politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Farage looks set to lose his BBC Election Question Time slot following BP’s candidate withdrawal move
It is being reported in the Times and other papers that Farage could lose some of his key TV debate slots following his move to pull BP candidates in Tory seats.
Read the full story here
Comments
Perfectly reasonable and unexpected consequence.
As a tongue in cheek comment I had suggested Jo was jeopardising her position by withdrawing from seats tactically.
If they won all non conservative held seats, they could still govern couldn't they ?
(In theory obvs)
Reviews of the Mandalorian have generally been pretty good:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/the_mandalorian
If she's entering the race, she's doing it in the next two weeks. (Spoiler alert: she's not entering the race.)
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1194467422100738049?s=20
I was going to post a link about how The Book of Gutsy Women (yuck title) was really badly reviewed.
But it turns out the reviews are all pretty decent which is a bit embarrassing.
This, of course, is where US trade negotiations will fall down. The US will require us to accept GM crops, and will also prevent us from labeling said crops as GM.
Johnson will push hard for it, and it will be really unpopular. (With both his own party and the country at large.)
IP protection is not interesting to a President who cares principally about saying "they've agreed to buy $500bn of US goods and therefore the trade deficit will be eliminated. Look at me, I made an amazing deal."
China will be looking at its list of imports and working out what can be bought from the US, rather than (for example) Brazil or Australia. It will agree to buy some steel, and some soy beans, and some wheat, and maybe some American oil, or coal, and it will end up paying a slightly higher price than it would have done otherwise.
The overall US trade deficit, of course, will not decline because those were commodities that would otherwise have been used in the US (requiring them to now be imported from elsewhere) or would have been exported to places like the UK or the EU.
It's pushing down on a bubble on a piece of plastic and being surprised when it pops up elsewhere.
https://beef2live.com/story-beef-exports-country-year-date-0-109756
US trade policy is dominated by Robert Lighthizer, who's obsessed by the steel industry, and the effect of protective tariffs on it. I've seen him speak, and never once has he mentioned technology and IP issues. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but it seems that the US-China deal will just be a bandaid that allows China to continue to behave badly, while not reducing the overall size of the deficit.
I've heard one of the major reasons Sony is shifting a lot of its core manufacturing out of China and into SE Asia is due to this reason. For example there was a consideration to make the new 8K image processing chips in a Chinese foundry, but fear of IP theft has pushed them to do it Japan and assemble the TVs in Thailand. Same for the high end cameras. Only the low margin impossible to copy stuff is going to stay in China (PS5, for example).
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/11/12/asia-pacific/nuclear-weapons-cost-sharing-south-korea/
China will do a deal with you. China won't rant against you in public. Why wouldn't you choose them as a partner over the US?
The cost - to the US - of this will be enormous over the next few decades.
Fifteen hours.
PB is a welcome distraction.
I have to confess I admire Martin Baxter's work on his Electoral Calculus site and now he must be burning the midnight oil to factor in the "sit outs" by TBP and the Remain Alliance. I wonder if any intended party candidates will "fail" to lodge nomination papers by 4pm tomorrow afternoon. For example is Liberal HQ going to send someone down to oversee the submission of a set of nomination papers for the Tim Walker replacement in Canterbury? I imagine a number of experienced party agents are sitting with blank nomination papers duly signed except for candidate name in case of last minute withdrawals because someone remembers that 30 years ago as a student a candidate called someone else a "banned" word!
Mind you Hong Kong looks like it will be "interesting" when he gets there!
'Basically the American Dream means benefitting from other people's misfortune.'
Kinda sums up the state of things in the US right now ...
It’s pretty horrible. There’s now a direct Dubai to LA, which is something around 16 hours, with 12 hours’ time difference.
Robert’s plane will land a day and a half after it took off, crossing the date line backwards westbound in the Pacific. That really screws with you.
A Labour member beaten in the race for a plum seat by a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn has hit out at the party's "crooked" candidate selection process.
Sundip Meghani lost out to Claudia Webbe in the race to contest Labour-held Leicester East at the general election. Islington councillor Ms Webbe is a member of Labour's ruling national executive committee and had tried unsuccessfully to be chosen as the party's candidate in a number of constituencies. She was chosen as the candidate in Leicester seat - which Keith Vaz held with a majority of more than 22,000 in 2017 - by a selection panel including two NEC members.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Mr Meghani, a lead investigator at the Independent Office for Police Conduct, said: "In my job I challenge abuse of power and corruption - and as a Labour member I fight injustice and unfairness. "So I cannot stay silent on the obvious dodgy practices and nepotism involved in this process, where Labour's ruling executive chose a member of Labour's ruling executive as the candidiate."
He added: "This type of conduct, where a well-connected favourite is nodded through, is no better than the Etonian old boys' network that Labour seeks to condemn."
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/107950/snubbed-labour-candidate-slams-partys-crooked
Assuming he’s able to win both the democratic nomination and the presidency, maybe he can arrest the slide.
I was shocked last time I was there earlier this year. Really, really, shocked. Homeless everywhere, or they would be if the authorities weren't busing them in from the suburbs and outlying towns into the city centres so that the inhabitants of wisteria lanes don't have to view them. New York metros and even mainline stations are places of routine fights amongst homeless who are often drunk or high.
The place is hell. I wouldn't live there if you paid me a fortune to do so. And this is what we want to emulate? God help us.
(Sorry Robert)
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/21/doing-good-selfless/
Right, some of us aren’t on a plane and have work to do. Laters!
This is just one reason why the debates and the arrangement of them are so flawed.
Should Farage have a place? He could lead the largest party. And the party he leads won the European Election. But he has no MPs and is sliding in the polls.
Should Sturgeon have a place? Like Farage, she isn't even standing to be an MP. Literally nobody watching will be able to vote for her. She also has a clear upper ceiling of support. There is no chance her party will form a majority. But she does lead the largest party in Scotland, and the governing party of Holyrood.
Debates work far better in a presidential system. Right now, politicians, and the media, jockey for position to try and work debate formats to their advantage. On top of sucking up far more media time than they deserve (because broadcasters love them), there are plenty of reasons to dislike these little slices of theatre.
At the same time, Cheltenham isn't quite the gimme everyone is assuming. Meanwhile, I think David Drew in Stroud is almost certainly a lost cause for Labour, but as it's Labour's only local marginal or indeed realistic target expect them to throw the kitchen sink at it.
https://twitter.com/jdportes/status/1194336599842144256/photo/1
Of course, if true, the aphorisms originator should be obscure or unknown!
I explained my view on here last night.
By not standing in 317 seats the BXP makes it impossible for Nigel to pass that very simple threshold.
Heck the BXP aren't standing in even half the seats in England so it opens the question of should he appear in any nationwide show if over 50% of viewers can't vote for you.
Leicester folk will have to retire to Skeggy again, not the Costas. The rich will be fine in Tuscany, free movement is considerably easier for those with money.
If YouGov is anything like the final result, Labour's entire election spend will have been wasted on a highly flammable firewall. How far beyond that structure the fire spreads will be the story of election night.
Is Swinson really going to force a candidate vs Rosie Duffield..
Seems.some sort of Mexican standoff taking place at present
I agree the Conservatives have picked up with the decline of the BXP, mind.
I never felt the LDs had much of a chance in the South West. Bollocks to Brexit works in South West London, but is less compelling in Cornwall and Devon.
Edit: And wasn't Vaz the previous MP actually not from Leicester?
I'm an arty-farty type (hence the occasional poetry) and not a mathematician so the fact that something doesn't ring true may be all down to me.
Leaving aside the fact that YouGov starts with polling much more favourable to the blues, here's my perplexity. Okay, so I don't see how a poll can show a higher Cons figure when you take out the non-BXP seats. You cannot remove a region (Cons held seats) and then apply the net loss to the national figure. Either the figures are national polling figures, or they're not. If they are regional breakdowns then we should have the regional breakdowns.
Forgive my ignorance, but this methodology looks totally flawed.
I'm also not factoring in the inevitable small sample size once you begin chopping out a region.
I guess the other way of putting this more simply is that the Conservatives don't hold a 14% lead across all the non-tory held seats. Right? If YouGov are going to try this then they need to poll every constituency, remove all the blue seats, and then release the figures for all the remaining 'regions' (non tory held seats).
Otherwise this looks to me like a crock of sh*t.
He looked dumbfounded and said the 4 day week will not happen for the next ten years
Burley obvious retort was so the 4 day week promise is an illusion
Sums up labour
Have a good morning.
The LDs hopes in the Cotswolds were given a boost by the incumbent's misbehaviour at the Party Conference. (Sent home for causing an altercation.)
Have a good day.
Spain’s economy depends upon such people so I don’t expect too many obstacles to be placed in the way.
There was a kettle across the kitchen which I'd have thought would be redundant with a boiling water tap... ?
Let me put it this way.
How many former Councillors for Islington end up as MPs? And how many former Councillors for Rhondda-Cynon-Taff end up as MPs? Why are those numbers so very different?
They already have enough from the tories! 😂
Electric jets seem to be a very long time off but electricity can be used to create hydrogen and the only emission from hydrogen cars is water vapor from memory - could jets be powered that way?
It sounded very aggressive towards labour, but if you think about it for a minute any sign Jo Swinson was helping Corbyn would have a really negative affect to any conservatives who might just lend her a vote at this GE
1. Relatively low energy density. You need a lot of space to store even compressed hydrogen.
2. Jet engines are really good at going at high speeds. Using hydrogen to generate electricity to power a prop would limit achieveable speeds to perhaps 400mph.