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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » NEW PB / Polling Matters podcast: Reshuffles, Oprah and exclusive polling on Brexit and trust
The PB / Polling Matters podcast returns for a new year with a new format.
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FPT:
Theresa May is facing fresh reshuffle embarrassment amid claims that she breached the Ministerial Code with her Downing Street PR stunt to promote the Tory party’s new top ranks.
Labour has written to the Prime Minister to complain that she was in clear breach of rules which forbid the use of any Government and taxpayer-funded property for party political purposes, HuffPost can reveal.
May led a parade of Conservative party chairmen and vice-chairmen in Downing Street on Monday as she started her shake-up of ministerial ranks.
The Conservative Party subsequently retweeted the picture on both their main twitter account and the Conservative Press account.
But just one of the appointees, party chairman Brandon Lewis, was given a Government post and the rest were all party jobs.
Section 6 of the Ministerial Code – which was updated only this week - says that Government property should not be used for “party political activities”, a strict rule that carries sanctions if breached.
Tory spokesperson says some party activity is allowed at 10 Downing St.
I noted that they were standing on the pavement when the photo was taken, so not on government property but council property.
The number of promising therapies which have failed after decade long trials is considerable, including antibodies against beta amyloid (Pfizer gave up on its antibody bapineuzumab, which had been in trials since 2007, at the end of last year, and pretty well abandoned Alzheimer's research).
Surprises are not utterly impossible, but given the current highly imperfect understanding of the disease process, the difficulty of running Alzheimer's trials (the patients likely to be enrolled already have significant disease progression) and the lengthy process to show any effect, compared to say cancer, the idea that there will be a preventive vaccine on the market within a decade is utterly unrealistic, IMO.
I'd probably double that.
As an example, the Novartis trial is recruiting patients now; they don't expect meaningful result since for at least five years. And that's a single stage of a trial. (An Alzheimer's vaccine was trialled and abandoned as far back as 2002.)
I don't denigrate any of the efforts here - indeed given the cost and relatively low chances of success, the persistence of some companies in funding research has been heroic - and every failure provides more data, but similar optimism has been expressed over the last decade or more, only to be crushed.
Yes, huge strides have been made in immunology, but the difficulty of targeting the brain means that we are at a fairly early stage in fully understating what we're doing. Couple that with the very limited understanding of Alzheimer's itself, and the likelihood of any single therapy proving successful is low.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus
Goes way beyond a few off colour remarks on twitter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/oprah-winfrey-fame-hungry-peddler-fake-empathy-would-terrible/
https://www.politico.eu/article/macierewicz-mateusz-morawiecki-polish-reshuffle-removes-controversial-ministers/
Rather more liberal publications (Slate, for example) have already expressed serious reservations. That a Telegraph opinion writer should publish a disobliging piece is rather less surprising, and of little consequence - after all, it's Democrats who will decide the fate of her would be candidacy.
(FWIW, I think her encouragement of crank opinions on for example vaccines ought to be disqualificatory.)
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001531/chinas-die-hard-star-wars-fans-respond-to-last-jedi-flop
The most upvoted review complains that “the whole film really insults the IQ of its audience,” and demands to know how the universe could possibly be ruled by such an incompetent Galactic Empire. “In Star Wars, it seems only Darth Vader had a brain — it’s such a shame he’s already dead,” the reviewer concludes.
Lay at 10/1. Probably lay at 25/1 on the savings account principle.
May -6
Corbyn -6
Blair -42
Clegg -24 (the next worst)
Carney +10 - the only positive.
Blair - the great white hope of Remainia?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/senate/az/arizona_senate_republican_primary-6235.html
Blair would probably be one of the worst people to front a rejoin campaign.
Adonis had a high level of don’t knows but also a quite high negative rating.
And there’s no “probably” about Blair being the worst person to front rejoin. “Unequivocaly” is nearer the mark
I suspect, only suspect, because I’m well out of touch now, that we might get somewhere on Alzheimers fairly soon, but it’ll be around the prevention, or prevention of further deterioration. We’re a long way from reversal.
Some of the data from DIAN is just incredible
We also need to get some good trade deals in place as soon as possible after we leave the EU. Not only is it good per se, but makes rejoining the EU later all the more difficult - it’s clear the Remainers aren’t going to give up even after we’ve left.
Hope to listen to the podcast through the day (mostly writing so listening to speech is a bit tricky to do at the same time).
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02565511
And wouldn't the latter be unpublished, price sensitive information ?
It'll take some changes for the tories. They need new blood, and new bold ideas. But things like the manifesto and the leader couldn't be as bad as the last GE.
https://twitter.com/JaneEJuanita/status/951212164903301120
I'm (as always) going to plump for cock-up over conspiracy.
Reading downthread, it's always a bit saddening to see fellow Brexit-folk being daft. It seems perfectly reasonable that people who disagree with Brexit should campaign to rejoin after we leave. Similarly, if there were ever a mandate to rejoin, whether via an election or referendum, then we'd have to respect that. My view is that this is an unlikely scenario, but stranger things have happened in my lifetime.
Democracy is a process, not an event. Brexit will cause economic pain and will have more drawbacks than benefits in the short term. Whether there'll be a compensatory benefits in the medium term is still up in the air. It's no wonder people are still cross.
https://mobile.twitter.com/YouGov/status/951373347782320129
That is an increase of 33 billion per year for the NHS and no government is going to be able to increase taxes by that much. As a matter of interest does anyone know how much the Ni or tax rates needs to rise to achieve the 33 billion
I noticed one of the 'intelligence' nutjobs he follows was retweeting any and all articles in support of Young.
The issue with Young isn't to do with issues, its to do with language.
...Young has also resigned from his post on the Fulbright Commission, which oversees student scholarship programmes between British and US universities.
Sir Nigel Sheinwald, chair of the US-UK Fulbright Commission, said: “I accepted his resignation, which I believe to be in the best interests of the Fulbright programme.”
UCL said it had no knowledge of the conference, an invitation-only circle of 24 attendees, which could have led to a breach of the government’s Prevent regulations on campus extremism.
“UCL is investigating a potential breach of its room bookings process for events,” a spokesperson said.
“Our records indicate the university was not informed in advance about the speakers and content of the conference series, as it should have been for the event to be allowed to go ahead.”...
Farron might be able to say a few Hail Marys to be absolved of his sin (not sure how it works in his particular strand of god-bothering), but the notion that you can't believe a word the LibDems say during an election campaign is reinforced.
Why are some religionists so obsessed with gender and sexuality?
A 1p raise in income tax raises about £4.5 billion.