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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Political Betting Local By-Election Conference Bounce Inde
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Political Betting Local By-Election Conference Bounce Index : Week One
Over the next few weeks the major parties will be holding their party conferences and just as in every other week there are local by-elections all over the country, therefore for the duration of this Parliament we will be keeping track of how the parties do in the week of their party conferences. This week the Liberal Democrats met in Bournemouth and there were three local by-elections in Chesterfield, Oadby and Wigston and Waveney, so let’s see how they did and get a score to place on the board that Corbyn meeting in Brighton will need to match this time next week.
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I reckon that two parter was the best episode of B5, ergo that makes it classic.
Pleased though I am for the LDs picking up two seats, the Chesterfield gain was in a seat the Party held for many years with last night's winning candidate as the Councillor while Oadby & Wigston is one of the few councils held by the party and last night's gain simply reversed a Labour gain and wiped them off the council.
I don't therefore read huge significance into these results apart from being pleased two seats were gained.
Even if they were - it would come back when they raised prices/cut driver payments.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/911187966407700480
Have you seen the news lately? A prominent Brexiteer said something outrageously untrue about our relationship with the EU, earning scorn from prominent remainers. The EU expressed concern with the rate of progress of negotiations, but the British government dismissed them. An economics expert reported that we were heading towards financial disaster with Brexit. An opposition politician demanded that we cancel Brexit, while others said we had to respect the will of the people.
It was quite a week. Almost as amazing as last week, when the exact same thing happened. And the week before that. And the week before that. And, in fact, almost every week since 24 June 2016.
https://twitter.com/standardnews/status/911191814912212993
Their argument that Trump, inter alia, was in breach of Twitter's harassment/threatening rules and the resultant damage could be a war that kills the people bringing the case.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-twitter/u-s-free-speech-group-sues-trump-for-blocking-twitter-users-idUSKBN19W1UZ
And all the more appropriate given what Heinlein would likely think of the EU. (Although he would have approved of financial passporting and the free movement of labour.)
Not sure Broxtowe is open either, in the sense that they selected a local candidate to replace Nick P earlier this year for the June election.
If the Labour Party isn't sexist then 50% of the open contests would be won by women
But that means that 75% of Labour candidates in target seats are women... which would be sexist
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-41358640
Are you still in Seattle and looking for places to go? Try the fish market, they have a bunch of mad stall holders there who spend all day throwing fish to each other and making jokes with the customers.
In my view this justifies some explicit discrimination to correct the imbalance, although I can think of some better ways to do it (that wouldn't have been subject to the suspicion of manipulation as occurred during the Blair years, when it was often alleged that AWS were used to block popular local male candidates who were not loyal Blairites).
My concern with this ruling is that, whatever excuses they use in public, this is about protectionism, and when a better company comes along offering a similar service - whether it's Lyft or a.n.other - they'll just get the same hassle.
I would be curious to know how many apply. If fewer than half of applications are by females then you'd expect fewer than half to get the position to be so.
By analogy, we know that racial discrimination exists in society, but it would be unjust if White people were barred from seeking certain jobs in order to equalise outcomes.
Just as an eye-for-eye isn't justice.
Initially very little needs to change except instead of French state owned companies we will have British state owned companies. There is no magic rule that says one can run trains every fifteen minutes and the other can't.
The transaction costs on franchises alone are enormous. Then add on the fact that govt can borrow at much cheaper rates.
That money could either be saved for the taxpayer or passed on to users in the form of reduced ticket prices. As you say - ownership is not particularly relevant to quality of service. But public ownership will be much cheaper.
We also will then have a much clearer picture of what the overall rail system costs.
We can decide at what level we should subsidise.
If they raised their prices to probability they would be more expensive than a regular min-cab firm due to their massive overheads.
But I suspect we will look back and wonder how we were dumb enough to fall for the hype.
The NHS for instance has seen some very impressive cost control on staff wages.
5 years after Uber was founded it had -149% Profit margin, for every pound of revenue it takes it loses £1.49.
It has to more than double it's take from Taxi fares to become profitable.
the Commander shows her the copy of Vogue.
"Why did you show me?"
"Who else could I show it to?"
Welcome back, however briefly.
https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new-clothes/
"But public ownership will be much cheaper."
Only if we don't have any enhancements; and that's far from certain anyway.
Let's take an example. The rail system currently has a clearing body that attributes delays and applies fines to whoever caused the delay - whether it's a TOC or Network Rail. If a train breaks down, the train operator pays for the delays caused to other operators. If a points failure causes it, then NR pays for the delays.
Some see this process as being utterly wasteful. After all, if the system was nationalised it would not be needed as BR would just be paying itself.
That might be wrong-headed. After all, BR did a similar process, although less rigorously. However, and this is important, they had little reason to correct causes for delays. If a track defect was causing delays, it might just be left. In the current situation, those delays hurt the company's pocket, so you invest to fix them.
All AIUI.
There is no Uber secret tech sauce - just a massive flow of investor money.
Drivers will HATE Uber. I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Unless drivers loathe Uber with every fibre of their being the Uber business model is not performing at peak.
There are very good reasons that minicabs are regulated, but this company thinks that laws designed to stop people getting robbed, raped or even murdered don’t apply to them.
Lost money for ages, no future, how crazy what happens when the Waitrose contract ends, etc...
And yet, what people were missing was that it was accumulating customers on the one hand and a logistics infrastructure on the other. So it could easily turn its hand to...Morrisons, or whoever.
Uber has the infrastructure in place. It's just a question of what they want to push down it.
They always had a route to profitability - at any time they could have stopped losing money and started being revenue positive. Eventually there was going to be an end to their massive capital expenditure (once they finally had enough distribution locations - you can't build warehouses forever) and/or to raise their prices very slightly.
Uber has to more than double their take. That's a monstrous uplift.
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/911201657270231040
Uber is loss making because it spends many billions of dollars a year on marketing. It spends Billions on marketing to grow its user numbers.
Its core business has almost no costs, which is why they pay drivers 85% of gross rather than the sub 50% that Addison Lee pays.
Doesn't sound like the disaster that Alistair is claiming.
"TfL has said it believes Uber’s conduct demonstrates a lack of corporate responsibility around a number of issues that have potential public safety and security implications. ... All private-hire operators in London need to play by the rules. The safety and security of customers must be paramount."
Yellowsubmarine claimed Cameron got a complete opt out from Ever Closer Union. This is simply not true. Ever Closer Union has been an integral part of every treaty underpinning the EEC/EC/EU since the original Treaty of Rome. The only way it could have been overturned would be through a new treaty - something that there was absolutely no guarantee would happen for many years. Until and unless a new treaty was agreed the UK would still have been subject to the existing treaties with their absolute commitment to Ever Closer Union.
Even had a new treaty been proposed at some point in the future there was no guarantee the exemptions would have been agreed by all other member states.
And even had we eventually got a new treaty there is no guarantee it would have been interpreted as we wished by the ECJ - something John Major found out to his cost.
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/evening-standard-comment-turns-out-that-eu-deal-is-better-than-no-deal-a3641181.html
Executive summary: "Told you so."
It's just that it is 50x bigger than the largest private hire business, and therefore it is easier to find examples of bad things.
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/taxi-driver-accused-sitting-outside-218270
https://twitter.com/youngvulgarian/status/911174965982097408
And these are the reasons for the decision:
https://twitter.com/ThomasWPenny/status/911199823289872385
I particularly like the fact I can use the same app in multiple locations and countries as it means I don't have to faff around
Given low barriers to entry, and the fact that drivers can be on two services simultaneously, why would they want to do that.
Much better to take a 15% commission from every taxi journey in the world. For providing an app and a few servers.