistaken for a Lib Dem.
Will the Scottish government publish its much awaited paper on pensions in a independent Scotland before the debate? I wouldnt want to be a 'yes' speaker in a debate on pensions without answers to the kind of questions that have been raised in this area.
Just started reading a new book (Jonah Goldberg / Libreral Fascism) - only half way through the introduction, but it's hugely thought provoking.
Argues that the impulses of our governing political classes (written in America, but applicable here - including both 'compassionate conservatism' and progressiveism) are basically facistic in nature. Take this as an example:
Liberal facism differs from classical facism in many ways... what unites them are their emotional or instinctual impulses... the quest for community, the urge to "get beyond" politics, a faith in the perfectibility of man and the authority of experts, and an obsession with the aesthetic of youth, the cult of action, and the need for an all-powerful state to coordinate society at the national or global level. Most of all they share the belief... that with the right amount of tinkering we can realise the utopian dream of "creating a better world".
It's controversial, of course, to refer to them with such a loaded word as "facistic" but there does seem a common thread in all our parties of putting the desires of the state above the rights of the individual.
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0767917189
That's my view as well. But Nick Palmer tells me (a) no and (b) even if it was it doesn't matter because Scotland is only little and (c) anyway that just means we're doing even better in England.
I can't work out if that is more complacent, patronising or insulting to Scotland.
There's an argument, certainly, that the Tories are quite happy to use the power of the state (whether directly or through moral suasion) to achieve what they want, while big corporates delight in regulation. I'd argue we're pretty close to corporatism at least
On a quick read through the threads, two little snippets caught my eye:
1) In the latest You Gov, one in three current LABOUR voters think 'Ed Miliband would not be up to the job of Prime Minister', and a further 18% don't know if he would. Less than half say he would be up to the job. This must be some kind of record amongst a party's own supporters, at least for a party which is in the lead in the VI. (Special note for tim: And look at the figure for 2010 LibDem voters, 63% of whom think he's a duffer).
2) Things have come to a pretty pass when the Sunday Times describes Caroline Flint as a 'Labour heavyweight'.
Three years on and another whole summer news cycle wasted, and Ed Miliband is still failing to set the heather on fire as a potential future PM. The hastily announced policy of lowering the voting age smacks of a desperate holding action this week. There are still no sign of any credible or funded policies prepared and ready to be rolled out this Autumn at the Conference Season. If there were, why on earth would a Cabinet reshuffle be on the cards when earlier this year Ed Miliband had ruled one out after the media trailed that Cameron was going to carry one out over the summer? It would be ironic if Cameron doesn't do anything other than tinker around the edges at junior level while Ed Miliband is forced to carry out a full top level Shadow Cabinet reshuffle in an attempt at another relaunch.
Time is running out, if Ed Miliband hasn't connected with the public now, I doubt he will manage it before the next GE. Miliband appears to be afflicted with the same hubris Gordon Brown had when he became Labour Leader and PM, just as the Labour party were then and now when they assumed that both Brown and Miliband for all their faults would still be a better option as PM for the country than Cameron. Ed Miliband like Brown before him, is trying to make a virtue out of the fact that he refuses to lower himself by doing any media 'stunts' to raise his political profile. And equally, the public are now showing their disdain and lack of interest in a politician who cannot be bothered to put himself out there on view so they can decide if this man has the inner mettle and character to be their future PM.
And anyone who takes comfort from Thatcher's polling before the 1979 GE should remember that she was the first politician in the modern media era who let the public into her home and family life in an attempt to connect to the voters. She positively thrived in front of the camera in this way. Brown was never a natural media performer, and always came across as extremely uncomfortable, unable to think on his feet in front of the cameras. Ed Miliband is beginning to resemble Brown more and more each day in his Leadership style,
right down to the inability to make decisions without dithering first.
I can't work out if that is more complacent, patronising or insulting to Scotland.
"True" is probably the word you're looking for? The polls do (perhaps surprisingly as I'd have thought Gordon might have been a factor) suggest Labour increasing similarly in Scotland to elsewhere, but if they didn't, it would mean Labour was increasing more in England than in Scotland, which would be handy as that's where the Tory marginals are.
No Nick , although they are only sub samples , they are pretty consistent over all the pollsters that Labour is down on their 2010 GE vote in Scotland to around 35 to 39% .
“For the third weekend running, Labour's woes remain the story. In his Sunday Mirror column, John Prescott declares that the party has "massively failed" to get its message across and reminds everyone how it was a different story when he was manning the shop.”
How time flies, is it really 3 weeks...!
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/08/labours-woes-mean-bar-being-set-ever-higher-milibands-conference-speech
The book just looks like partisan political abuse: all virtues belong to my party; all vices to the opposition -- even if we agreed with the author what constitutes vice and virtue. At least so far as I can tell from its table of contents, Goldberg does not discuss Republican belief in big government: George W Bush its most recent exemplar.
You are probably right about corporatism, especially with the recent tendency for regulatory and taxation arbitrage to lead to very little of either.
In the past week or two, on the recommendation of pb, I have bought Lord Levy's autobiography and Hedge Hogs; I shall not be buying this book.
Fitalass said, "Seriously, is this a joke?".
In what way is that 'vicious' or 'personalised'?
It is also irrelevant. Can't wait to get round to the general election. Then we can see how the PB Tories explain it being at least 28 years before they have the chance to win a majority.
We don't have, for reasons I find inexplicable, leader approval ratings in the UK
YouGov run weekly approval ratings in the US - why not in the UK?
"Well/badly" is not a good question.
7,858 for the latest PB incarnation of 'tim'.
True dedication if a smidgeon futile.
Three weaks stay forever.
The former had EdM at minus-28 - one point worse than Dave on minus 27.
That's two threads in four days with leader ratings highlighted.
If people don't like it they can go elsewhere.