politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The response to the death of Mrs. Thatcher – today’s YouGov verdicts
Update: Labour lead at 11 – Latest YouGov/The Sun results 12th April – CON 31%, LAB 42%, LD 12%, UKIP 11%; APP -35 y-g.co/16SdRuO
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Mr Everyman!
OT - for PB nerds - a mesmerising time-lapse of a pendulum swing, the shapes it forms are just mind-bending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN_gjuoYlEM
I fear for your future as the anti sage of PB .... a site mourns .... bookies share price crashes and a pillar of the PB community is crushed to dust !!
Prime Minister ratings (net good)
Thatcher:+11
Blair: -6
Brown: -52
Major: -23
Heath: -19 (41 don't know)
Net
Thatcher "good for Britain" +4
Left Country economically better off : +10
More respected in the world : +38
More equal society: -38
More free society : =
More opportunities for women: +35
More divided: +45
Industry more competitive: -4
Put "Great" back into GB: -2
Did enough to regenerate industry in areas hit by closures: -60
Privatise BT/BG: -16
Right to buy:+31
Take on Unions:.+36
Falklands: +53
Poll Tax: -52
Tackle inflation over unemployment: -7
Cut tax top rate 83>40% : +10
City Big Bang: -10
Section 28: -9
Single Market: =
EEC rebate: +60
I wonder if the negative view on privatisation - strongest among the older, might encourage Ed to challenge this part of the consensus?
Has Jo Grimond won Orkney and Shetland yet ?? ....
Andrea's a bit late - 34 years - reporting the result !!
Mr Durkin on MT:
"The “market” was not a wicked thing. It was lively and sociable, she said. It brought spices and coffee and bananas into the shops. In her day, it brought Fred Astaire to the local cinema. And most ordinary Britons had the good sense to agree (unlike the Left, our “intelligentsia” and the Tory old guard).
To the horror of the Left, Thatcher, re-defined the class struggle. The socialists argued that “the workers” were being ripped off by “the bosses”. But when workers looked at their wages and saw almost half had gone, they knew it wasn’t the bosses who had taken it. It was the state. “Socialism” was reduced to fleecing hard-working people in the private sector to keep the middle class public sector gravy train rolling.
The new class struggle, as defined by the revolutionary Thatcher, was between Tax Producers (in the productive economy) and Tax Consumers (in the parasitic public sector). The regions that voted Labour were dominated by public sector workers and benefit recipients (they wanted to keep the tap on). The regions that voted for Thatcher were populated by the suckers who footed the bill (and rather resented it). "
It is clear that the class struggle described above is yet to be resolved.
He also quotes MT from 1975:
"A man's right to work as he will .
To spend what he earns to own property.
To have the State as servant and not as master.
These are the British inheritance.
They are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend."
Another great Maggie quote, true then, true now:
"To borrow and to borrow and to borrow is not Macbeth with a heavy cold - it's Labour policy!"
I wish today's speech writers - of all parties - were half as literate..
The architect of David Cameron’s policy on gay marriage is leaving Downing Street after losing a power battle with the Prime Minister’s new Election supremo.
Andrew Cooper, Mr Cameron’s personal polling guru and a key modernising figure at No 10, is returning to his private business after being usurped by outspoken Australian ‘fixer’ Lynton Crosby.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308756/Camerons-gay-marriage-guru-quits-power-battle-foghorn-fixer.html#
On the left the "more opportunities for women" will have stuck in a few craws....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308705/Inside-North-Korea-A-rare-dispatch-deep-lunatic-rogue-state-enslaved-Zombie-Sons.html?ICO=most_read_module
As one of the comments points out, that horse that Kim Fat Un is riding is the only animal seen in any picture of North Korea, the rest have been eaten
http://www.martindurkin.com/short-thoughts/margaret-death-revolutionary
If you say it was rubbish Roger, then it must have been good.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9992076/Tornado-filmed-up-close-and-personal-by-legendary-stormchaser.html
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=+Margaret+Street,+London,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&sll=51.500177,-0.126344&sspn=0.008723,0.026157&hnear=Margaret+St,+London,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=16
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9990296/Margaret-Thatcher-She-was-a-giant-but-karaoke-Thatcherism-is-not-enough-for-her-successors.html
But you're right - Thatcher came to power at a time when Britain's problems were almost entirely home grown. That made them solvable. The Tories came to power in 2010 on the back of an international crisis, which means solutions have to be international too. There's no reason to think she would have handled austerity any better than the current government's dismal attempts, but every reason to believe she would have tried harder to lead the wider search for a way out of the malaise (as Brown and Blair would have done too).
"The Tories are as frightened of taking on Ukip. They don't want to ridicule Farage, to say he offers no plan for a workable future, because they are frightened of alienating the reactionary rightwing press and their own reactionary backbenchers and activists. It is Cameron's fear, rather than any faith in the opinion polls or admiration for the statesmanlike qualities of Ed Miliband, that suggests to me the Conservatives may be in more trouble than they seem."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/14/cameron-ukip-nigel-farage
http://tinyurl.com/caf2j8d
Probably not the best picture to go under that headline
http://tinyurl.com/ceqvdrk
It looks lavishly filmed - but such sights on a Sunday morning really need a health warning. Imagine Downton with rosary beads...
Sky has been more balanced.
I would give nearly top marks to all broadcasters for their coverage since Mrs Thatcher's death. They've trodden a very difficult path very skilfully. Radio 1 should have decided to play the whole of Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead, but that's been the main slip in my view.
I can't blame the broadcasters and the newspapers for their exhaustive coverage, though it's starting to pall even for me. There's a mad glamour about Mrs Thatcher reminiscent of one of Dickens' finest characters.
Just imagine if Blair suddenly jumping on a left-wing bandwagon. It would not have worked.
Cameron needs to return to the strategy that got him into no10 or the Tories need to find someone else who can take the party in a new direction.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli
'News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: "What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact."'
Hodges: 'Great to see Andrew Marr back. Though not if you're head of the UK Rowing Machine manufacturers association...'
Mrs Thatcher may have believed in the benefits and rigours of the free market but many in government were just raising money by selling off the family silver, which is why they did not care about British companies being owned by foreign governments, just not the British government.
***Sunil Alert***
Brief Encounter was partially filmed at Carnforth railway Station.
A coalition.
Would that be holding Prime Ministerial debates, and inviting someone who has no chance of being PM.
Maybe this time they could invite Nigel Farage.
With all these new buttons introduced, pity there isn't one marked Stupid.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/13/david-blunketts-vision-nation-under-labour
So far this week we've had articles by Tony Blair, David Blunkett and Lance Price, all pushing for Ed Miliband to tack to the centre, with similar comments from Peter Mandelson and Alan Milburn. Ed Miliband is very lucky that so much attention is being paid to Mrs Thatcher's death, because otherwise this would be the main story of the week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/14/cameron-ukip-nigel-farage
:note-to-me.lose-a-life:
Curbing the power of trade unions / the miners’ strike 49%
The Falklands War 47%
The Poll Tax 39%
Privatisation of nationalised industries e.g. gas, electricity, telecoms 30%
Council housing ‘right to buy’ 27%
Unemployment 17%
Her role in ending the Cold War 8%
Her relationship with Europe 5%
Northern Ireland / hunger strikes 4%
None of the above 8%
Respondents could choose up to three. "
I'm amazed that ComRes neglected such seminal issues as Section 28, South Africa and General Pinochet.
It's very sad really. Because all of it amounts to 'Do what we used to do.'
It's like an aging rock band telling young musicians that they don't understand music because they don't follow their exact chord structure.
The world moves on. And so should they..
Reply to Carlotta: If you took a glance at Ukips facebook page you will not find reactionaries, rather bright modern and go-ahead people from all walks of life. If I thought that Ukip was in any way reactionary I would not be supporting them.
Nick Cohen writes like a haunted man, poor thing.
'Privatisation of nationalised industries e.g. gas, electricity, telecoms 30%'
Unless the respondents to this poll were aged 50 or over they would have no experience of these utilities when they were state owned.
FF - 27%
FG - 24%
SF - 16%
Lab - 12%
Odds on SF coming 4th drifting slightly to 5/1 (from 16/1 originally though). FG / Lab only 2/1 to form the next Government.
Everyone I speak to thinks the media, aprticularly the BBC have gone OTT.
Con 2010 17%
Lab 2010 3%
LD 2010 6%
As I've said before I think some UKIP supporters are wrongly recording that they voted Conservative in 2010 because they were "Conservative" but didn't vote but want to feel like they're punishing their old party anyway. Even so, that effect, nor the differential above, are very significant - at the moment 1.5 percentage points (and with the UKIP vote up in the air, it's difficult to tell).
So how much did welfare dependency and crime increase between 1970 and 1979?
And how much did it increase in similar western countries?
And how much would they have increased if Labour had been in government during the 1980s?
And how did welfare dependency compare in 2010 to 1990?
There were socioeconomic trends occurring which would have still have occurred whoever was prime minister and whatever governments did.
That goes for many of the 'successes' as well as for the many of the 'failures' of Thatcher.
Because Thatcher was so prominent throughout the 1980s she merely became the name upon which to pin things which would have happened anyway.
Leading to the mythology of Thatcher which is often very different to the reality.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22134809
Desperate. The political argument has been lost; only voodoo economics prevail. I fear that my dream of an independent Scotland will be destroyed by Disney prophosies and propaganda....
Can't Prescott be both?
UKIP has a facebook page ?
Yes indeedy: https://www.facebook.com/TheUKIP?ref=stream
Of course you still need to be open minded enough to attempt to understand where other people are coming from.
But PB does make you both more knowledgeable and less judgmental if you are.
How much was spent on Harold Wilson's funeral ? Or, was he a decent person who did not need imperial trappings.
Harold won four general elections !
That is a feeble excuse. I think you should be honest. You should proclaim boldly that you support a funeral befitting a Queen. After all, even our Queen possibly can't afford to die at the Ritz.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2308783/PETER-HITCHENS-Lets-remember-Maggie-really--tragic-failure.html
Frankly, my dear....
I'm not here for anyones' but my own amusement. First-rule when posting: Don't give-out if you can't swallow.
Your views are yours; mine are ignorable. Judgement is a skill you have yet to learn....
I think you should be honest.
Much of it would have.
Just as much of what is happening under this government would have happened under a Labour government and much of what will happen under Labour after 2015 would still happen if the Conservatives were then in power.
'By my calculation you have two spare bedrooms. Is one of them for Michael Green?"
Cue utterly unembarrassed snigger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Graphical_summary
Not my fault the facts upset you.
I think there are some things with which few would agree: "Brave as she was at Brighton, she still began the surrender to the IRA that was completed by Anthony Blair." for example.
Then there are some things which I agree with but since I don't go in for sycophancy I had already taken into account: whether some particular privatisations were properly undertaken, for example.
Then there are a couple of things which I think motivate Hitchens precisely because based on her other work he had such high hopes and I think he feels let down: "And this country still has the biggest nationalised industry in the world, the great, over-rated NHS." I think he has a different attitude towards Cameron (or indeed most if not all Conservative frontbenchers) who would not privatise the NHS (in the way Hitchens imagines; not the sort of accusation being lobbed at them recently) for that reason.
Overall I think the article is only surprising if you either believe that Thatcher could be all things to all men on the right, or that Thatcher was in Hitchens' shed when, in my opinion, she never was.
Woah! Nigel's trousers on Sunday Pol SE. I suspect he's chosen them to go with the purple chairs. Subliminal. Clever, Nige.
'Some may consider that £8-million on Our Mags' funeral excessive but they should look at how Labour spent English taxes'
It's about the equivalent cost of a single day of Tony Blair's bloodbath in Iraq.
I trust your tongue was firmly in your cheek when you wrote that, Charles. The City has always had its philanthropic individuals and institutions, one of the great shames of the place is how few people realise just how much charity work is financed by it (especially the Livery Companies). However, it also true that the City exists to make money for its members and players. The big bang changed how business is done, not the purpose of the business.