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  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231
    edited December 2019
    melcf said:

    Priti Patel, talks about a points based immigration system. No one talks about INVESTING in the local population and training them to do these jobs. Instead of advertising and fast tracking in Pakistan or Nigeria. Or raising wages, to make some jobs, such as care workers, more appealing with some career progression.
    UK needs skilled employment but it also needs people to do back breaking jobs on minimum wage. Such as production operatives and fruit picking. The big industries, many who have contributed in billions into the Tories fund, won't be happy with staff shortages or paying staff more. It cuts into their profits and affects shareholder.
    So besides this 'points based' immigration, there will be low skilled immigration also. Eventually making Brexit a 'pointless' excercise. Except, it allowed the Torie to stay in power for 10-15 years, despite savage austerity. Even Houdini couldn't have diverted attention with such skill

    +1

    Many of the white working class voters voting Tory to Get Brexit Done are prioritizing concerns over identity ahead of economic self-interest. There is nothing evil about this. It is their choice. I worry where this leads however. Once Brexit is 'done', how are the Tories going to retain the support of these identity driven voters? Their efforts to do so could take the party and the country to a dark place. I'm not saying this will happen, please note, but I do worry about it. Especially since they have as a leader a moral vacuum who seems inclined to shallow populism.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,123
    edited December 2019
    Compare Boris' answer to naughty thing he has done that got the interviewer laughing with Jezza's cold I won't answer that about romantic thing he had done.
  • Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?
  • alb1onalb1on Posts: 698
    IshmaelZ said:


    YouGov's MRP comes with an impeccable pedigree.

    "The model was developed primarily by Professor Ben Lauderdale of University College London in conjunction with Jack Blumenau (University College London),From there, the models are fit using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with the open source software Stan. Stan was developed at Columbia University by Andrew Gelman and his colleagues, with support from YouGov and other organisations." (YouGov website)

    Make no mistake, this is a serious statistical project with an impressive array of statisticians and political scientists. Stan & Hamiltonian MCMC are cutting edge techniques that have only become available in the last decade.

    Andrew Gelman is as famous as it is possible to be in the field of statistics.

    Against this, we have a bloke on the internet (Barnesian).

    The greatest difficulty in analysing data is that you are the easiest person to fool. This is especially the case in elections, in which you may have a huge emotional investment in the outcome.

    A team of people -- and especially a team of professional statisticians who are mainly interested in algorithms to extract the best predictions -- seems to me absolutely the best way to circumvent this.

    I have already stated that I am not voting, being equally disgusted with all the parties. But, I think Stodge called this election correctly right at the beginning -- the only thing open for debate is the size of the Tory majority. I expect YouGov's MRP will be pretty damn accurate.

    Massive, massive appeal to authority there. In addition, 1. Like Camelot, it's only a model. 2. Garbage in, garbage out. The foundation of any statistical endeavour is a truly random sample. YouGov work with self-selected panels. LOL. 3. Last time round, it was some bloke off the internet (D Herdson) popping in with an anecdote who gave us much the clearest steer about how things were going.

    "Anecdotes bad, scientific studies good" is a principle which is overstated even in the context of medicine - we wouldn't have lithium, or the MAOIs (and therefore anti depressants generally) or viagra (except as an ineffectual angina treatment) if researchers hasn't paid attention to anecdotes. And the principle doesn't read across to polling well because polls are not proper objective data in the first place - you don't study cancer by asking the patient how he would expect to react to a course of chemotherapy.
    You are making the mistake of thinking that the role of anecdote and scientific study is similar in medicine (and other fields). Anecdote is useful for forming a hypothesis but has no role in proving that hypothesis and either elevating it to a theorem or advancing it to the production and approval of a drug.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    Maybe the absence of Diane Abbott explains labours poor performance?
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    IshmaelZ said:



    Massive, massive appeal to authority there. In addition, 1. Like Camelot, it's only a model. 2. Garbage in, garbage out. The foundation of any statistical endeavour is a truly random sample. YouGov work with self-selected panels. LOL. 3. Last time round, it was some bloke off the internet (D Herdson) popping in with an anecdote who gave us much the clearest steer about how things were going.

    "Anecdotes bad, scientific studies good" is a principle which is overstated even in the context of medicine - we wouldn't have lithium, or the MAOIs (and therefore anti depressants generally) or viagra (except as an ineffectual angina treatment) if researchers hasn't paid attention to anecdotes. And the principle doesn't read across to polling well because polls are not proper objective data in the first place - you don't study cancer by asking the patient how he would expect to react to a course of chemotherapy.

    No. I use Stan and Hamiltonian MC in my own work.

    If you are at the kindergarten level of "the foundation of any statistical endeavour is a truly random sample", you must be an arts and humanities graduate.

    There is no truly random sample ever, there is ALWAYS a selection function.
  • HYUFD said:

    Boris wants a points based immigration system not to end immigration and he wants a trade deal with the EU too

    We have a fantastic trade deal with the EU right now. The best we will ever have.
    Yep we are all just loving that £70 billion a year trade deficit we have with them.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,936

    Maybe the absence of Diane Abbott explains labours poor performance?

    She was hired by YouGov to work on their MRP.
  • alb1onalb1on Posts: 698
    Charles said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Johnson has just said on Ridge that the 'naughtiest thing he's prepared to admit to is riding his bicycle
    on the pavment'.

    Is that one of those change at Baker Street/ascending the OXO tower type euphemisms?
    He said he sometimes mounted without descending

    Someone with a dirtier mind than mine might construe a double entendre
    A natural consequence of watching the Benny Hill tribute act that is Boris.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,609

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    What the fuck business is it of yours?
  • RobD said:

    Maybe the absence of Diane Abbott explains labours poor performance?

    She was hired by YouGov to work on their MRP.
    If that was the case, they would be predicting a Labour majority of 6754 seats.
  • melcfmelcf Posts: 166

    Sandpit said:

    saddened said:

    melcf said:

    Priti Patel, talks about a points based immigration system. No one talks about INVESTING in the local population and training them to do these jobs. Instead of advertising and fast tracking in Pakistan or Nigeria. Or raising wages, to make some jobs, such as care workers, more appealing with some career progression.
    UK needs skilled employment but it also needs people to do back breaking jobs on minimum wage. Such as production operatives and fruit picking. The big industries, many who have contributed in billions into the Tories fund, won't be happy with staff shortages or paying staff more. It cuts into their profits and affects shareholder.
    So besides this 'points based' immigration, there will be low skilled immigration also. Eventually making Brexit a 'pointless' excercise. Except, it allowed the Torie to stay in power for 10-15 years, despite savage austerity. Even Houdini couldn't have diverted attention with such skill

    Why does everybody keep banging on as if Brexit is going to collapse the social care Labour Market. 84% of people who are employed in social care are British. Only 8% are EU nationals. Brexit may cause issues, collapsing the social care work force isn't one of them.
    https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/publications/The-state-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England.aspx
    Don’t go bringing facts to the debate.

    The fact is that currently there are 120,000 vacancies in the social care sector and we are about to make it harder to recruit from a demographic which accounts for over 100,000 workers in the sector.

    Plus, just like in hospitals, the vacancies are not not evenly distributed. Ironically, it's the poorer, leave voting areas which are the ones having the worst hospital staff shortages!
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    Fafs team just performed one of the best run outs I've seen in a while

    Do you know the nickname of his new brother in law?
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,844
    edited December 2019
    saddened said:

    melcf said:

    Priti Patel, talks about a points based immigration system. No one talks about INVESTING in the local population and training them to do these jobs. Instead of advertising and fast tracking in Pakistan or Nigeria. Or raising wages, to make some jobs, such as care workers, more appealing with some career progression.
    UK needs skilled employment but it also needs people to do back breaking jobs on minimum wage. Such as production operatives and fruit picking. The big industries, many who have contributed in billions into the Tories fund, won't be happy with staff shortages or paying staff more. It cuts into their profits and affects shareholder.
    So besides this 'points based' immigration, there will be low skilled immigration also. Eventually making Brexit a 'pointless' excercise. Except, it allowed the Torie to stay in power for 10-15 years, despite savage austerity. Even Houdini couldn't have diverted attention with such skill

    Why does everybody keep banging on as if Brexit is going to collapse the social care Labour Market. 84% of people who are employed in social care are British. Only 8% are EU nationals. Brexit may cause issues, collapsing the social care work force isn't one of them.
    https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/publications/The-state-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England.aspx
    We have an ageing population, and the government is promising to tackle the problems presumably by increasing the ratio of carers:elderly. So for both of those reasons we will need a lot more care workers. There are already 122,000 vacancies unfulfilled. So with further investment and more elderly we will soon need well over 150k additional (not new) care workers.

    We have low levels of unemployment, 16% of care workers are already foreigners, more will be immigrants or foreigners. It is absurd to think we can manage care to a good standard without high levels of immigration.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    isam said:

    God knows what is causing the enthusiasm for Jess "Stab Him in the Front" Philips.

    She seems to me the latest in a long list of self-identified, self-promoting Messiahs for the centrists in Labour.

    We have had: Eric Joyce (yes, there was a time when the two-fisted he-man was the subject of thoughtful pieces in the Guardian), Dan Jarvis (remember him, he was the future once), Owen Smith (the thickest man in Wales, a real achievement given the dross representing Wales in Westminster and Cardiff).

    I'd say Angela Rayner was the best of the options currently available to Labour.

    The seems authentic, a Northern Labour MP who lives in the constituency, and has a more than usually varied background. She is both pragmatic and on the left.

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class
    Swearing is of course best done in a Scottish accent.

    Maybe we can get MalcolmG to run the Labour Party?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231
    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
  • alb1onalb1on Posts: 698

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    In the case of Boris that is not a simple question.
  • ozymandiasozymandias Posts: 1,503

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Evidently your medication hasn’t kicked-in this morning.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,602
    edited December 2019
    IshmaelZ said:


    YouGov's MRP comes with an impeccable pedigree.

    "The model was developed primarily by Professor Ben Lauderdale of University College London in conjunction with Jack Blumenau (University College London), YouGov’s UK political team, and YouGov's Data Science team headed by Doug Rivers of Stanford University. The data are streamed directly from YouGov's survey system to its analytic database, Crunch. From there, the models are fit using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with the open source software Stan. Stan was developed at Columbia University by Andrew Gelman and his colleagues, with support from YouGov and other organisations." (YouGov website)

    Make no mistake, this is a serious statistical project with an impressive array of statisticians and political scientists. Stan & Hamiltonian MCMC are cutting edge techniques that have only become available in the last decade.

    Andrew Gelman is as famous as it is possible to be in the field of statistics.

    Against this, we have a bloke on the internet (Barnesian).

    The greatest difficulty in analysing data is that you are the easiest person to fool. This is especially the case in elections, in which you may have a huge emotional investment in the outcome.

    A team of people -- and especially a team of professional statisticians who are mainly interested in algorithms to extract the best predictions -- seems to me absolutely the best way to circumvent this.

    I have already stated that I am not voting, being equally disgusted with all the parties. But, I think Stodge called this election correctly right at the beginning -- the only thing open for debate is the size of the Tory majority. I expect YouGov's MRP will be pretty damn accurate.

    Massive, massive appeal to authority there. In addition, 1. Like Camelot, it's only a model. 2. Garbage in, garbage out. The foundation of any statistical endeavour is a truly random sample. YouGov work with self-selected panels. LOL. 3. Last time round, it was some bloke off the internet (D Herdson) popping in with an anecdote who gave us much the clearest steer about how things were going.

    "Anecdotes bad, scientific studies good" is a principle which is overstated even in the context of medicine - we wouldn't have lithium, or the MAOIs (and therefore anti depressants generally) or viagra (except as an ineffectual angina treatment) if researchers hasn't paid attention to anecdotes. And the principle doesn't read across to polling well because polls are not proper objective data in the first place - you don't study cancer by asking the patient how he would expect to react to a course of chemotherapy.
    Appeal to authority? I prefer to use polling designed by people who know what they're doing.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    HYUFD said:

    Boris wants a points based immigration system not to end immigration and he wants a trade deal with the EU too

    We have a fantastic trade deal with the EU right now. The best we will ever have.
    Sure, but the voters decided that they didn’t like the political compromises that were required.

    So we look for the best deal that can command a stable majority support
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    How so?
  • kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.

    Depends how you define working class.

    She definitely doesn't have a northern accent, though!

  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,602

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    It's all a conspiracy to keep the Tories in power!
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    RobD said:

    IanB2 said:

    RobD said:

    IanB2 said:

    RobD said:

    Barnesian said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Stocky said:

    Does any one know whether the MRP Poll seat predictor thingy is continually updated or is it the same as when they produced their MRP poll a couple of weeks ago?

    We will know on Tuesday night when the final MRP comes out
    The methodology and variables are pretty well outlined in the covering paper. The detail is worth reading to understand some of the assumptions.

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/11/27/how-yougovs-2019-general-election-model-works
    Yes it is worth reading, particularly the section on uncertainty.

    With MRP it is tempting to focus on the single figure estimates and ignore the wide range of possible outcomes. It is compounded by comparing single figure estimates for individual constituencies with constituency polls to confirm one's belief in the accuracy of the MRP single figure constituency estimates.

    I suspect the accurate prediction at GE2017 was a lucky fluke. It was like aiming a trembling rifle at a target and hitting the bulls-eye by fluke.
    What do you think is the fundamental problem with the YouGov model?
    Insufficiently able to capture seat-specific factors.
    Are there many of those? I thought they did well with seats such as East Devon.
    They have a sample of 100 or so in each seat, which is enough to detect an Indy like Wright doing well - but with a huge margin of error. Demographics won't help much in refining what is essentially a stab in the dark.

    What is mysterious about the YG model is how they reconcile (or balance) the two inputs - the seat poll and the national demographic model. Especially where they conflict
    Isn't that the whole point of MRP, to combine many of these small samples together with a demographic model of the country/region?
    Exactly. But how?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    nichomar said:

    This election in a nutshell. Boris bumbling and joking about cycling on the pavement and asking his team for naughty things theyve seen him do and Sophy Ridge grinning all over her face and loving every minute of it.
    Hes got it, he knows how to play everyone and it is infectious. That's the unstoppable force grumpy grandpa will get run over by.

    He completely disarmed her, actually for the second time
    He left me reaching for the sick bucket he is neither charming or charismatic, just a self promoting duplicitous toff
    It’s much more effective in person

    I don’t like him, but you can feel the force of his charm and it’s hard to resist
  • Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    What the fuck business is it of yours?
    Its about his morality and ethics as a person...does he take responsibility for his actions or is he another father that abandons children? Where child maintenance (UK tax payer) has to chase down men not taking responsibility.

    When the question is asked...he waffles and blusters...this is a man that can't stay faithful in a marriage, won't say how many children he has yet calls single mothers "irresponsible
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,602

    God knows what is causing the enthusiasm for Jess "Stab Him in the Front" Philips.

    She seems to me the latest in a long list of self-identified, self-promoting Messiahs for the centrists in Labour.

    We have had: Eric Joyce (yes, there was a time when the two-fisted he-man was the subject of thoughtful pieces in the Guardian), Dan Jarvis (remember him, he was the future once), Owen Smith (the thickest man in Wales, a real achievement given the dross representing Wales in Westminster and Cardiff).

    I'd say Angela Rayner was the best of the options currently available to Labour.

    She seems authentic, a Northern Labour MP who lives in the constituency, and has a more than usually varied background. She is both pragmatic and on the left.

    What does a non-authentic human being look like?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,361

    Maybe the absence of Diane Abbott explains labours poor performance?

    Just try to imagine how bad it could have been if she had not been locked in the house till the election is over
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,729

    That Panelbase poll is worrying for the SNP. The changes are small, but the direction of travel is wrong.

    SNP 39% (-1)
    SCon 29% (+1)
    SLab 21% (+1)
    SLD 10% (-1)

    It is actually the SLab 21% that concerns me most. That is their best Scottish poll showing since April. Looks like Labour are peaking just right and the Lib Dems are dipping at just the wrong moment.

    Our only consolation is that Panelbase has the SNP at 39% in October too, when other pollsters had us in the low 40s.

    The heavy media focus on the Con vs Lab fight has, as usual, misled many voters.

    However, I’m increasingly optimistic that the SCons are getting support in the wrong areas: building up for some fantastic second places throughout the Central Belt.

    How has it misled voters ?
    Because there is not one single Con/Lab contest in the whole of Scotland.

    Zero out of 59 constituencies.
    Tories in 59 seats, Labour in 59 seats. I'd say that was a contest.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231

    God knows what is causing the enthusiasm for Jess "Stab Him in the Front" Philips.

    She seems to me the latest in a long list of self-identified, self-promoting Messiahs for the centrists in Labour.

    We have had: Eric Joyce (yes, there was a time when the two-fisted he-man was the subject of thoughtful pieces in the Guardian), Dan Jarvis (remember him, he was the future once), Owen Smith (the thickest man in Wales, a real achievement given the dross representing Wales in Westminster and Cardiff).

    I'd say Angela Rayner was the best of the options currently available to Labour.

    She seems authentic, a Northern Labour MP who lives in the constituency, and has a more than usually varied background. She is both pragmatic and on the left.

    The Dan Jarvis thing was baffling. I think it boiled down to the fact that he used to be a soldier, has good hair and nice wide shoulders.

    Sorry, but you need a little more than that to bring about an irreversible shift in the balance of opportunity, wealth and power in favour of working people.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,153

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,844
    edited December 2019

    God knows what is causing the enthusiasm for Jess "Stab Him in the Front" Philips.

    She seems to me the latest in a long list of self-identified, self-promoting Messiahs for the centrists in Labour.

    We have had: Eric Joyce (yes, there was a time when the two-fisted he-man was the subject of thoughtful pieces in the Guardian), Dan Jarvis (remember him, he was the future once), Owen Smith (the thickest man in Wales, a real achievement given the dross representing Wales in Westminster and Cardiff).

    I'd say Angela Rayner was the best of the options currently available to Labour.

    She seems authentic, a Northern Labour MP who lives in the constituency, and has a more than usually varied background. She is both pragmatic and on the left.

    I am not sure she is a centrist, she is probably more a pragmatist, happy to go along with what works rather than what an ideology tells her to think. That is an appeal to me.
    She is a "non politician" politician, which seems to be what the public want at the moment. Id agree Rayner is the best of the Corbynites (excluding McDonnell who is less likely to be interested).
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,361

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Evidently your medication hasn’t kicked-in this morning.
    Spot on re the media though, Tories to a person
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231

    Compare Boris' answer to naughty thing he has done that got the interviewer laughing with Jezza's cold I won't answer that about romantic thing he had done.

    "Boris" has great appeal to the shallow, we know this.
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    Andy_JS said:

    God knows what is causing the enthusiasm for Jess "Stab Him in the Front" Philips.

    She seems to me the latest in a long list of self-identified, self-promoting Messiahs for the centrists in Labour.

    We have had: Eric Joyce (yes, there was a time when the two-fisted he-man was the subject of thoughtful pieces in the Guardian), Dan Jarvis (remember him, he was the future once), Owen Smith (the thickest man in Wales, a real achievement given the dross representing Wales in Westminster and Cardiff).

    I'd say Angela Rayner was the best of the options currently available to Labour.

    She seems authentic, a Northern Labour MP who lives in the constituency, and has a more than usually varied background. She is both pragmatic and on the left.

    What does a non-authentic human being look like?
    A bit like Tony Blair.

    Someone who can effortlessly segue from membership of CND to manipulating evidence for war to asset stripping third-world states.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483

    nichomar said:

    This election in a nutshell. Boris bumbling and joking about cycling on the pavement and asking his team for naughty things theyve seen him do and Sophy Ridge grinning all over her face and loving every minute of it.
    Hes got it, he knows how to play everyone and it is infectious. That's the unstoppable force grumpy grandpa will get run over by.

    He completely disarmed her, actually for the second time
    He left me reaching for the sick bucket he is neither charming or charismatic, just a self promoting duplicitous toff
    But it works
    Given that most people don’t watch these sort of things the wider world unwittingly allows its view of politicians from secondary sources hence certain sectors of the media paint ‘boris’ as some likable but harmless buffoon, corbyn as an evil commie old man and Swinson as a shrill bossy head girl. They accept what they want to believe because they are not interested enough to do their own assessment.
  • timmotimmo Posts: 1,469
    alb1on said:

    p.s. Having tipped the LibDems to win Guildford on here 2 months ago I'll give you another one. Woking. I think Jonathan Lord will hold on for the tories, but it's worth a flutter. There's a lot of LibDem traction.

    Dominic Raab is in big trouble. Michael Gove isn't entirely safe either. WImbledon might go LibDem too.

    But Woking's worth a punt if you don't mind losing a tenner. 12/1 is definitely worth it.

    I've been doing a lot in Wimbledon and based on what I've seen and heard, I'd have it as a near certain Conservative hold. Fully admit that it's not based on empirical data though.
    I live in Guildford, which should go to the LDs - but that is largely thanks to the most dysfunctional local Tory party. The word I hear is that Wimbledon is on a knife edge (and that is from Labour supporters there who are now tactically voting LD). But Gove is safe and I still expect Raab to hold on. Woking is interesting. All 3 parties in Woking are utterly corrupt with records of electoral fraud in council elections. Whoever wins (if it is close) some careful investigation would be the order of the day.
    There are also some interesting noises coming out of Mole valley..Sir Paul Beresford isnt well liked..the lib dems have a really good ground game and it's very remainy.
  • kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

  • HYUFD said:

    Boris wants a points based immigration system not to end immigration and he wants a trade deal with the EU too

    We have a fantastic trade deal with the EU right now. The best we will ever have.
    Yep we are all just loving that £70 billion a year trade deficit we have with them.
    I am glad you enjoy it. Post-Brexit, when trade worsens, you will probably be ecstatic :D
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    malcolmg said:

    Maybe the absence of Diane Abbott explains labours poor performance?

    Just try to imagine how bad it could have been if she had not been locked in the house till the election is over
    She must be getting fed up with Rees Mogg by now?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,153
    edited December 2019
    kinabalu said:

    Compare Boris' answer to naughty thing he has done that got the interviewer laughing with Jezza's cold I won't answer that about romantic thing he had done.

    "Boris" has great appeal to the shallow, we know this.
    They both do, peddling simple solutions to complex issues while acting as some moral force. The difference is in style and that I suspect Corbyn believes his shallow simplistic solutions are great, while Boris is more flexible in believing his own shallowness. Horrible pair.
  • America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,167
    edited December 2019
    Richmond and Wimbledon will be LD gains, I think, too.
  • kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

    It seems nowadays to be considered working class it is best not to have parents who are actually working.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited December 2019
    Was Julie Walters' character in "Educating Rita" based on Emily Thornberry?

    "Early life
    Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey on 27 June 1960.[1][2] Her parents were Sallie Thornberry, a teacher, and Cedric Thornberry, at the time teaching international law at the London School of Economics, and later a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.[3][4][5] When Thornberry was seven, her parents divorced and she had to leave their home with her mother and two brothers. After this, she relied on free school meals and food parcels, and their cats were euthanised to save money.[6] Her mother later became a Labour councillor and mayor, and her father stood as the Labour candidate for Guildford in the 1966 general election.[5][7]

    She failed the eleven-plus exam, so attended a secondary modern school.[3] She left to live with her father when she was fifteen until he left without warning to work for the United Nations when she was seventeen. She worked as a cleaner and a barmaid in London alongside resitting her O-Levels and taking her A-Levels.[6][8] "

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Thornberry
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,153
    kinabalu said:

    God knows what is causing the enthusiasm for Jess "Stab Him in the Front" Philips.

    She seems to me the latest in a long list of self-identified, self-promoting Messiahs for the centrists in Labour.

    We have had: Eric Joyce (yes, there was a time when the two-fisted he-man was the subject of thoughtful pieces in the Guardian), Dan Jarvis (remember him, he was the future once), Owen Smith (the thickest man in Wales, a real achievement given the dross representing Wales in Westminster and Cardiff).

    I'd say Angela Rayner was the best of the options currently available to Labour.

    She seems authentic, a Northern Labour MP who lives in the constituency, and has a more than usually varied background. She is both pragmatic and on the left.

    The Dan Jarvis thing was baffling. I think it boiled down to the fact that he used to be a soldier, has good hair and nice wide shoulders.

    Sorry, but you need a little more than that to bring about an irreversible shift in the balance of opportunity, wealth and power in favour of working people.
    It's enough to get noticed, but if theres nothing else there it is apparent pretty quickly.
  • That Panelbase poll is worrying for the SNP. The changes are small, but the direction of travel is wrong.

    SNP 39% (-1)
    SCon 29% (+1)
    SLab 21% (+1)
    SLD 10% (-1)

    It is actually the SLab 21% that concerns me most. That is their best Scottish poll showing since April. Looks like Labour are peaking just right and the Lib Dems are dipping at just the wrong moment.

    Our only consolation is that Panelbase has the SNP at 39% in October too, when other pollsters had us in the low 40s.

    The heavy media focus on the Con vs Lab fight has, as usual, misled many voters.

    However, I’m increasingly optimistic that the SCons are getting support in the wrong areas: building up for some fantastic second places throughout the Central Belt.

    How has it misled voters ?
    Because there is not one single Con/Lab contest in the whole of Scotland.

    Zero out of 59 constituencies.
    Tories in 59 seats, Labour in 59 seats. I'd say that was a contest.
    By that logic, Gary Hynds is a contestant in Lagan Valley. He isn’t. He is an also-ran
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,695
    edited December 2019

    melcf said:

    OllyT said:

    Foxy said:

    Barnesian said:


    I note your comment about support for Tories (or BXP) in social housing. Formally solid LD areas of social housing are now leaking to Tory or BXP, even in Barnes. This is more than offset by rock solid affluent Tory areas switching en masse to LDs.

    The Tory party of the the future will be a strange beast, deserted by the middle class and looking for its support from the "left behind" who are fickle and often don't vote - "what's the point mate".
    Yes, a Tory party reliant on that vote will be an interesting beast indeed, but we do need a word of warning. All these tales of WWC voters hating Corbyn, of desiring Brexit over all things and despising the student union luvvies of the Labour party were all the stuff of PB threads a few days before GE 2017 too. Some of my most successful constituency bets last time were on Labour in WWC Northern Red seats "nailed on" for Con gains.
    The key thing is what WWC voters in places like Workington, Hartlepool, Stoke and Sunderland do at the next general election when they realise that Brexit and Johnson were a mirage and that things haven't improved for them or their areas and indeed might even have got worse
    May be by 2024 the Tories will find another topic, to whip up passions and divide society?
    May be a war, on some remote outpost? Who knows

    Perhaps not the best suggestion, given New Labour's penchant for wars.

    How many bloody wars did New Labour fight -- I lost count in the end.
    Just a minute:

    Tory government 1979-1997:
    Falklands War (1982)
    Gulf War (1990–91)
    Bosnian War (1992–96)

    Labour 1997-2010:
    Operation Desert Fox (1998)
    Kosovo War (1999)
    Sierra Leone Civil War (2000)
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Iraq War (2003–11)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)

    Tories again 2010 on:
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)
    Boko Haram insurgency (2012–Ongoing)
    Northern Mali conflict (2013–Ongoing)
    Military intervention against ISIS (2014–Ongoing)
    Libyan Civil War (2011)
    Syrian Civil War (2018)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_Kingdom#20th_century
  • isam said:

    Was Julie Walters' character in "Educating Rita" based on Emily Thornberry?

    "Early life
    Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey on 27 June 1960.[1][2] Her parents were Sallie Thornberry, a teacher, and Cedric Thornberry, at the time teaching international law at the London School of Economics, and later a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.[3][4][5] When Thornberry was seven, her parents divorced and she had to leave their home with her mother and two brothers. After this, she relied on free school meals and food parcels, and their cats were euthanised to save money.[6] Her mother later became a Labour councillor and mayor, and her father stood as the Labour candidate for Guildford in the 1966 general election.[5][7]

    She failed the eleven-plus exam, so attended a secondary modern school.[3] She left to live with her father when she was fifteen until he left without warning to work for the United Nations when she was seventeen. She worked as a cleaner and a barmaid in London alongside resitting her O-Levels and taking her A-Levels.[6][8] "

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Thornberry

    That is an interesting life.
  • America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    I'm sure there are a great deal number of Conservatives who feel the opposite and feel the BBC has a strong anti Tory bias.

    It is all personal perspective.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

    I have seen nothing to suggest her family was at any stage of her life working class or engaged in working class employment, her education was an all girls grammar. Nothing about her life says working class to me.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,936
    edited December 2019



    Just a minute:

    Tory government 1979-1997:
    Falklands War (1982)
    Gulf War (1990–91)
    Bosnian War (1992–96)

    Labour 1997-2010:
    Operation Desert Fox (1998)
    Kosovo War (1999)
    Sierra Leone Civil War (2000)
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Iraq War (2003–11)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)

    Tories again 2010 on:
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)
    Boko Haram insurgency (2012–Ongoing)
    Northern Mali conflict (2013–Ongoing)
    Military intervention against ISIS (2014–Ongoing)
    Libyan Civil War (2011)
    Syrian Civil War (2018)

    The scale is a bit different for some of those. I mean in Northern Mali the UK sent 40 troops....
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231
    isam said:

    How so?

    She has a northern accent and swears a lot.
  • rural_voterrural_voter Posts: 2,038
    timmo said:

    alb1on said:

    p.s. Having tipped the LibDems to win Guildford on here 2 months ago I'll give you another one. Woking. I think Jonathan Lord will hold on for the tories, but it's worth a flutter. There's a lot of LibDem traction.

    Dominic Raab is in big trouble. Michael Gove isn't entirely safe either. WImbledon might go LibDem too.

    But Woking's worth a punt if you don't mind losing a tenner. 12/1 is definitely worth it.

    I've been doing a lot in Wimbledon and based on what I've seen and heard, I'd have it as a near certain Conservative hold. Fully admit that it's not based on empirical data though.
    I live in Guildford, which should go to the LDs - but that is largely thanks to the most dysfunctional local Tory party. The word I hear is that Wimbledon is on a knife edge (and that is from Labour supporters there who are now tactically voting LD). But Gove is safe and I still expect Raab to hold on. Woking is interesting. All 3 parties in Woking are utterly corrupt with records of electoral fraud in council elections. Whoever wins (if it is close) some careful investigation would be the order of the day.
    There are also some interesting noises coming out of Mole valley..Sir Paul Beresford isnt well liked..the lib dems have a really good ground game and it's very remainy.
    My LD-voting relatives who live there think that some people would vote for Beresford even if he was deceased!
  • DeClareDeClare Posts: 483
    edited December 2019
    Andy_JS said:
    I've been looking at the weather forecast for Thursday, it's going to pour with rain all day, in the South-East at any rate.
    This will probably reduce turnout among youngsters more than it will among older people who are more likely to run a car and more likely to vote by post.
    A lot of working age people will get home from work, take a look at the weather and not be arsed.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    alb1on said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    YouGov's MRP comes with an impeccable pedigree.

    "The model was developed primarily by Professor Ben Lauderdale of University College London in conjunction with Jack Blumenau (University College London),From there, the models are fit using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with the open source software Stan. Stan was developed at Columbia University by Andrew Gelman and his colleagues, with support from YouGov and other organisations." (YouGov website)

    Make no mistake, this is a serious statistical project with an impressive array of statisticians and political scientists. Stan & Hamiltonian MCMC are cutting edge techniques that have only become available in the last decade.

    Andrew Gelman is as famous as it is possible to be in the field of statistics.

    Against this, we have a bloke on the internet (Barnesian).

    The greatest difficulty in analysing data is that you are the easiest person to fool. This is especially the case in elections, in which you may have a huge emotional investment in the outcome.

    A team of people -- and especially a team of professional statisticians who are mainly interested in algorithms to extract the best predictions -- seems to me absolutely the best way to circumvent this.

    I have already stated that I am not voting, being equally disgusted with all the parties. But, I think Stodge called this election correctly right at the beginning -- the only thing open for debate is the size of the Tory majority. I expect YouGov's MRP will be pretty damn accurate.

    Massive, massive appeal to authority there. In addition, 1. Like Camelot, it's only a model. 2. Garbage in, garbage out. The foundation of any statistical endeavour is a truly random sample. YouGov work with self-selected panels. LOL. 3. Last time round, it was some bloke off the internet (D Herdson) popping in with an anecdote who gave us much the clearest steer about how things were going.

    "Anecdotes bad, scientific studies good" is a principle which is overstated even in the context of medicine - we wouldn't have lithium, or the MAOIs (and therefore anti depressants generally) or viagra (except as an ineffectual angina treatment) if researchers hasn't paid attention to anecdotes. And the principle doesn't read across to polling well because polls are not proper objective data in the first place - you don't study cancer by asking the patient how he would expect to react to a course of chemotherapy.
    You are making the mistake of thinking that the role of anecdote and scientific study is similar in medicine (and other fields). Anecdote is useful for forming a hypothesis but has no role in proving that hypothesis and either elevating it to a theorem or advancing it to the production and approval of a drug.
    I am pointing out that mistake, not making it.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 9,167
    edited December 2019

    America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    I'm sure there are a great deal number of Conservatives who feel the opposite and feel the BBC has a strong anti Tory bias.

    It is all personal perspective.
    The BBC nowadays seems to have a cultural bias slightly in favour of certain identity politics issues, and a politico-economic bias slightly in favour of the centre-right. All very odd.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,361

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    What the fuck business is it of yours?
    Its about his morality and ethics as a person...does he take responsibility for his actions or is he another father that abandons children? Where child maintenance (UK tax payer) has to chase down men not taking responsibility.

    When the question is asked...he waffles and blusters...this is a man that can't stay faithful in a marriage, won't say how many children he has yet calls single mothers "irresponsible
    More faces than the town clock, this is how bad the UK is nowadays when a no good charlatan like that can be PM.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    alb1on said:

    Charles said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Johnson has just said on Ridge that the 'naughtiest thing he's prepared to admit to is riding his bicycle
    on the pavment'.

    Is that one of those change at Baker Street/ascending the OXO tower type euphemisms?
    He said he sometimes mounted without descending

    Someone with a dirtier mind than mine might construe a double entendre
    A natural consequence of watching the Benny Hill tribute act that is Boris.
    I know you’re a LibDem activist so that makes it hard but please try not to be so po-faced and relentlessly political the whole time
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    Lol tories at the bbc. Cuckoo!
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    edited December 2019

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    What the fuck business is it of yours?
    Depends. May she wants to know if Boris will acknowledge their kid?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231

    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    Upwardly mobile working class family background.
  • America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    I'm sure there are a great deal number of Conservatives who feel the opposite and feel the BBC has a strong anti Tory bias.

    It is all personal perspective.
    The BBC nowadays seems to have a cultural bias slightly in favour of certain identity politics issues, and a politico-economic bias slightly in favour of the centre-right. All very odd.
    Agreed, too many middle managers with nothing to do so end up enforcing conformity.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

    I have seen nothing to suggest her family was at any stage of her life working class or engaged in working class employment, her education was an all girls grammar. Nothing about her life says working class to me.
    No. Her parents jobs when she was growing up don't seem to be working class jobs at all. Then she worked for their company after Uni!

    Nothing wrong with being middle class, and having an middle class upbringing at all, but I dont see why people are kidded that isn't what Jess Phillips is or had.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976

    America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    The cool thing about Corbyn is he somehow manages to combine the worst traits of both Trump and Sanders. Or at least his followers do - I wonder sometimes if Corbyn is aware of some of the more egregious output from the likes of Bastani.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,361

    That Panelbase poll is worrying for the SNP. The changes are small, but the direction of travel is wrong.

    SNP 39% (-1)
    SCon 29% (+1)
    SLab 21% (+1)
    SLD 10% (-1)

    It is actually the SLab 21% that concerns me most. That is their best Scottish poll showing since April. Looks like Labour are peaking just right and the Lib Dems are dipping at just the wrong moment.

    Our only consolation is that Panelbase has the SNP at 39% in October too, when other pollsters had us in the low 40s.

    The heavy media focus on the Con vs Lab fight has, as usual, misled many voters.

    However, I’m increasingly optimistic that the SCons are getting support in the wrong areas: building up for some fantastic second places throughout the Central Belt.

    How has it misled voters ?
    Because there is not one single Con/Lab contest in the whole of Scotland.

    Zero out of 59 constituencies.
    Tories in 59 seats, Labour in 59 seats. I'd say that was a contest.
    By that logic, Gary Hynds is a contestant in Lagan Valley. He isn’t. He is an also-ran
    That is an insult to also rans
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,609
    isam said:

    Fafs team just performed one of the best run outs I've seen in a while

    Do you know the nickname of his new brother in law?
    Was it as good as somone who was a legend in the local team, for ambling between the wickets and getting run out.

    He was called Thrombus - the slow-moving clot.....
  • DeClare said:

    Andy_JS said:
    I've been looking at the weather forecast for Thursday, it's going to pour with rain all day, in the South-East at any rate.
    This will probably reduce turnout among youngsters more than it will among older people who are more likely to run a car and more likely to vote by post.
    A lot of working age people will get home from work, take a look at the weather and not be arsed.
    There should be more than a day to vote, and one of the days should be a weekend day.
  • kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
  • melcfmelcf Posts: 166
    Both Dianee Abott and Rees-Mogg locked at his wife's ancestral home
    The home that was given a 7.6 million renovation/ heritage grant!
  • Sean_F said:

    argyllrs said:

    MJW said:

    Just to add to my earlier post about the fundamentals I'd say there is a small but not statistically insignificant chance of something truly astonishing happening and labour completely imploding on thursday to the low 100s in seats (130 to 140). Some of the anecdata seems apocalyptic for them and the Brexit pull is huge in that it's almost exclusively going Tory.

    Although I wouldn't go that far, I do think there's a strange situation whereby a slightly larger lead in national polling would be the difference between a tiny Tory majority or possibly even hung parliament with a little help from the LDs and tactical voting, and Labour starting to haemorrhage seats across the north. 6-7 points the Tories probably gain a lot of votes without huge numbers of seats, and likely lose a few where they're on the defensive. 10 points (which obviously will be a higher lead in seats the Tories are doing well in rather than London) and we start to get the kind of carnage where few Labour MPs or candidates outside London, Liverpool, and Manchester are truly safe.
    I'm going to bet on Sunderland Central. I think the swing in the North East will be well above the national average.
    You may wish to consider the reverse bet as well, i.e. selling the Tories elsewhere (or generally) if on the night they run Lab close (or even gain) Sunderland Central
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 82,123
    edited December 2019

    America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    I'm sure there are a great deal number of Conservatives who feel the opposite and feel the BBC has a strong anti Tory bias.

    It is all personal perspective.
    The BBC nowadays seems to have a cultural bias slightly in favour of certain identity politics issues, and a politico-economic bias slightly in favour of the centre-right. All very odd.
    I wouldn't be surprised if Corbyn isn't very popular among the younger members of staff, but those in positions of authority, they liked New Labour because it was left of centre on social issues without wanting to tax them into the ground, get rid of private schools, etc i.e. fits with their general world view as described by Andrew Marr.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    kinabalu said:

    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    Upwardly mobile working class family background.
    How do you know?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,231
    Andy_JS said:

    What does a non-authentic human being look like?

    Blond, messy hair, prone to fat, little piggy eyes, shirt hanging out?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,936

    kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
    Can you give a specific example of bias in Robinson's moderation on Friday?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061
    kinabalu said:

    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    Upwardly mobile working class family background.
    Middle class family background. With an ugly accent.
  • Endillion said:

    America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    The cool thing about Corbyn is he somehow manages to combine the worst traits of both Trump and Sanders. Or at least his followers do - I wonder sometimes if Corbyn is aware of some of the more egregious output from the likes of Bastani.
    You clearly have never met any trump or sanders supporters.

    Trump supporters are basically like Boris Johnson - support racism, homophobia, dividing people and blaming everything on immigrants or people of colour.
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited December 2019

    isam said:

    Fafs team just performed one of the best run outs I've seen in a while

    Do you know the nickname of his new brother in law?
    Was it as good as somone who was a legend in the local team, for ambling between the wickets and getting run out.

    He was called Thrombus - the slow-moving clot.....
    Hardus Viljoen aka "Nails"
  • alb1onalb1on Posts: 698

    timmo said:

    alb1on said:

    p.s. Having tipped the LibDems to win Guildford on here 2 months ago I'll give you another one. Woking. I think Jonathan Lord will hold on for the tories, but it's worth a flutter. There's a lot of LibDem traction.

    Dominic Raab is in big trouble. Michael Gove isn't entirely safe either. WImbledon might go LibDem too.

    But Woking's worth a punt if you don't mind losing a tenner. 12/1 is definitely worth it.

    I've been doing a lot in Wimbledon and based on what I've seen and heard, I'd have it as a near certain Conservative hold. Fully admit that it's not based on empirical data though.
    I live in Guildford, which should go to the LDs - but that is largely thanks to the most dysfunctional local Tory party. The word I hear is that Wimbledon is on a knife edge (and that is from Labour supporters there who are now tactically voting LD). But Gove is safe and I still expect Raab to hold on. Woking is interesting. All 3 parties in Woking are utterly corrupt with records of electoral fraud in council elections. Whoever wins (if it is close) some careful investigation would be the order of the day.
    There are also some interesting noises coming out of Mole valley..Sir Paul Beresford isnt well liked..the lib dems have a really good ground game and it's very remainy.
    My LD-voting relatives who live there think that some people would vote for Beresford even if he was deceased!
    I suppose Beresford does have one merit as an MP. He does not even try to hide the fact that it is his second job. His main job is being a dentist.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,361
    melcf said:

    Both Dianee Abott and Rees-Mogg locked at his wife's ancestral home
    The home that was given a 7.6 million renovation/ heritage grant!

    That is an even worse thought than Corbyn and Abott. Mogg is another on missing in action.
  • melcfmelcf Posts: 166
    Wars could be fought for various reasons. Some wars can boost election success
    Cut and pasted, below
    In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher's popularity increased. The success of the Falklands campaign was widely regarded as a factor in the turnaround in fortunes for the Conservative government, who had been trailing behind the SDP-Liberal Alliance in the opinion polls for months before the conflict began, but after the success in the Falklands the Conservatives returned to the top of the opinion polls by a wide margin and went on to win the following year's general election by a landslide.[132] Subsequently, Defence Secretary Nott's proposed cuts to the Royal Navy were abandoned.
  • kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

    I have seen nothing to suggest her family was at any stage of her life working class or engaged in working class employment, her education was an all girls grammar. Nothing about her life says working class to me.

    I went to an all boy's grammar school. I don't think that tells you anything. Her parents were clearly from working class families, but did well for themselves. If they brought her up to feel and believe she was working class, then that's how she sees herself. I don't have a huge problem with it, though I do think it's strange that so many people on the left find it so hard to admit that they and their families may have changed class.

  • alb1onalb1on Posts: 698
    Charles said:

    alb1on said:

    Charles said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Johnson has just said on Ridge that the 'naughtiest thing he's prepared to admit to is riding his bicycle
    on the pavment'.

    Is that one of those change at Baker Street/ascending the OXO tower type euphemisms?
    He said he sometimes mounted without descending

    Someone with a dirtier mind than mine might construe a double entendre
    A natural consequence of watching the Benny Hill tribute act that is Boris.
    I know you’re a LibDem activist so that makes it hard but please try not to be so po-faced and relentlessly political the whole time
    I think that it is those (like you) who cannot poke fun at our leaders who are being po-faced. Lighten up. And I am not a LD activist (although I wil vote for them). Indeed, as I have said many times, I used to vote for Andrew Tyrie when I lived in Chichester - because he was an outstanding MP. I assume you are a party troll who cannot get his mind around the idea of quality v party. :)
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    edited December 2019


    Just a minute:

    Tory government 1979-1997:
    Falklands War (1982)
    Gulf War (1990–91)
    Bosnian War (1992–96)

    Labour 1997-2010:
    Operation Desert Fox (1998)
    Kosovo War (1999)
    Sierra Leone Civil War (2000)
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Iraq War (2003–11)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)

    Tories again 2010 on:
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)
    Boko Haram insurgency (2012–Ongoing)
    Northern Mali conflict (2013–Ongoing)
    Military intervention against ISIS (2014–Ongoing)
    Libyan Civil War (2011)
    Syrian Civil War (2018)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_Kingdom#20th_century

    (i) I would remove the Falklands War. Whatever the rights/wrongs of the UK colony of the Falklands, it is clear that the Falklands were actually invaded (by a fascist general). That is, the decision to take military action was made in Buenos Airies rather than Westminster.

    (ii) You also seem to be under the misapprehension that the Tories were in power from 2010, whereas the rest of us remember it being a Coalition Government from 2010-2015 in which the LibDems were partners. Perhaps this is an interesting example of amnesia/confirmation bias?

    Once you have made those corrections, I think it would be interesting to know how many UK soldiers were lost, and how many foreign casualties were caused by UK troops in the various interventions.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    melcf said:

    OllyT said:

    Foxy said:

    Barnesian said:


    I note your comment about support for Tories (or BXP) in social housing. Formally solid LD areas of social housing are now leaking to Tory or BXP, even in Barnes. This is more than offset by rock solid affluent Tory areas switching en masse to LDs.

    The Tory party of the the future will be a strange beast, deserted by the middle class and looking for its support from the "left behind" who are fickle and often don't vote - "what's the point mate".
    Yes, a Tory party reliant on that vote will be an interesting beast indeed, but we do need a word of warning. All these tales of WWC voters hating Corbyn, of desiring Brexit over all things and despising the student union luvvies of the Labour party were all the stuff of PB threads a few days before GE 2017 too. Some of my most successful constituency bets last time were on Labour in WWC Northern Red seats "nailed on" for Con gains.
    The key thing is what WWC voters in places like Workington, Hartlepool, Stoke and Sunderland do at the next general election when they realise that Brexit and Johnson were a mirage and that things haven't improved for them or their areas and indeed might even have got worse
    May be by 2024 the Tories will find another topic, to whip up passions and divide society?
    May be a war, on some remote outpost? Who knows

    Perhaps not the best suggestion, given New Labour's penchant for wars.

    How many bloody wars did New Labour fight -- I lost count in the end.
    Just a minute:

    Tory government 1979-1997:
    Falklands War (1982)
    Gulf War (1990–91)
    Bosnian War (1992–96)

    Labour 1997-2010:
    Operation Desert Fox (1998)
    Kosovo War (1999)
    Sierra Leone Civil War (2000)
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Iraq War (2003–11)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)

    Tories again 2010 on:
    War in Afghanistan (2001–Ongoing)
    Somali Civil War (2009–present)
    Boko Haram insurgency (2012–Ongoing)
    Northern Mali conflict (2013–Ongoing)
    Military intervention against ISIS (2014–Ongoing)
    Libyan Civil War (2011)
    Syrian Civil War (2018)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_Kingdom#20th_century
    Tories cleaning up Labour’s messes?

    ‘‘Twas ever thus

    Although in your list from Kosovo onwards (May be excluding Sierre Leone?) I’d argue that those are just regional campaigns in a single war rather than individual wars
  • isamisam Posts: 41,118
    edited December 2019

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

    I have seen nothing to suggest her family was at any stage of her life working class or engaged in working class employment, her education was an all girls grammar. Nothing about her life says working class to me.

    I went to an all boy's grammar school. I don't think that tells you anything. Her parents were clearly from working class families, but did well for themselves. If they brought her up to feel and believe she was working class, then that's how she sees herself. I don't have a huge problem with it, though I do think it's strange that so many people on the left find it so hard to admit that they and their families may have changed class.

    How do we know her parents were clearly from working class families? All I know is what wiki says
  • alb1onalb1on Posts: 698
    IshmaelZ said:

    alb1on said:

    IshmaelZ said:


    YouGov's MRP comes with an impeccable pedigree.

    "The model was developed primarily by Professor Ben Lauderdale of University College London in conjunction with Jack Blumenau (University College London),From there, the models are fit using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with the open source software Stan. Stan was developed at Columbia University by Andrew Gelman and his colleagues, with support from YouGov and other organisations." (YouGov website)

    Make no mistake, this is a serious statistical project with an impressive array of statisticians and political scientists. Stan & Hamiltonian MCMC are cutting edge techniques that have only become available in the last decade.

    Andrew Gelman is as famous as it is possible to be in the field of statistics.

    Against this, we have a bloke on the internet (Barnesian).

    The greatest difficulty in analysing data is that you are the easiest person to fool. This is especially the case in elections, in which you may have a huge emotional investment in the outcome.

    A team of people -- and especially a team of professional statisticians who are mainly interested in algorithms to extract the best predictions -- seems to me absolutely the best way to circumvent this.

    I have already stated that I am not voting, being equally disgusted with all the parties. But, I think Stodge called this election correctly right at the beginning -- the only thing open for debate is the size of the Tory majority. I expect YouGov's MRP will be pretty damn accurate.

    Massive, massive appeal to authority there. The foundation of any statistical endeavour is a truly random sample. YouGov work with self-selected panels. LOL. 3. Last time round, it was some bloke off the internet (D Herdson) popping in with an anecdote who gave us much the clearest steer about how things were going.

    "Anecdotes bad, scientific studies good" is a principle which is overstated even in the context of medicine - we wouldn't have lithium, or the MAOIs (and therefore anti depressants generally) or viagra (except as an ineffectual angina treatment) if researchers hasn't paid attention to anecdotes. And the principle doesn't read across to polling well because polls are not proper objective data in the first place - you don't study cancer by asking the patient how he would expect to react to a course of chemotherapy.
    You are making the mistake of thinking that the role of anecdote and scientific study is similar in medicine (and other fields). Anecdote is useful for forming a hypothesis but has no role in proving that hypothesis and either elevating it to a theorem or advancing it to the production and approval of a drug.
    I am pointing out that mistake, not making it.
    My apologies then, I misunderstood.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 43,361
    RobD said:

    kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
    Can you give a specific example of bias in Robinson's moderation on Friday?
    Another known liar, he lied through his teeth about Salmond. A biased creep.
  • ReggieCideReggieCide Posts: 4,312
    I've just heard the BBC report that Sturgeon thinks the Scottish people should determine whether there is another Indyref, rather than Westminister. Isn't that a referendum to decide whether to have a referendum? The only way out of that is to have another referendum.
  • Endillion said:

    America and Murdoch will watching the election very closely - Johnson\Corbyn could be Trump\Sanders in November 2020.

    Only difference is that the sanders progressive wing have an active media voice that holds Trump to account and won't tolerate lies (trump has a lie tracker over 15000). The UK press across print, radio and television have been utterly shameless in their bias at getting Johnson elected. The BBC needs a massive clear out.. To many diehard Tories in senior positions.

    The cool thing about Corbyn is he somehow manages to combine the worst traits of both Trump and Sanders. Or at least his followers do - I wonder sometimes if Corbyn is aware of some of the more egregious output from the likes of Bastani.
    You clearly have never met any trump or sanders supporters.

    Trump supporters are basically like Boris Johnson - support racism, homophobia, dividing people and blaming everything on immigrants or people of colour.
    As opposed to the rife anti semitism of the far left?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,936
    malcolmg said:

    RobD said:

    kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
    Can you give a specific example of bias in Robinson's moderation on Friday?
    Another known liar, he lied through his teeth about Salmond. A biased creep.
    Bit early to be hitting the turnip juice, isn't it? :p
  • melcfmelcf Posts: 166
    malcolmg said:

    melcf said:

    Both Dianee Abott and Rees-Mogg locked at his wife's ancestral home
    The home that was given a 7.6 million renovation/ heritage grant!

    That is an even worse thought than Corbyn and Abott. Mogg is another on missing in action.
    From Greenfell tower straight to the ivory tower
  • RobD said:

    kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
    Can you give a specific example of bias in Robinson's moderation on Friday?
    Lol seriously..how many times did nick Robinson repeat Boris johnson s talking point with direct questioning forcing corbyn to answer. I read on twitter nick asked corbyn 9 time smears Johnson made and called corbyn out twice on falsehoods. Robinson only questioned Johnson three times and didn't call out any falsehoods.

    Yet Boris Johnson repeatedly lied and nick robinson did nothing
    Johnson said there will be 50k nurses..not true
    Johnson said we will get brexit done if elected..not true the law was passed and nobody was stopping that law from passed he chose an election.
    Johnson said there will be 20000 more police again not true.
    Johnson said there would be 40_new hospitals again not true.

    Its an absolute scandal that we have press core that is not holding Boris to account
  • melcf said:

    Wars could be fought for various reasons. Some wars can boost election success
    Cut and pasted, below
    In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher's popularity increased. The success of the Falklands campaign was widely regarded as a factor in the turnaround in fortunes for the Conservative government, who had been trailing behind the SDP-Liberal Alliance in the opinion polls for months before the conflict began, but after the success in the Falklands the Conservatives returned to the top of the opinion polls by a wide margin and went on to win the following year's general election by a landslide.[132] Subsequently, Defence Secretary Nott's proposed cuts to the Royal Navy were abandoned.

    Which ignores the fact that swingback to the Tories had begun before the conflict began. Tories led in the Gallup in March and the Mori in February, with other polls showing a rapid narrowing before then too.
  • ReggieCideReggieCide Posts: 4,312
    malcolmg said:

    RobD said:

    kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
    Can you give a specific example of bias in Robinson's moderation on Friday?
    Another known liar, he lied through his teeth about Salmond. A biased creep.
    I hadn't noticed his pants were on fire.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 59,936

    RobD said:

    kle4 said:

    Got to love the corrupt press campaigning for Boris Johnson.
    - Sophie Ridge (laugh and giggle) - Tory
    - Laura Kuennsburg BBC Chief Political Correspondent - Tory Unionist
    - Tom Bradby ITV - Tory
    - Nick Ferrari LBC - Tory
    - Nick Robinson (debate moderator BBC) Tory
    - Iain Dale LBC Tory
    - Chuck in the billionaire tax avoiding press barons hitmen - daily mail, sun , times, Sunday times, mail on Sunday, daily express, su day express, the star, Sunday star telegraph, Sunday telegraph and this is why we have Boris Johnson

    Simple question I want answer to
    How many children do you have Boris?

    Why does that question matter? His unsuitability for the job would exist even if he had no children, or 15 . It distracts from his political unsuitability.
    We know the corrupt media...bbc, Amy news, LBC and the billionaire tax avoiding press baron hitmen would be asking a labour politician this question without hesitation.

    Any smear the whole Tory press core run with it.

    Don't you see the corrupt media everywhere..
    Sophie ridge is supposed to be interviewing Boris Johnson and her corrupt Tory soul just can't help itself by having a laugh and giggle.
    Who in the BBC decided to have a life long Tory member Nick Robinson moderate the debate on Friday?
    Who in the BBC decided to have a diehard Tory Unionist Laura to follow and interview Boris Johnson???

    The new online progressive media is right..dark money is destroying our democracy and people across media are not holding Boris Johnson to account.
    Can you give a specific example of bias in Robinson's moderation on Friday?
    Lol seriously..how many times did nick Robinson repeat Boris johnson s talking point with direct questioning forcing corbyn to answer. I read on twitter nick asked corbyn 9 time smears Johnson made and called corbyn out twice on falsehoods. Robinson only questioned Johnson three times and didn't call out any falsehoods.

    Yet Boris Johnson repeatedly lied and nick robinson did nothing
    Johnson said there will be 50k nurses..not true
    Johnson said we will get brexit done if elected..not true the law was passed and nobody was stopping that law from passed he chose an election.
    Johnson said there will be 20000 more police again not true.
    Johnson said there would be 40_new hospitals again not true.

    Its an absolute scandal that we have press core that is not holding Boris to account
    You read on twitter. So you didn't actually watch it then?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 10,061

    kinabalu said:

    isam said:

    She swears a lot in a Northern accent, which seems to lead posh people to think she is working class

    She IS working class.
    Is she bollocks. Her father was a teacher and her mother was deputy chair of the NHS confederation. Shes middle class.

    I would say that she is, but that she comes from a working class family. My Dad ended up an engineer, my Mum a social worker. They both left school at 15 with three O levels between them and when I was a kid my Dad fixed lifts on a night shift and my Mum worked in a pub. I got free school meals. Then in the late 1970s my Mum went to college and qualified as a social worker, while my Dad went on various courses and ended up where he did. I was born into the working ckass and grew up in a working class family, but there is no way any of us could be described as working class now.

    I have seen nothing to suggest her family was at any stage of her life working class or engaged in working class employment, her education was an all girls grammar. Nothing about her life says working class to me.

    I went to an all boy's grammar school. I don't think that tells you anything. Her parents were clearly from working class families, but did well for themselves. If they brought her up to feel and believe she was working class, then that's how she sees herself. I don't have a huge problem with it, though I do think it's strange that so many people on the left find it so hard to admit that they and their families may have changed class.

    What did her grandparents do? What leads you to say they were 'clearly working class'?
    I went to a public school on the assisted places scheme, my family are relatively poor, it doesn't tell you a lot no
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