If the cut through tomorrow around the water cooler is that he is nailed on for a decent majority of 60+ then some voters will think twice, given the unconscious wished result is a plague on both crap houses.
LOL! If Con was on course to lose the election that would be bad news. But Con being on course to win the election is bad news as well?
Seems like whatever happens its a terrrrrrrrrrrrrible night for the Tories on PB sometimes.
If I was Boris I know I'd prefer this MRP to the 2017 MRP anyway.
If I was Boris, I wouldn’t give a shit about any MRP. Politics is based upon arithmetic, and it is the exam result that counts, not the prelims.
Too many PB Tories are falling into a classic trap: believing their own hype.
Ynys Mon - Labour popular long term MP is standing down so expect Labour majority to slide in any case. Seat is held very confortably by Plaid in the Senedd, with large activist base. Conservative candidate parachuted in from London has not started well but local demographics in her favour. Brexit candidate will strip votes from Labour & Con. Plaid/LD/Green alliance wont have much impact.
This seat is now a Plaid -Con marginal. I predict a narrow Plaid gain with Labour in 3rd place
Ynys Mon - Labour popular long term MP is standing down so expect Labour majority to slide in any case. Seat is held very confortably by Plaid in the Senedd, with large activist base. Conservative candidate parachuted in from London has not started well but local demographics in her favour. Brexit candidate will strip votes from Labour & Con. Plaid/LD/Green alliance wont have much impact.
This seat is now a Plaid -Con marginal. I predict a narrow Plaid gain with Labour in 3rd place
I'd expect a Plaid victory but the YouGov study is saying the Conservatives will win fairly easily with 35% to 28% for the other two parties.
If the cut through tomorrow around the water cooler is that he is nailed on for a decent majority of 60+ then some voters will think twice, given the unconscious wished result is a plague on both crap houses.
LOL! If Con was on course to lose the election that would be bad news. But Con being on course to win the election is bad news as well?
Seems like whatever happens its a terrrrrrrrrrrrrible night for the Tories on PB sometimes.
If I was Boris I know I'd prefer this MRP to the 2017 MRP anyway.
If I was Boris, I wouldn’t give a shit about any MRP. Politics is based upon arithmetic, and it is the exam result that counts, not the prelims.
Too many PB Tories are falling into a classic trap: believing their own hype.
YouGov study: LDs to poll less than 10% in 316 constituencies. More in 295.
If they're on 14% nationally, then they want to get sub 10% in as many seats as possible.
True.
On another subject, is there anything more British than the fact that only 8 people (just 2 the previous time I checked) have commented on Dominic Cummings' latest blog post despite it being widely publicised yesterday? If Donald Trump's main advisor did a blog post and left the comments open to the public there'd probably be thousands of comments, mostly from opponents.
Or perhaps there have been a lot more and they've been removed. I should have thought of that possibility.
Labour to change strategy with two weeks to go https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50580699 Let’s hope the Tories have wargamed these obvious tactics and have a plan for the last 2 weeks of the campaign. Otherwise it’s definitely squeaky bum time...
Ynys Mon - Labour popular long term MP is standing down so expect Labour majority to slide in any case. Seat is held very confortably by Plaid in the Senedd, with large activist base. Conservative candidate parachuted in from London has not started well but local demographics in her favour. Brexit candidate will strip votes from Labour & Con. Plaid/LD/Green alliance wont have much impact.
This seat is now a Plaid -Con marginal. I predict a narrow Plaid gain with Labour in 3rd place
I'd expect a Plaid victory but the YouGov study is saying the Conservatives will win fairly easily with 35% to 28% for the other two parties.
There are a number of funny looking results like that in the model - Cambridge as safe Labour for one. It will certainly be a triumph for MRP if this turns out to be a reasonably accurate prediction of the result at the end of the day, but I don't buy it.
They're reporting on the BBC this morning that Labour is planning to give more prominent roles to Leave-backing shadow cabinet members for the remainder of the campaign, and to try to deflect attention from Brexit to other topics, over the next two weeks in the run-up to polling day, in an effort to lure the Labour Leavers - but, frankly, it looks like they're already winning their voters back. They probably just need to say "NHS" 7,000 times a day between now and December 12th and the theoretical Tory majority ought to evaporate.
The key will be whether the Labour vote rises further of it the Tories can stem the flow. The headlines over the last couple of days might help the Tories, but we’ve seen how good the labour machine can be at wooing people back in the closing stages.
Ynys Mon - Labour popular long term MP is standing down so expect Labour majority to slide in any case. Seat is held very confortably by Plaid in the Senedd, with large activist base. Conservative candidate parachuted in from London has not started well but local demographics in her favour. Brexit candidate will strip votes from Labour & Con. Plaid/LD/Green alliance wont have much impact.
This seat is now a Plaid -Con marginal. I predict a narrow Plaid gain with Labour in 3rd place
I'd expect a Plaid victory but the YouGov study is saying the Conservatives will win fairly easily with 35% to 28% for the other two parties.
There are a number of funny looking results like that in the model - Cambridge as safe Labour for one. It will certainly be a triumph for MRP if this turns out to be a reasonably accurate prediction of the result at the end of the day, but I don't buy it.
They're reporting on the BBC this morning that Labour is planning to give more prominent roles to Leave-backing shadow cabinet members for the remainder of the campaign, and to try to deflect attention from Brexit to other topics, over the next two weeks in the run-up to polling day, in an effort to lure the Labour Leavers - but, frankly, it looks like they're already winning their voters back. They probably just need to say "NHS" 7,000 times a day between now and December 12th and the theoretical Tory majority ought to evaporate.
No, for Labour the key is getting a high turnout of the under forties. No one is changing their mind at this point, it is all GOTV and tactical voting.
If the cut through tomorrow around the water cooler is that he is nailed on for a decent majority of 60+ then some voters will think twice, given the unconscious wished result is a plague on both crap houses.
LOL! If Con was on course to lose the election that would be bad news. But Con being on course to win the election is bad news as well?
Seems like whatever happens its a terrrrrrrrrrrrrible night for the Tories on PB sometimes.
If I was Boris I know I'd prefer this MRP to the 2017 MRP anyway.
If I was Boris, I wouldn’t give a shit about any MRP. Politics is based upon arithmetic, and it is the exam result that counts, not the prelims.
Too many PB Tories are falling into a classic trap: believing their own hype.
Isn't it YouGov's "hype" not the Tories'?
Err... no. I invite you to peruse Tory comments on social media during the last eight hours.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50580699 "a key error was that the Liberal Democrat threat was overestimated, while the willingness of Leave voters to switch from Labour to the Conservatives was underestimated."
Constituency markets notably unimpressed with the YG MRP. Eg, neither Caithness nor East Dunbartonshire nor Edinburgh West moved one iota, despite YG claim that SLDs in deep trouble.
Caithness: LD 4/7 SNP 2/1 East Dunbartonshire: LD 2/7 SNP 3/1 Edinburgh West: LD 4/11 SNP 9/4
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
If the cut through tomorrow around the water cooler is that he is nailed on for a decent majority of 60+ then some voters will think twice, given the unconscious wished result is a plague on both crap houses.
LOL! If Con was on course to lose the election that would be bad news. But Con being on course to win the election is bad news as well?
Seems like whatever happens its a terrrrrrrrrrrrrible night for the Tories on PB sometimes.
If I was Boris I know I'd prefer this MRP to the 2017 MRP anyway.
If I was Boris, I wouldn’t give a shit about any MRP. Politics is based upon arithmetic, and it is the exam result that counts, not the prelims.
Too many PB Tories are falling into a classic trap: believing their own hype.
Isn't it YouGov's "hype" not the Tories'?
Err... no. I invite you to peruse Tory comments on social media during the last eight hours.
If the cut through tomorrow around the water cooler is that he is nailed on for a decent majority of 60+ then some voters will think twice, given the unconscious wished result is a plague on both crap houses.
LOL! If Con was on course to lose the election that would be bad news. But Con being on course to win the election is bad news as well?
Seems like whatever happens its a terrrrrrrrrrrrrible night for the Tories on PB sometimes.
If I was Boris I know I'd prefer this MRP to the 2017 MRP anyway.
If I was Boris, I wouldn’t give a shit about any MRP. Politics is based upon arithmetic, and it is the exam result that counts, not the prelims.
Too many PB Tories are falling into a classic trap: believing their own hype.
Isn't it YouGov's "hype" not the Tories'?
Err... no. I invite you to peruse Tory comments on social media during the last eight hours.
You referred to PB Tories.
A blog is social media. Peruse the last eight hours on PB. An awful lot of premature ejaculation.
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
This is a familiar pattern, which we also saw with MPs rebelling over Iraq and the current ex-Tories like Grieve and Soubry. Rebel MPs get polite acknowledgements from people who voted against them, before proceeding to vote against them again. Meanwhile, some loyalists stay at home.
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
This is a familiar pattern, which we also saw with MPs rebelling over Iraq and the current ex-Tories like Grieve and Soubry. Rebel MPs get polite acknowledgements from people who voted against them, before proceeding to vote against them again. Meanwhile, some loyalists stay at home.
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
Since the model works by starting from a very small sample of local voters - as I recall fewer than a hundred - and then projects demographic-based voting behaviour based on regional and national polling onto the seat to make up the result - I would have thought a weakness of this approach is determining accurately the level of support for Indy’s like Field or the TIGs?
I don’t expect them to win, just wonder how accurate the MRP can be for such candidates?
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
The other point now is that the YouGov MRP is so trusted now that it might generate its own feedback loop, in terms of helping the LibDems catch the Tories in the batch of seats where it shows good second places. Not least because any LibDem candidate in such a seat will be plastering the YouGov prediction over their closing campaign leaflets in an attempt to bring across the tactical anti-Tory voters. This could be decisive in the Winchesters, South Cambs etc.
Plus I’d have expected the MRP approach to struggle a little with assessing a very active but locally focused ground campaign, since people of similar demographics in other seats won’t have been affected. Although I remember making the same point last time and it didn’t do the LDs any good.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
PB has been far too focused on Brexit. This election is going to be decided by much more boring, golden-oldie topics, eg:
NI: the Union Wales: living standards Scotland: the Union England: ongoing national decline; now into its 2nd century.
Certainly in Scotland the Union continues to trump Brexit which is why the Tory vote is holding up so much better than expected post Ruth. Swinson had better hope it does in East Dumbartonshire too.
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
This is a familiar pattern, which we also saw with MPs rebelling over Iraq and the current ex-Tories like Grieve and Soubry. Rebel MPs get polite acknowledgements from people who voted against them, before proceeding to vote against them again. Meanwhile, some loyalists stay at home.
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
"I like trees. Trees are nice. Labour likes trees. Labour are nice. I like Labour, I am nice." Substitute Labour for Tory/LibDem/Brexit Party etc... This rare cross party consensus is good news for the nation's acorn and conker suppliers!
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
The other point now is that the YouGov MRP is so trusted now that it might generate its own feedback loop, in terms of helping the LibDems catch the Tories in the batch of seats where it shows good second places. Not least because any LibDem candidate in such a seat will be plastering the YouGov prediction over their closing campaign leaflets in an attempt to bring across the tactical anti-Tory voters. This could be decisive in the Winchesters, South Cambs etc.
Plus I’d have expected the MRP approach to struggle a little with assessing a very active but locally focused ground campaign, since people of similar demographics in other seats won’t have been affected. Although I remember making the same point last time and it didn’t do the LDs any good.
Problem is if yougov is correct there are only 3 or 4 seats more they can win. It’s a shocker. 95% on voters won’t know or care about the MRP too so won’t take the tactical voting plea any more seriously
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
I would tend to agree. Before the Lib Dems can really recover they need to re-establish themselves as the alternative. After both 2015 and 2017 they simply weren't in far too much of the country. Second places are important for their future. +1 MPs seems way too pessimistic to me but I can see them struggling to get past 20 this time.
I really, really cannot see the Tories taking Ynys Mon, although I expect Labour to lose it. As far as I can tell their candidate doesn't speak Welsh, and that will be a killer in that seat. If Plaid do not take Ynys Mon they've had a dreadful night.
On the subject of trees: one billion trees is nearly twenty (nearer 17 in fact) for each person in the country. Large scale planting in the Lake District and Highlands of Scotland would be the only way to do it I think.
Caithness 1% S Cambs, NE Fife 2% Winchester 3% Cheadle, Guilford 5% Lewis, N Norfolk, St Ives 6% Kensington 8% Hazel Grove 9% Eastbourne, Wokingham, Ceredigion 10% Wells, Esher, Chelsea 11% TAY 12% Wimbledon, Cities 13% Brecon 14% Wantage, Putney 15%
If 15% counts as a near miss then the Lib Dems are in more trouble than I thought.
Have to say that I would be astonished if they lost Caithness. Taking NE Fife is harder but I think more likely than not. South Cambs looks a good bet too. After that it gets a bit trickier but they were pretty confident about Winchester earlier in the campaign.
If some of this type of stuff comes to pass, then 2019 will be a watershed election
97 is a bad year to choose - I think it’s well known that PM candidates (ie not Jo) get a boost in their seat as people like to vote for the “bloke off the telly”
I really, really cannot see the Tories taking Ynys Mon, although I expect Labour to lose it. As far as I can tell their candidate doesn't speak Welsh, and that will be a killer in that seat. If Plaid do not take Ynys Mon they've had a dreadful night.
Morning all and probably this has been discussed down thread but I was struck last night by how similar the YouGov MRP was to the earlier Tactical Voting projection. Are almost all the suggested changes in seats also the same. Speaking for my own seat, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, the SNP sneaking it is as I said on here last week what I have increasingly been hearing. The unionist vote appears to be hardening round Andrew Sinclair the SCon candidate and in the last few days blue SCon and Andrew Sinclair posters have started appearing all over the constituency. He was elected as one of the 10 news Tory councillors at the last election in 2016 and represents Wick in a 3 member multi-member ward which used to be solid Labour territory.
Conservatives wondering why pie-in-the-sky Labour policies seem to have some traction might instead ask themselves what the problem might be for an incumbent government whose only policy is to sign up for the equivalent of a severe recession because the compromises of the modern world are all too difficult.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
"I like trees. Trees are nice. Labour likes trees. Labour are nice. I like Labour, I am nice." Substitute Labour for Tory/LibDem/Brexit Party etc... This rare cross party consensus is good news for the nation's acorn and conker suppliers!
In fairness completely covering Wales in trees is one of the better uses I have seen for it.
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
This is a familiar pattern, which we also saw with MPs rebelling over Iraq and the current ex-Tories like Grieve and Soubry. Rebel MPs get polite acknowledgements from people who voted against them, before proceeding to vote against them again. Meanwhile, some loyalists stay at home.
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
Since the model works by starting from a very small sample of local voters - as I recall fewer than a hundred - and then projects demographic-based voting behaviour based on regional and national polling onto the seat to make up the result - I would have thought a weakness of this approach is determining accurately the level of support for Indy’s like Field or the TIGs?
I don’t expect them to win, just wonder how accurate the MRP can be for such candidates?
Last time round the MRP severely overestimated Claire Wright's appeal over the Tories in East Devon.
O/T - Labour nationalisations. Most of discussion has been about how they would compensate shareholders with “bonds” (and today - whether this would be legal under EU law).
But on a different tack - what happens to Corporate bondholders in these companies? Especially in companies like Thames Water which would presumably effectively cease to exist? I’m presuming that most of the large investment they have made into infrastructure in recent years (“replacing Victorian network”) has been initially funded by debt, to be met from existing and future revenues. Are these bonds going to be swapped with Govt bonds as well?
Conservatives wondering why pie-in-the-sky Labour policies seem to have some traction might instead ask themselves what the problem might be for an incumbent government whose only policy is to sign up for the equivalent of a severe recession because the compromises of the modern world are all too difficult.
The important question is, given the Tories will be in power for five years and yet their manifesto has nothing in it, what are they really going to get up to in that time? Brexit-inspired Thatcherite deregulation is the obvious answer.
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
Also they are crap and elected a Tory donkey of a leader. They need to learn from their mistakes , not prolong them.
O/T - Labour nationalisations. Most of discussion has been about how they would compensate shareholders with “bonds” (and today - whether this would be legal under EU law).
But on a different tack - what happens to Corporate bondholders in these companies? Especially in companies like Thames Water which would presumably effectively cease to exist? I’m presuming that most of the large investment they have made into infrastructure in recent years (“replacing Victorian network”) has been initially funded by debt, to be met from existing and future revenues. Are these bonds going to be swapped with Govt bonds as well?
I think that expecting the policy to have been thought through to that level of detail by a party that thinks bonds don’t count as government borrowing may be asking a bit much.
O/T - Labour nationalisations. Most of discussion has been about how they would compensate shareholders with “bonds” (and today - whether this would be legal under EU law).
But on a different tack - what happens to Corporate bondholders in these companies? Especially in companies like Thames Water which would presumably effectively cease to exist? I’m presuming that most of the large investment they have made into infrastructure in recent years (“replacing Victorian network”) has been initially funded by debt, to be met from existing and future revenues. Are these bonds going to be swapped with Govt bonds as well?
Not sure why they would. A change of shareholder does not per se affect the bondholder. But I have little doubt that the OBR would insist on those bonds being brought onto the government balance sheet as government debt making our debt/GDP ratio even worse.
PB has been far too focused on Brexit. This election is going to be decided by much more boring, golden-oldie topics, eg:
NI: the Union Wales: living standards Scotland: the Union England: ongoing national decline; now into its 2nd century.
Certainly in Scotland the Union continues to trump Brexit which is why the Tory vote is holding up so much better than expected post Ruth. Swinson had better hope it does in East Dumbartonshire too.
Only a matter of time David,the unionists have had it in Scotland.
Conservatives wondering why pie-in-the-sky Labour policies seem to have some traction might instead ask themselves what the problem might be for an incumbent government whose only policy is to sign up for the equivalent of a severe recession because the compromises of the modern world are all too difficult.
The important question is, given the Tories will be in power for five years and yet their manifesto has nothing in it, what are they really going to get up to in that time? Brexit-inspired Thatcherite deregulation is the obvious answer.
The obvious answer is that they think that getting Brexit done might take a day or two longer than the end of next year.
O/T - Labour nationalisations. Most of discussion has been about how they would compensate shareholders with “bonds” (and today - whether this would be legal under EU law).
But on a different tack - what happens to Corporate bondholders in these companies? Especially in companies like Thames Water which would presumably effectively cease to exist? I’m presuming that most of the large investment they have made into infrastructure in recent years (“replacing Victorian network”) has been initially funded by debt, to be met from existing and future revenues. Are these bonds going to be swapped with Govt bonds as well?
The legal entity which issued the bonds would still exist, it's just it's sole shareholder would be Her Majesty's Government.
The bonds (or bank debt) would therefore continue to exist.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
Also they are crap and elected a Tory donkey of a leader. They need to learn from their mistakes , not prolong them.
malcy, I'm sure the LibDems would love your advice on which - if any - of their current MPs wouldn't be "a Tory donkey of a leader".
The seat forecast I find most puzzling is the SNP gaining Caithness from the LDs. I'd be pretty surprised if that actually happens on election night.
I wouldn't. A Liberal chum told me last week that on the doorsteps they are finding the unionist vote heading strongly to Andrew Sinclair. Said Liberal chum described it now as a 3-way marginal. I am hoping Andrew will make it that but dont expect him to win this time.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
Conservatives wondering why pie-in-the-sky Labour policies seem to have some traction might instead ask themselves what the problem might be for an incumbent government whose only policy is to sign up for the equivalent of a severe recession because the compromises of the modern world are all too difficult.
The important question is, given the Tories will be in power for five years and yet their manifesto has nothing in it, what are they really going to get up to in that time? Brexit-inspired Thatcherite deregulation is the obvious answer.
Not going to happen. A FTA agreement with the EU will require a high degree of regulatory equivalence. No doubt there will be the odd gesture but the general pattern will remain the same.
I know its a bit optimistic but they might just spend the 5 years sorting out Social care, student debt, infrastructure investment, education etc. That would be nice.
I really, really cannot see the Tories taking Ynys Mon, although I expect Labour to lose it. As far as I can tell their candidate doesn't speak Welsh, and that will be a killer in that seat. If Plaid do not take Ynys Mon they've had a dreadful night.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
Iffy stats. 12-15 ft more usually recommended for apples on mm106 which is a biggish rootstock. And fruit trees are a special case because you want maximum horizontal spread for ease of harvesting. For non fruit trees (you don't mean hardwood - all fruit trees are hardwood) you don't care and you can let them follow their natural instinct and grow upwards as hard as they can.
Not disputing it's still a lorra trees.
Not wanting to put ideas in their heads but if you abolished grouse shooting that's a lot of uplands you could rewood .
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
Nice theory. Tories however have selected another non-resident as their candidate. Here today, gone tomorrow etc. We're a bit local round here.
Um, the Conservative candidate lives in the constituency (unlike Caroline Flint) and has lived in the Doncaster area all his life. Much better than the previous Tory! There's no need to lie just because you don't like the results. https://www.doncasterconservatives.org/news/nick-fletcher-don-valley
PB has been far too focused on Brexit. This election is going to be decided by much more boring, golden-oldie topics, eg:
NI: the Union Wales: living standards Scotland: the Union England: ongoing national decline; now into its 2nd century.
Certainly in Scotland the Union continues to trump Brexit which is why the Tory vote is holding up so much better than expected post Ruth. Swinson had better hope it does in East Dumbartonshire too.
Only a matter of time David,the unionists have had it in Scotland.
I think we have actually passed peak independence. Sturgeon is going to be seriously damaged by that trial and the SNP have no one else even close to the competence of either Salmond or Sturgeon. They have been remarkably fortunate in their leaders for a very considerable time. That time may be drawing to a close.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
Blimey. How long do you think it takes to plant a tree?
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
If you have the land to plant it on, possibly not. Its yet another magic (money) tree idea from Labour.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
Iffy stats. 12-15 ft more usually recommended for apples on mm106 which is a biggish rootstock. And fruit trees are a special case because you want maximum horizontal spread for ease of harvesting. For non fruit trees (you don't mean hardwood - all fruit trees are hardwood) you don't care and you can let them follow their natural instinct and grow upwards as hard as they can.
Not disputing it's still a lorra trees.
Not wanting to put ideas in their heads but if you abolished grouse shooting that's a lot of uplands you could rewood .
One thing that struck me in the US was that pretty much every hill and mountain had trees all over it, in a way that is unusual in Europe (I never got to the desert-y bits). Although it was attractive it did make the scenery of upland areas very samey, and when you walked up a hill often you didn’t get any views even when you got to the top, unless there was a fire tower. It was a reminder of how things were here until people came along.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
Iffy stats. 12-15 ft more usually recommended for apples on mm106 which is a biggish rootstock. And fruit trees are a special case because you want maximum horizontal spread for ease of harvesting. For non fruit trees (you don't mean hardwood - all fruit trees are hardwood) you don't care and you can let them follow their natural instinct and grow upwards as hard as they can.
Not disputing it's still a lorra trees.
Not wanting to put ideas in their heads but if you abolished grouse shooting that's a lot of uplands you could rewood .
One thing that struck me in the US was that pretty much every hill and mountain had trees all over it, in a way that is unusual in Europe (I never got to the desert-y bits). Although it was attractive it did make the scenery of upland areas very samey, and when you walked up a hill often you didn’t get any views even when you got to the top, unless there was a fire tower. It was a reminder of how things were here until people came along.
People with sheep. I have rights of common on Dartmoor, and it's astonishing what an artificial construct a wilderness actually is.
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
This is a familiar pattern, which we also saw with MPs rebelling over Iraq and the current ex-Tories like Grieve and Soubry. Rebel MPs get polite acknowledgements from people who voted against them, before proceeding to vote against them again. Meanwhile, some loyalists stay at home.
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
Since the model works by starting from a very small sample of local voters - as I recall fewer than a hundred - and then projects demographic-based voting behaviour based on regional and national polling onto the seat to make up the result - I would have thought a weakness of this approach is determining accurately the level of support for Indy’s like Field or the TIGs?
I don’t expect them to win, just wonder how accurate the MRP can be for such candidates?
Last time round the MRP severely overestimated Claire Wright's appeal over the Tories in East Devon.
You’re right - and I remember wondering then how the model could do that. Nothing in any of the descriptions I have read suggests how you can use demographics to work out whether people are going to vote for an Independent standing in one constituency.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
Iffy stats. 12-15 ft more usually recommended for apples on mm106 which is a biggish rootstock. And fruit trees are a special case because you want maximum horizontal spread for ease of harvesting. For non fruit trees (you don't mean hardwood - all fruit trees are hardwood) you don't care and you can let them follow their natural instinct and grow upwards as hard as they can.
Not disputing it's still a lorra trees.
Not wanting to put ideas in their heads but if you abolished grouse shooting that's a lot of uplands you could rewood .
Isnt moorland a unique environment ?
Can really see the point in plastering them with conifers, that was one of the big criticisms of earlier plantings
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
If you have the land to plant it on, possibly not. Its yet another magic (money) tree idea from Labour.
I find a 2015 article stating that there are 3 billion trees in the UK. Labour policy then is roughly to increase the number of trees by two-thirds over twenty years. I can envisage the incentives that would encourage land to switch from marginal agriculture to forestry/woodland, so land isn't necessarily a problem. The supply of trees is more likely to be problematic, particularly with the disease risks of importing them.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is unceoris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
If you have the land to plant it on, possibly not. Its yet another magic (money) tree idea from Labour.
I find a 2015 article stating that there are 3 billion trees in the UK. Labour policy then is roughly to increase the number of trees by two-thirds over twenty years. I can envisage the incentives that would encourage land to switch from marginal agriculture to forestry/woodland, so land isn't necessarily a problem. The supply of trees is more likely to be problematic, particularly with the disease risks of importing them.
Just plant one sycamore and in 20 years there will be two billion of the bastards.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Stunning that Chris Mason apparently needed help with that calculation
Caithness 1% S Cambs, NE Fife 2% Winchester 3% Cheadle, Guilford 5% Lewis, N Norfolk, St Ives 6% Kensington 8% Hazel Grove 9% Eastbourne, Wokingham, Ceredigion 10% Wells, Esher, Chelsea 11% TAY 12% Wimbledon, Cities 13% Brecon 14% Wantage, Putney 15%
There are some fascinating differences between B4B and yougov. B4B does not have s cambs as close, but it has the LDs winning Wimbledon.
Which is a reminder that the demographic modelling is jiggerypokery and you still have to get to the right model. Last time was more straightforward in that what MRP picked up was the Labour appeal and the shift toward age/education in terms of the Tory/Labour split. There wasn’t a LibDem challenge, nor a Remain Alliance, nor a batch of independents trying to defend their seats. Modelling 2019 is a bit more challenging that 2017.
Clearly reading the comments on this thread very few of you have any idea what is involved in large scale tree planting. For a start, the majority of tree planting in the UK takes place on upland hills, usually in sparsely populated areas. Just drive through Cumbria, North Yorkshire, the Borders or Scottish Highlands to get the picture. Large scale infrastructure planning has to go into major planting, often involving creating miles of rough track roads to give access and the erection of bridges and pontoons to cross rivers, moor land and bogs. The last time we had major planting was in the 1970s and early 1980s when from memory there were huge tax breaks under Schedule A which enabled people like Terry Wogan and the popstars of the day to avoid £100,000s in tax. They mass planted crap fast growing Norwegian spruce trees which for the last 30 years ecologists have been trying to remove because they destroy the native landscapes. Just ask the people of Caithness about the damage to the Flow country!!
I find a 2015 article stating that there are 3 billion trees in the UK. Labour policy then is roughly to increase the number of trees by two-thirds over twenty years. I can envisage the incentives that would encourage land to switch from marginal agriculture to forestry/woodland, so land isn't necessarily a problem. The supply of trees is more likely to be problematic, particularly with the disease risks of importing them.
Does it have to be a mature tree. Will an acorn do the trick? You could easily cultivate and plant millions of those. Whilst the numbers are 'interesting', the romantic in me likes the idea of our generation restoring Britains woodland. A legacy of which we could be truly proud.
2 billion trees huh Labour? 20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity) But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre. 200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required. Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres. So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Wales is 5.1237 million acres. So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge. Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
Iffy stats. 12-15 ft more usually recommended for apples on mm106 which is a biggish rootstock. And fruit trees are a special case because you want maximum horizontal spread for ease of harvesting. For non fruit trees (you don't mean hardwood - all fruit trees are hardwood) you don't care and you can let them follow their natural instinct and grow upwards as hard as they can.
Not disputing it's still a lorra trees.
Not wanting to put ideas in their heads but if you abolished grouse shooting that's a lot of uplands you could rewood .
Isnt moorland a unique environment ?
Can really see the point in plastering them with conifers, that was one of the big criticisms of earlier plantings
Yes it's an absolutely rubbish idea. Just saying it's possible.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
If you have the land to plant it on, possibly not. Its yet another magic (money) tree idea from Labour.
I find a 2015 article stating that there are 3 billion trees in the UK. Labour policy then is roughly to increase the number of trees by two-thirds over twenty years. I can envisage the incentives that would encourage land to switch from marginal agriculture to forestry/woodland, so land isn't necessarily a problem. The supply of trees is more likely to be problematic, particularly with the disease risks of importing them.
Interesting that Andrew Neill's interviews caused such consternation. He asked the obvious question and didn't allow the usual non-answers. Why do political interviewers usually show deference to the thick, and evasive, allowing them to use the time as a party political broadcast full of lies and half-truths?
I stopped watching most of these years ago because the sight of politicians treating the voters as fools and being aided and abetted by the TV interviewers did little for my digestion.
We may end up with the MPs we deserve but no one elected the interviewers. Laura K at least tries a little and Emma Barnet is reasonable with males, but she often simpers when interviewing women.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
Another good example of the national dyscalculia I was describing yesterday. It is a major problem and the inability to count both in politics and the media is undermining our democracy.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
Employing 10,000 people to plant 30 per day each doesn't seem impossible or unreasonable.
Blimey. How long do you think it takes to plant a tree?
Er, I planted a tree in my garden recently. I dug a small hole, put the tree in, filled in the hole. It can't have taken more than twenty minutes.
On the subject of trees: one billion trees is nearly twenty (nearer 17 in fact) for each person in the country. Large scale planting in the Lake District and Highlands of Scotland would be the only way to do it I think.
And such planting would be castastrophic for peat land and native fauna. As a councillor I have had a couple of emails from the FOTE website demanding we double tree cover. Who is going to pay for the use of the fields ? The trees produced on high ground would be at best sickly even if they lived. Native trees will not grow above 900 ft - well not in any meaningful way. There are many areas where modern conservation was a reaction to Economic Forestry in the 1970s planting softwoods. This was particularly true in Exmoor. Here in Yorkshire Dales they were going to cut them down, then discovered they were the only place Red Squirrels were thriving.
And, when you have planted them, thinned them, left them, they eventually start to fall over. So, at that point you have to harvest the essentially worthless crop of mal-formed and stunted trees. In theory it can be done at a profit but I don't know of many instances where that has happened. So, you have to put roads in and the eco people object to that as well, and the lorries and the shit on the roads.
And after harvesting the land then has to be squared up or re-planted. I think these people who are advocating this nonsense need to be invited to the forestry in Garsdale or Dentdale for a photoshoot.
I THINK you would need to provide about £200 per acre per annum for 40 yrs for people to sign up to wreck the habitat on grade 5 or grade 6 land here in Yorkshire Dales. it would be an ecological disaster and a very expensive one. If Fysics Teacher is right above, and I think he is then that is about £11 Billion per annum, £460 billion in total.
MRP & Don Valley.. We are given to believe that BJ&co will be receiving an 8% majority, or 4000 on a 2017 turnout. Given Flinty had a 5000 lab Maj in 2017, and is quite well thought of hereabouts for actually supporting Leave (sort of), presumably nearly all of these ex pit villagers are now voting Tory. This in a seat last held by a non-lab MP in 1918. Not coincidentally, I suspect, at this last event the Tories didn't stand.. UGov are having a giraffe.
Flint will lose.
The problem that rebel Labour MPs have got is that their support for the Boris deal has not increased support for *them* as MPs but has hardened support for *Brexit* in their constituencies, and voters who want to "Get Brexit done" are much more likely to support Boris or Farage. In other words these MPs get no thanks at all from their constituents.
This is a familiar pattern, which we also saw with MPs rebelling over Iraq and the current ex-Tories like Grieve and Soubry. Rebel MPs get polite acknowledgements from people who voted against them, before proceeding to vote against them again. Meanwhile, some loyalists stay at home.
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
Since the model works by starting from a very small sample of local voters - as I recall fewer than a hundred - and then projects demographic-based voting behaviour based on regional and national polling onto the seat to make up the result - I would have thought a weakness of this approach is determining accurately the level of support for Indy’s like Field or the TIGs?
I don’t expect them to win, just wonder how accurate the MRP can be for such candidates?
Last time round the MRP severely overestimated Claire Wright's appeal over the Tories in East Devon.
You’re right - and I remember wondering then how the model could do that. Nothing in any of the descriptions I have read suggests how you can use demographics to work out whether people are going to vote for an Independent standing in one constituency.
+1 I wrote the model off for this reason - it just made it look like it hadn't been through proper review by people who actually understood electoral mechanics. On the other hand, she did have just about the largest error bar of any prediction in any seat in the country... but, even so ...
Comments
Too many PB Tories are falling into a classic trap: believing their own hype.
This seat is now a Plaid -Con marginal. I predict a narrow Plaid gain with Labour in 3rd place
On another subject, is there anything more British than the fact that only 8 people (just 2 the previous time I checked) have commented on Dominic Cummings' latest blog post despite it being widely publicised yesterday? If Donald Trump's main advisor did a blog post and left the comments open to the public there'd probably be thousands of comments, mostly from opponents.
Or perhaps there have been a lot more and they've been removed. I should have thought of that possibility.
https://dominiccummings.com/2019/11/27/on-the-referendum-34-batsignal-dont-let-corbyn-sturgeon-cheat-a-second-referendum-with-millions-of-foreign-votes/
Let’s hope the Tories have wargamed these obvious tactics and have a plan for the last 2 weeks of the campaign. Otherwise it’s definitely squeaky bum time...
They're reporting on the BBC this morning that Labour is planning to give more prominent roles to Leave-backing shadow cabinet members for the remainder of the campaign, and to try to deflect attention from Brexit to other topics, over the next two weeks in the run-up to polling day, in an effort to lure the Labour Leavers - but, frankly, it looks like they're already winning their voters back. They probably just need to say "NHS" 7,000 times a day between now and December 12th and the theoretical Tory majority ought to evaporate.
NI: the Union
Wales: living standards
Scotland: the Union
England: ongoing national decline; now into its 2nd century.
"a key error was that the Liberal Democrat threat was overestimated, while the willingness of Leave voters to switch from Labour to the Conservatives was underestimated."
Caithness: LD 4/7 SNP 2/1
East Dunbartonshire: LD 2/7 SNP 3/1
Edinburgh West: LD 4/11 SNP 9/4
SNP 3/4
SLab 11/4
SCon 16/5
I’m not saying they will Hold it, but nearly 3/1 is just a daft price. This is the strongest Labour constituency party north of the border.
The 2bn trees figure is straight out of the same playbook as the £58bn for the WASPI women, or the £250bn for the investment fund, or the £400bn for the state bank. Labour are just plucking numbers out of the air that are so vast as to be incomprehensible. They just go straight over the heads of the voters, and the vital fact - that all of these policies are therefore undeliverable - is lost. Voters just get some vague message about being handed out slabs of (other peoples') money or it being spent on hospitals and schools and trees and a zillion and one other nice things, and think that sounds rather wonderful.
That's how come we're going to end up with another Hung Parliament. All of the places where there were enough voters sceptical of these crackpot schemes to count against Labour were already lost to them the last time around. All the remaining seats clearly contain the necessary accumulation of core Labour voters plus those who are receptive to these telephone number figures. If anything, we should be expecting a more fanciful Labour offer than last time to be pushing a few Con-Lab marginals into the Labour column, which is why I hazarded a guess that the Tories (allowing also for a few losses to the SNP) ought to finish this election somewhere around the 300 mark.
The Conservatives have no effective defence against this strategy. All that they can do is resign themselves to a spell on the Opposition benches, wait for Labour to fail to deliver and hope that this teaches a sufficient number of voters a lesson.
"Nothing has changed"
On another subject, Sanders seems to be edging forwards - ahead of Buttigieg in New Hampshire, and a clear 2nd nationally with one tie with Biden. Bloomberg has merely joined the 3% pack though of course it's early days for him.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
LDs WINNING (now)HERE
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/28/bless-this-referendum-bougainville-votes-and-prays-for-independence
20 feet apart for long term viability (recommended for fruit trees - larger spacing for hardwoods unless you are going to thin them later - but then that is not 2 billion trees to maturity)
But lets really squash them in a bit closer and say 200 to the acre.
200 to the acre. 2,000,000,000 trees = 10,000,000 acres required.
Yorkshire is 2,900,000 acres.
So three and half Yorkshires covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge.
Wales is 5.1237 million acres.
So two plots the size of Wales covered in trees to meet Labour's pledge.
Did they even have access to a fag packet when they pulled that number out their arse?
https://twitter.com/gilesyb/status/1199943534817792000?s=21
What we are seeing now is the effect of the Lib Dems’ catastrophe in 2015. They are so out of contention that it will take several elections for them not to be squeezed so horribly.
I don’t expect them to win, just wonder how accurate the MRP can be for such candidates?
Plus I’d have expected the MRP approach to struggle a little with assessing a very active but locally focused ground campaign, since people of similar demographics in other seats won’t have been affected. Although I remember making the same point last time and it didn’t do the LDs any good.
Otherwise your post is way too pessimistic. Things are getting tighter and the outcome is uncertain but there is everything to play for. Having Boris instead of May is key. He knows how to campaign and how to win. She didn't.
F1: Latifi to drive for Williams next year:
https://twitter.com/adamcooperF1/status/1199947170411098112
He is the perfect example of the 'billionaire class'
Caithness 1%
S Cambs, NE Fife 2%
Winchester 3%
Cheadle, Guilford 5%
Lewis, N Norfolk, St Ives 6%
Kensington 8%
Hazel Grove 9%
Eastbourne, Wokingham, Ceredigion 10%
Wells, Esher, Chelsea 11%
TAY 12%
Wimbledon, Cities 13%
Brecon 14%
Wantage, Putney 15%
Substitute Labour for Tory/LibDem/Brexit Party etc... This rare cross party consensus is good news for the nation's acorn and conker suppliers!
DD 15% to the Tories everywhere and I wonder what their MRP majority is....
If Plaid do not take Ynys Mon they've had a dreadful night.
But on a different tack - what happens to Corporate bondholders in these companies? Especially in companies like Thames Water which would presumably effectively cease to exist? I’m presuming that most of the large investment they have made into infrastructure in recent years (“replacing Victorian network”) has been initially funded by debt, to be met from existing and future revenues. Are these bonds going to be swapped with Govt bonds as well?
Play nicely.
The bonds (or bank debt) would therefore continue to exist.
I know its a bit optimistic but they might just spend the 5 years sorting out Social care, student debt, infrastructure investment, education etc. That would be nice.
Not disputing it's still a lorra trees.
Not wanting to put ideas in their heads but if you abolished grouse shooting that's a lot of uplands you could rewood .
https://www.doncasterconservatives.org/news/nick-fletcher-don-valley
Can really see the point in plastering them with conifers, that was one of the big criticisms of earlier plantings
I can envisage the incentives that would encourage land to switch from marginal agriculture to forestry/woodland, so land isn't necessarily a problem. The supply of trees is more likely to be problematic, particularly with the disease risks of importing them.
Which is a reminder that the demographic modelling is jiggerypokery and you still have to get to the right model. Last time was more straightforward in that what MRP picked up was the Labour appeal and the shift toward age/education in terms of the Tory/Labour split. There wasn’t a LibDem challenge, nor a Remain Alliance, nor a batch of independents trying to defend their seats. Modelling 2019 is a bit more challenging that 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/13/tree-planting-in-england-falls-72-short-of-government-target
Personally I think the only plants here are the Labour Party.
Have a good morning.
Whilst the numbers are 'interesting', the romantic in me likes the idea of our generation restoring Britains woodland. A legacy of which we could be truly proud.
I stopped watching most of these years ago because the sight of politicians treating the voters as fools and being aided and abetted by the TV interviewers did little for my digestion.
We may end up with the MPs we deserve but no one elected the interviewers. Laura K at least tries a little and Emma Barnet is reasonable with males, but she often simpers when interviewing women.
The worry over giving the Tories a big majority could hurt them in some seats.
And, when you have planted them, thinned them, left them, they eventually start to fall over. So, at that point you have to harvest the essentially worthless crop of mal-formed and stunted trees. In theory it can be done at a profit but I don't know of many instances where that has happened. So, you have to put roads in and the eco people object to that as well, and the lorries and the shit on the roads.
And after harvesting the land then has to be squared up or re-planted. I think these people who are advocating this nonsense need to be invited to the forestry in Garsdale or Dentdale for a photoshoot.
I THINK you would need to provide about £200 per acre per annum for 40 yrs for people to sign up to wreck the habitat on grade 5 or grade 6 land here in Yorkshire Dales. it would be an ecological disaster and a very expensive one. If Fysics Teacher is right above, and I think he is then that is about £11 Billion per annum, £460 billion in total.
I wrote the model off for this reason - it just made it look like it hadn't been through proper review by people who actually understood electoral mechanics.
On the other hand, she did have just about the largest error bar of any prediction in any seat in the country... but, even so ...