This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
Presume Steve Baker got caught in an untypical pincer movement. High Wycombe town becoming ever more BAME (like a mini-Slough) while the other areas in the constituency, such as Marlow, while usually very Tory, were remainy and hence swung against him given his high-profile support for a hard Brexit. A combination repeated in few other seats I would guess.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 40 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
You are displaying your all too familiar lack of acuity. What Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017 was to enthuse various constituencies - namely students, anti-Mayers, those sick of politics, idealists, and more besides. He failed to win the election. Because the people he enthused were not sufficient in number to gain an electoral majority. He hit his ceiling and it was not good enough.
Another leader would have appealed to voters differently and thereby raised the number of people voting Labour to a level sufficient to form the next government.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
I'm not so sure of that. Time will tell I guess. I think many of these northern leavers felt they had no choice but vote Boris. Note Boris - not Conservative. They voted for Boris to get Brexit done. I don't think they will necessary stay Tory from now on. But we shall see, too early to call either way yet I think. Too much Brexit stuff, and its effects, still to happen.
I don’t believe you are allowed to top up in the NHS.
If you choose to supplement your healthcare the NHS can kick you out (ie it’s our way or the highway)
Foxy can advise better, but my understanding is that you can supplement if you're getting treatment for a different condition. What they don't like is if you flip-flop between NHS and private for the same treatment, potentially creating confusion.
I think you can still pay extra for a private room, too, perhaps other kinds of non-medical upgrades? I've fortunately never been seriously ill yet so I don't actually know.
Confusion only arises because of the NHS’s one size fits all approach
The classic example is with new cancer drugs. If NICE has determined they aren’t value for money they aren’t prescribed on the NHS. Which is fair enough.
But why prevent someone paying for it themselves (full system cost) and have it administered by the NHS?
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
If that’s true it is complete and utter filth, and I have lost nearly all respect, and I did have quite a bit, for Nandy
If his whatsits have been cut off, maybe. It's not perhaps PC, but I'm willing to help to hold him down.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I agree. I get very frustrated re the gender issue. People should be segregated according to their circumstances not their sex. Eg violent criminals in high security, sex offenders for their own protection, drug dependent inmates away from pushers and getting treatment, low risk criminals in open prisons, etc. In all probability that means separating the sexes, but because of circumstances, not because of their sex. This means regardless of their disputed sex this person will not be mixing with anyone whom he/she may cause harm or be harmed by.
On that subject I can see no reason why open prisons can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
Presume Steve Baker got caught in an untypical pincer movement. High Wycombe town becoming ever more BAME (like a mini-Slough) while the other areas in the constituency, such as Marlow, while usually very Tory, were remainy and hence swung against him given his high-profile support for a hard Brexit. A combination repeated in few other seats I would guess.
Remain or soft Leave seats like Chingford, Hendon, Watford, Wokingham saw a similar story
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
In terms of voteshare, yes. What should have given more cause for concern at the time was that it was the third election running where they won fewer seats than in 1992.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
I don't necessarily disagree with your analysis, just pointing out the fact.
You give a logical argument above as to why these seats are safer.
However the order on the list of targets by majority (as per your previous post/argument) isn't. The reason being is the order swapped once so they can swap back again. The seats were won from a low position on the list so you can't argue now they are now safer because of their higher position on the list. They're contradictory arguments.
The latest response by you is a more persuasive argument (whether one agrees with it or not)
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
Well with these new fangled calculator things there is rarely a need for that is there? It will end in tears and innumeracy, I am sure.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
I'm not so sure of that. Time will tell I guess. I think many of these northern leavers felt they had no choice but vote Boris. Note Boris - not Conservative. They voted for Boris to get Brexit done. I don't think they will necessary stay Tory from now on. But we shall see, too early to call either way yet I think. Too much Brexit stuff, and its effects, still to happen.
It reflects the movement across the western world, the white working class shifting more conservative, the graduate upper middle class shifting more left liberal, it is unlikely to be reversed
I cannot think of a candidate that better fits the caricature of Labour as a party for self righteous English metropolitans than Keir Starmer.
Unless Boris succeeds in rapidly gentrifying the crumbled red wall into a hoard of prosecco swigging vegans, I have no idea what conceivable path to power a Starmer led Labour would have.
And if he is pig headed enough to still be talking about the EU Single Market in 2024/5, I think he’ll do even worse than Corbyn.
On what do you base this? You don't seem to have any facts there apart from your opinions. This guy was a former director of public prosecutions and you don't get to that position without being highly competent
Bullshit Mike
You get to the top of any big organisation by being highly political. Competence is a bonus.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Logs are needed for certain very useful types of graph in physics (exponential relationships and anything where you don’t know the power are the two main ones) so sometimes I have to give a crash course version to those not doing A-level maths.
Using logs for multiplying and dividing multi digit numbers is a dying art though, except in the trivial case of checking calculations by looking at the powers of ten.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
Well with these new fangled calculator things there is rarely a need for that is there? It will end in tears and innumeracy, I am sure.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
Interesting bunch, that latter. Chose a majority Con government and immediate Leave over a weak minority Lab government and Ref2/Remain. Can such a person really lay claim to the prestigious Remainer handle? Arguable at the very least.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
I don't believe it follows that because so many traditional Labour voters in those seats voted Tory in 2019 that they will do so again.The big swings in those areas are likely to be due to 'Get Brexit Done' and 'Stop Corbyn' factors. Neither of those factors will apply in 2023/2024, and it is far too premature to assume that previous loyalties will not reassert themselves.Swings which occurred over a period of two and a half years may be reversed over a later four to five year period. For that reason, I suspect it may be a mistake to take the Tory majorities in places such as Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield at face value. It is not simply a matter of how big the Tory majorities are in such seats but also of how how firm such Tory support proves to be. LibDem support during periods of surge - as we saw again last year post the EU elections - tends to be 'easy come - easy go' , and much the same may be true of the Tory vote in these heartlands. We simply do not know.
If things work out sub-optimally for Nicola next month (and her comments at the weekend about how she had learned from the #metoo movement that she had put up with a lot of male behaviour that she should not have were....interesting) she may well be very well placed to take over. A remarkable rise.
Yep. Murdo Fraser was tipping her for the top job before this parliament is out a few days ago. Basically Scottish politics is in a holding pattern until we see the outcome of the Salmond trial. Nicola is trying to keep the fundies happy in the meantime by insisting that a 2020 referendum is on the cards, but everyone knows that is bunkum. Kate Forbes seems to be universally liked but difficult to imagine someone so young successfully leading a charge to something so profound as Scottish independence. Just not credible, surely.
Depends who else throws their hat into the ring when the time comes.
That's the problem for SNP. Most of the credible alternatives (Blackford, Alyn Smith, Joanne Cherry) are stuck down in Westminster or, in the case of Angus Robertson, in neither Parliament. John Swinney is certainly capable but he's been round the ring once already and I'm struggling to think of anyone else although Humza Yousaf probably fancies his chances. I don't.
Have we had your view on the 'new' SCon leadership yet? What think ye of Jackson Coleslaw's (ht SandyRentool I think) abilities to lead a charge against something so profound as Scottish independence
I cannot think of a candidate that better fits the caricature of Labour as a party for self righteous English metropolitans than Keir Starmer.
Unless Boris succeeds in rapidly gentrifying the crumbled red wall into a hoard of prosecco swigging vegans, I have no idea what conceivable path to power a Starmer led Labour would have.
And if he is pig headed enough to still be talking about the EU Single Market in 2024/5, I think he’ll do even worse than Corbyn.
On what do you base this? You don't seem to have any facts there apart from your opinions. This guy was a former director of public prosecutions and you don't get to that position without being highly competent
Bullshit Mike
You get to the top of any big organisation by being highly political. Competence is a bonus.
Utter bollocks. You are talking about the DPP, not the Bursar of the public school you went to. It is hilarious how many right wing Tories are so desperate to run down Starmer. If they really thought he was crap they would be talking him up. The reality is that they know when he is compared to the clown we have as PM he will look very sensible indeed, and no one (except right wing Tories) will care if he is boring. In fact, after a few years of the Johnson Cummings act they might just welcome it.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
Interesting bunch, that latter. Chose a majority Con government and immediate Leave over a weak minority Lab government and Ref2/Remain. Can such a person really lay claim to the prestigious Remainer handle? Arguable at the very least.
Very sensible. Leaving that last post of yours and its responses well alone. What a savvy PB-er you are. Always said so.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
Indeed - and it has been suggested that Corbyn had wanted to stand down in mid- 2018 but was prevailed upon by Lansmann and Mcdonnel to stay on. If so, they have much to answer for.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
Well with these new fangled calculator things there is rarely a need for that is there? It will end in tears and innumeracy, I am sure.
I am afraid that using NUMBERS is below me, the final stage after the proper maths has been done. I mean they do have their uses as scalars, multipliers and exponents, but molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff.....
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I agree. I get very frustrated re the gender issue. People should be segregated according to their circumstances not their sex. Eg violent criminals in high security, sex offenders for their own protection, drug dependent inmates away from pushers and getting treatment, low risk criminals in open prisons, etc. In all probability that means separating the sexes, but because of circumstances, not because of their sex. This means regardless of their disputed sex this person will not be mixing with anyone whom he/she may cause harm or be harmed by.
On that subject I can see no reason why open prisons can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
I cannot think of a candidate that better fits the caricature of Labour as a party for self righteous English metropolitans than Keir Starmer.
Unless Boris succeeds in rapidly gentrifying the crumbled red wall into a hoard of prosecco swigging vegans, I have no idea what conceivable path to power a Starmer led Labour would have.
And if he is pig headed enough to still be talking about the EU Single Market in 2024/5, I think he’ll do even worse than Corbyn.
On what do you base this? You don't seem to have any facts there apart from your opinions. This guy was a former director of public prosecutions and you don't get to that position without being highly competent
Bullshit Mike
You get to the top of any big organisation by being highly political. Competence is a bonus.
Utter bollocks. You are talking about the DPP, not the Bursar of the public school you went to. It is hilarious how many right wing Tories are so desperate to run down Starmer. If they really thought he was crap they would be talking him up. The reality is that they know when he is compared to the clown we have as PM he will look very sensible indeed, and no one (except right wing Tories) will care if he is boring. In fact, after a few years of the Johnson Cummings act they might just welcome it.
I think he is super competent. But I also think he advocates an agenda that is too left wing and too Remain-y to bring in the votes he needs from disillusioned Cons on the one hand, and Red Wall Lab types on the other.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Logs are needed for certain very useful types of graph in physics (exponential relationships and anything where you don’t know the power are the two main ones) so sometimes I have to give a crash course version to those not doing A-level maths.
Using logs for multiplying and dividing multi digit numbers is a dying art though, except in the trivial case of checking calculations by looking at the powers of ten.
I go past a portrait of John Napier on my way into the Advocates Library. A clever chap by all accounts.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
We can squeeze until the voters are all sopranos and we won't win in my patch where Phillip Davies has over 50% of the vote. This is a seat we need to win in 2024.
We tried squeezing Remainers and abandoning Leavers in 2019. It didn't work.
Don't forget that in many Northern seats more of our ex-voters jumped to the Brexit Party than to the Tories. They need to go somewhere else next time. It needs to be back to Labour, if we are to stand a chance. We need to have policies that these voters find attractive. Gender-neutral tofu just won't cut it.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats romwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
I don't believe it follows that because so many traditional Labour voters in those seats voted Tory in 2019 that they will do so again.The big swings in those areas are likely to be due to 'Get Brexit Done' and 'Stop Corbyn' factors. Neither of those factors will apply in 2023/2024, and it is far too premature to assume that previous loyalties will not reassert themselves.Swings which occurred over a period of two and a half years may be reversed over a later four to five year period. For that reason, I suspect it may be a mistake to take the Tory majorities in places such as Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield at face value. It is not simply a matter of how big the Tory majorities are in such seats but also of how how firm such Tory support proves to be. LibDem support during periods of surge - as we saw again last year post the EU elections - tends to be 'easy come - easy go' , and much the same may be true of the Tory vote in these heartlands. We simply do not know.
Maybe but I suspect even if some switch back if there is a swing against the Tories at the next general election it will be larger in London and the South than in the North, the Midlands and Wales
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
In terms of voteshare, yes. What should have given more cause for concern at the time was that it was the third election running where they won fewer seats than in 1992.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
The new leader has a lot of work to do.
It was far from being one way traffic though - in that Labour did win 16 seats in 2019 which returned Tory MPs in 2015.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
Indeed - and it has been suggested that Corbyn had wanted to stand down in mid- 2018 but was prevailed upon by Lansmann and Mcdonnel to stay on. If so, they have much to answer for.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
Interesting bunch, that latter. Chose a majority Con government and immediate Leave over a weak minority Lab government and Ref2/Remain. Can such a person really lay claim to the prestigious Remainer handle? Arguable at the very least.
Very sensible. Leaving that last post of yours and its responses well alone. What a savvy PB-er you are. Always said so.
Funny how, in spite of the evidence HYUFD is still desperate to claim that voters in the GE voted positively for "Boris" (as he likes to sycophantically call him) They voted against the idea of PM Corbyn, pure and simple.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
He had earned the right with the 2017 performance. And many of the same people were predicting disaster then, remember. Stopped clock and all that. I do agree, as it happens, that a different leader might well have done better in 2019. The election was not winnable for Labour - given its timing and framing - but it did not have to result in a Con overall majority of 80. I think 30 was achievable.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
Interesting bunch, that latter. Chose a majority Con government and immediate Leave over a weak minority Lab government and Ref2/Remain. Can such a person really lay claim to the prestigious Remainer handle? Arguable at the very least.
Very sensible. Leaving that last post of yours and its responses well alone. What a savvy PB-er you are. Always said so.
Funny how, in spite of the evidence HYUFD is still desperate to claim that voters in the GE voted positively for "Boris" (as he likes to sycophantically call him) They voted against the idea of PM Corbyn, pure and simple.
If they were Remainers maybe, if they were Leavers then no they voted positively for Brexit and for Boris to deliver it, hence the Tories picked up barely any seats in London and the South but lots of seats in the North and Midlands
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
In terms of voteshare, yes. What should have given more cause for concern at the time was that it was the third election running where they won fewer seats than in 1992.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
The new leader has a lot of work to do.
It was far from being one way traffic though - in that Labour did win 16 seats in 2019 which returned Tory MPs in 2015.
‘given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks.’
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
Well with these new fangled calculator things there is rarely a need for that is there? It will end in tears and innumeracy, I am sure.
We did perfectly well when we had abacuses...
I went to a study tour of the Soviet Union in 1981 or so, certainly when Brezhnev was still in charge, and banks there were still using abacuses for their daily work. When I produced my pocket calculator the Russians were (a) astonished and (b) convinced that I was a millionaire. If only.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
Indeed - and it has been suggested that Corbyn had wanted to stand down in mid- 2018 but was prevailed upon by Lansmann and Mcdonnel to stay on. If so, they have much to answer for.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
Interesting bunch, that latter. Chose a majority Con government and immediate Leave over a weak minority Lab government and Ref2/Remain. Can such a person really lay claim to the prestigious Remainer handle? Arguable at the very least.
Very sensible. Leaving that last post of yours and its responses well alone. What a savvy PB-er you are. Always said so.
Funny how, in spite of the evidence HYUFD is still desperate to claim that voters in the GE voted positively for "Boris" (as he likes to sycophantically call him) They voted against the idea of PM Corbyn, pure and simple.
If they were Remainers maybe, if they were Leavers then no they voted positively for Brexit and for Boris to deliver it
No. Look at the evidence. Your obsession with the cause that you have converted to, and you fanbois obsession with Johnson are making you completely blind. Corbyn was the overriding reason. Labour voters are not extremists, terrorist sympathisers or anti-Semites. They either didn't turn out or voted Tory. I think you will see a big rturn in Labour support if they end up with decent leadership. I guess we will have to wait another 4.5 year to see who is right though!
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
If things work out sub-optimally for Nicola next month (and her comments at the weekend about how she had learned from the #metoo movement that she had put up with a lot of male behaviour that she should not have were....interesting) she may well be very well placed to take over. A remarkable rise.
Yep. Murdo Fraser was tipping her for the top job before this parliament is out a few days ago. Basically Scottish politics is in a holding pattern until we see the outcome of the Salmond trial. Nicola is trying to keep the fundies happy in the meantime by insisting that a 2020 referendum is on the cards, but everyone knows that is bunkum. Kate Forbes seems to be universally liked but difficult to imagine someone so young successfully leading a charge to something so profound as Scottish independence. Just not credible, surely.
Depends who else throws their hat into the ring when the time comes.
That's the problem for SNP. Most of the credible alternatives (Blackford, Alyn Smith, Joanne Cherry) are stuck down in Westminster or, in the case of Angus Robertson, in neither Parliament. John Swinney is certainly capable but he's been round the ring once already and I'm struggling to think of anyone else although Humza Yousaf probably fancies his chances. I don't.
Have we had your view on the 'new' SCon leadership yet? What think ye of Jackson Coleslaw's (ht SandyRentool I think) abilities to lead a charge against something so profound as Scottish independence
Tbh I wouldn't fancy his chances against Nicola. I am hoping that proves not to be an issue.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
Just in case people are getting the wrong end of the stick here. My understanding is that this is not an actual decision being contemplated. The individual being referenced has served their sentence (in juvenile detention) for the crime committed, was released a while ago and is not facing further jail time.
If things work out sub-optimally for Nicola next month (and her comments at the weekend about how she had learned from the #metoo movement that she had put up with a lot of male behaviour that she should not have were....interesting) she may well be very well placed to take over. A remarkable rise.
Yep. Murdo Fraser was tipping her for the top job before this parliament is out a few days ago. Basically Scottish politics is in a holding pattern until we see the outcome of the Salmond trial. Nicola is trying to keep the fundies happy in the meantime by insisting that a 2020 referendum is on the cards, but everyone knows that is bunkum. Kate Forbes seems to be universally liked but difficult to imagine someone so young successfully leading a charge to something so profound as Scottish independence. Just not credible, surely.
Depends who else throws their hat into the ring when the time comes.
That's the problem for SNP. Most of the credible alternatives (Blackford, Alyn Smith, Joanne Cherry) are stuck down in Westminster or, in the case of Angus Robertson, in neither Parliament. John Swinney is certainly capable but he's been round the ring once already and I'm struggling to think of anyone else although Humza Yousaf probably fancies his chances. I don't.
Have we had your view on the 'new' SCon leadership yet? What think ye of Jackson Coleslaw's (ht SandyRentool I think) abilities to lead a charge against something so profound as Scottish independence
Tbh I wouldn't fancy his chances against Nicola. I am hoping that proves not to be an issue.
Would you buy a used car from the Scottish Tories?
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
This is NOT one of your reasonably solid posts. All I am doing is bringing some detached perspective to a matter on which people - with Dec 12th so fresh - sometimes lose it. Yes, it has all ended in tears but at the 2017 election Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its best non-Blair result in almost 50 years. This cannot be simply airbrushed from history, much as it might suit various agendas to attempt to do so.
A detached perspective would show that Labour were out of their tiny minds in allowing Corbyn to lead them into the 2019 election. The membership were warned repeatedly by many inside the party and chose to ignore it. A lot of MPs paid the price.
Indeed - and it has been suggested that Corbyn had wanted to stand down in mid- 2018 but was prevailed upon by Lansmann and Mcdonnel to stay on. If so, they have much to answer for.
Lansmann has done so much damage to the Labour party it is surprising that Boris didn't offer him a peerage.
And while I am on my rant of gender let's go for the trilogy of complaints - gender neutral loos.
Now I am in favour of gender neutral loos as it solves the gender issue, but not the ones I have gone into. Those ones have just pandered to PC.
The last one I used was all cubicles. Now I am a bit of a hygiene fetish so I don't like using cubicles and I don't need to. What is more this takes up more space, costs more, causes men to queue when shouldn't need to and makes the queue longer for women. Losses all around.
What is wrong with a single entrance, with screened off urinals, cubicles, disabled cubicles and baby changing room?
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
Well with these new fangled calculator things there is rarely a need for that is there? It will end in tears and innumeracy, I am sure.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Logs are needed for certain very useful types of graph in physics (exponential relationships and anything where you don’t know the power are the two main ones) so sometimes I have to give a crash course version to those not doing A-level maths.
Using logs for multiplying and dividing multi digit numbers is a dying art though, except in the trivial case of checking calculations by looking at the powers of ten.
I go past a portrait of John Napier on my way into the Advocates Library. A clever chap by all accounts.
Napierian logarithms are the ones I use most of the time TBH. I leave their explanation to the maths department though.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
If things work out sub-optimally for Nicola next month (and her comments at the weekend about how she had learned from the #metoo movement that she had put up with a lot of male behaviour that she should not have were....interesting) she may well be very well placed to take over. A remarkable rise.
Yep. Murdo Fraser was tipping her for the top job before this parliament is out a few days ago. Basically Scottish politics is in a holding pattern until we see the outcome of the Salmond trial. Nicola is trying to keep the fundies happy in the meantime by insisting that a 2020 referendum is on the cards, but everyone knows that is bunkum. Kate Forbes seems to be universally liked but difficult to imagine someone so young successfully leading a charge to something so profound as Scottish independence. Just not credible, surely.
Depends who else throws their hat into the ring when the time comes.
That's the problem for SNP. Most of the credible alternatives (Blackford, Alyn Smith, Joanne Cherry) are stuck down in Westminster or, in the case of Angus Robertson, in neither Parliament. John Swinney is certainly capable but he's been round the ring once already and I'm struggling to think of anyone else although Humza Yousaf probably fancies his chances. I don't.
Have we had your view on the 'new' SCon leadership yet? What think ye of Jackson Coleslaw's (ht SandyRentool I think) abilities to lead a charge against something so profound as Scottish independence
Tbh I wouldn't fancy his chances against Nicola. I am hoping that proves not to be an issue.
He's been up against her most of the last year so the SCons can't say they weren't warned. Unfair q I know, but was there anyone in the ranks that you think might have been an improvement (assume you think Ballantyne wasn't a proper option)?
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
It's such a shame that he must stand down. One more push and I sincerely believe he will get Lab over the line. Surely the Jeremy Must Stay campaign starts here. Prop: @kinabalu.
was the third election running where they won fewer seats than in 1992.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
The new leader has a lot of work to do.
It was far from being one way traffic though - in that Labour did win 16 seats in 2019 which returned Tory MPs in 2015.
‘given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks.’
I believe that fewer than 15 seats actually swung to Labour compared with 2017. It did come as a surprise to me - despite my earlier comments re first term incumbency - that Labour was able to retain so many of the gains made in 2017. First term incumbency tends to be useful in the context of an adverse national swing of 1% or 2% - but in 2019 the average anti-Labour swing was circa 4.5% . Under those circumstances, I would have expected very few of the 2017 gains to be held.As it was, half were retained.
If things work out sub-optimally for Nicola next month (and her comments at the weekend about how she had learned from the #metoo movement that she had put up with a lot of male behaviour that she should not have were....interesting) she may well be very well placed to take over. A remarkable rise.
Yep. Murdo Fraser was tipping her for the top job before this parliament is out a few days ago. Basically Scottish politics is in a holding pattern until we see the outcome of the Salmond trial. Nicola is trying to keep the fundies happy in the meantime by insisting that a 2020 referendum is on the cards, but everyone knows that is bunkum. Kate Forbes seems to be universally liked but difficult to imagine someone so young successfully leading a charge to something so profound as Scottish independence. Just not credible, surely.
Depends who else throws their hat into the ring when the time comes.
That's the problem for SNP. Most of the credible alternatives (Blackford, Alyn Smith, Joanne Cherry) are stuck down in Westminster or, in the case of Angus Robertson, in neither Parliament. John Swinney is certainly capable but he's been round the ring once already and I'm struggling to think of anyone else although Humza Yousaf probably fancies his chances. I don't.
Have we had your view on the 'new' SCon leadership yet? What think ye of Jackson Coleslaw's (ht SandyRentool I think) abilities to lead a charge against something so profound as Scottish independence
Tbh I wouldn't fancy his chances against Nicola. I am hoping that proves not to be an issue.
Would you buy a used car from the Scottish Tories?
The attack lines just write themselves...
We won the referendum when led by Alastair Darling against Alec Salmond. We are a resilient lot.
In terms of voteshare, yes. What should have given more cause for concern at the time was that it was the third election running where they won fewer seats than in 1992.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
The new leader has a lot of work to do.
All valid commentary. Yes, bums on seats counts the most. Other things are more of academic interest. I'm not massively bullish for next time - how can one be? - but I can see us winning (outright) if the next few years are a horror story. Which they might be. Short of that, we could still win but it depends. The main thing I'm uncertain about is what is going on in the heads of these WWC ex Labour Leaver types who went for "Boris". What are they wanting from him and will he deliver it? If they are expecting a serious transformation in their material life prospects, he is almost certain to let them down. So this is therefore what I hope they are expecting. But it might not be. It might be more along the lines of just get us out of that terrible EU, toughen up on immigration, and then OK lots of Borissey gesture and theatre stuff to amuse and entertain us would be nice too. In which case I am sorely afraid that he is eminently capable of delivering and may thus be hard to shift.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Most of my use of logarithms over the years has been for converting exponential data into linear forms or as a substitution during integration to simplify the maths. I have hardly ever used them as a quickie multiplier method since O Level
Well with these new fangled calculator things there is rarely a need for that is there? It will end in tears and innumeracy, I am sure.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Logs are needed for certain very useful types of graph in physics (exponential relationships and anything where you don’t know the power are the two main ones) so sometimes I have to give a crash course version to those not doing A-level maths.
Using logs for multiplying and dividing multi digit numbers is a dying art though, except in the trivial case of checking calculations by looking at the powers of ten.
I go past a portrait of John Napier on my way into the Advocates Library. A clever chap by all accounts.
I go past Adam Smith's grave and house on my way to work - been a lot of rumbling lately.......
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
What crappy "teaching"! You could have been taught logs the same day you learnt powers. The following statements are equivalent: a^b=c log_a(c)=b That also teaches a fine lesson in how the same fact can be expressed in different notations, each of which might make things easier depending on what you want to do.
It was the same with calculus. It measures the area under the curve we were told and just nodded sagely. Again statistics as part of the economics course shed a bit more light.
Once it was explained what a logarithm was I was bewildered why it was not explained on the first day. It made it so much easier to understand and made mistakes less likely. Really poor.
I don't believe it follows that because so many traditional Labour voters in those seats voted Tory in 2019 that they will do so again.The big swings in those areas are likely to be due to 'Get Brexit Done' and 'Stop Corbyn' factors. Neither of those factors will apply in 2023/2024, and it is far too premature to assume that previous loyalties will not reassert themselves.Swings which occurred over a period of two and a half years may be reversed over a later four to five year period. For that reason, I suspect it may be a mistake to take the Tory majorities in places such as Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield at face value. It is not simply a matter of how big the Tory majorities are in such seats but also of how how firm such Tory support proves to be. LibDem support during periods of surge - as we saw again last year post the EU elections - tends to be 'easy come - easy go' , and much the same may be true of the Tory vote in these heartlands. We simply do not know.
I think you are forgetting the psychological element. For many people it was a massive psychological barrier to stop voting Labour. Once that barrier is broken it is much easier to not vote Labour next time. Just look at Lab's shares in Scotland e.g.:
Motherwell and Wishaw
2010 - 61% 2015 - 32% 2017 - 38% 2019 - 32%
Glasgow South
2010 - 52% 2015 - 30% 2017 - 37% 2019 - 30%
I think Lab can retake some of the most marginal red wall seats but Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield will be out of reach for good.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
Does that mean I am allowed to marry the rabbit?
Is the rabbit over 18?
I don't know much about rabbits but I suspect that might be a challenge
That imo is a huge shame. I think the writing was on the wall when they rescheduled so that Broadcasting House and Pienaar clashed. You may dislike BH (I do) but it is quite clear who the BBC preferred.
I don't believe it follows that because so many traditional Labour voters in those seats voted Tory in 2019 that they will do so again.The big swings in those areas are likely to be due to 'Get Brexit Done' and 'Stop Corbyn' factors. Neither of those factors will apply in 2023/2024, and it is far too premature to assume that previous loyalties will not reassert themselves.Swings which occurred over a period of two and a half years may be reversed over a later four to five year period. For that reason, I suspect it may be a mistake to take the Tory majorities in places such as Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield at face value. It is not simply a matter of how big the Tory majorities are in such seats but also of how how firm such Tory support proves to be. LibDem support during periods of surge - as we saw again last year post the EU elections - tends to be 'easy come - easy go' , and much the same may be true of the Tory vote in these heartlands. We simply do not know.
I think you are forgetting the psychological element. For many people it was a massive psychological barrier to stop voting Labour. Once that barrier is broken it is much easier to not vote Labour next time. Just look at Lab's shares in Scotland e.g.:
Motherwell and Wishaw
2010 - 61% 2015 - 32% 2017 - 38% 2019 - 32%
Glasgow South
2010 - 52% 2015 - 30% 2017 - 37% 2019 - 30%
I think Lab can retake some of the most marginal red wall seats but Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield will be out of reach for good.
I don't think the comparison with Scotland really works - simply because the SNP is viewed by many as a left of centre alternative. That clearly does not apply to the Tories.
The whole "lets find something bad that someone once said online several years ago when they were a student, so we can hound them out of their current job" schtick is thankfully now starting to wear thin very quickly.
Mr. Eadric, I don't watch much news now so can't comment on relative amounts of coverage, but agree it's the top story in the world right now. How this goes could alter a lot of things perhaps in ways we can't easily foresee right now.
I don't believe it follows that because so many traditional Labour voters in those seats voted Tory in 2019 that they will do so again.The big swings in those areas are likely to be due to 'Get Brexit Done' and 'Stop Corbyn' factors. Neither of those factors will apply in 2023/2024, and it is far too premature to assume that previous loyalties will not reassert themselves.Swings which occurred over a period of two and a half years may be reversed over a later four to five year period. For that reason, I suspect it may be a mistake to take the Tory majorities in places such as Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield at face value. It is not simply a matter of how big the Tory majorities are in such seats but also of how how firm such Tory support proves to be. LibDem support during periods of surge - as we saw again last year post the EU elections - tends to be 'easy come - easy go' , and much the same may be true of the Tory vote in these heartlands. We simply do not know.
I think you are forgetting the psychological element. For many people it was a massive psychological barrier to stop voting Labour. Once that barrier is broken it is much easier to not vote Labour next time. Just look at Lab's shares in Scotland e.g.:
Motherwell and Wishaw
2010 - 61% 2015 - 32% 2017 - 38% 2019 - 32%
Glasgow South
2010 - 52% 2015 - 30% 2017 - 37% 2019 - 30%
I think Lab can retake some of the most marginal red wall seats but Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield will be out of reach for good.
I don't think the comparison with Scotland really works - simply because the SNP is viewed by many as a left of centre alternative. That clearly does not apply to the Tories.
True but there are a lot of similarities with both groups of voters feeling neglected by Labour. I think in the red wall the "break" has been much more about culture than economics and it is going to take a lot more than better economic policies to win these voters back.
A key policy is immigration - a lot of the Labour members are in favour of completely open borders and it is going to be heard to reconcile this with the red wall seats.
This idea of winning by squeezing everyone else left of centre.
.
Labour might scrape a majority with the LDs if it wins seats like Chingford and Watford and Hendon and Wycombe which voted Remain or are soft Leave and if the LDs pick up Remain Tory seats like Esher and Walton and Cheltenham but yes for a majority Labour needs to gain seats like Scunthorpe and Shipley and West Bromwich
The Tory majority in Wycombe in 2019 was about the same as it was in 1997.
Except Wycombe is now 43rd on the Labour target list, easier to gain than Sedgefield and Grimsby
That assume uniform swing and presumably it wasn't uniform swing that created this state of affairs.
If you were a northern Leaver who went Tory from Labour last time you cast a pro Boris, pro Brexit vote.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
I'm not so sure of that. Time will tell I guess. I think many of these northern leavers felt they had no choice but vote Boris. Note Boris - not Conservative. They voted for Boris to get Brexit done. I don't think they will necessary stay Tory from now on. But we shall see, too early to call either way yet I think. Too much Brexit stuff, and its effects, still to happen.
It reflects the movement across the western world, the white working class shifting more conservative, the graduate upper middle class shifting more left liberal, it is unlikely to be reversed
You make a valid point. Still, not convinced. There is still a visceral dislike for the Conservatives up here. Brexit upset the apple cart, but I think it's more the oldies than the young that, up here at least, went for Boris. As they shuffle off their mortal coils I don't see the following cohorts shifting Tory in big enough numbers.
The working class isn't a homogenous mass. A quarter of the vote, give or take, in Yvette Cooper's seat has always voted Tory. Younger people are not so suspicious of furriners and non-whites. They are more socially liberal.
Brexit, up here, was voted for by the Boomers, who have gone Tory for Brexit, and, yes, an aversion to Corbyn.
If things work out sub-optimally for Nicola next month (and her comments at the weekend about how she had learned from the #metoo movement that she had put up with a lot of male behaviour that she should not have were....interesting) she may well be very well placed to take over. A remarkable rise.
Yep. Murdo Fraser was tipping her for the top job before this parliament is out a few days ago. Basically Scottish politics is in a holding pattern until we see the outcome of the Salmond trial. Nicola is trying to keep the fundies happy in the meantime by insisting that a 2020 referendum is on the cards, but everyone knows that is bunkum. Kate Forbes seems to be universally liked but difficult to imagine someone so young successfully leading a charge to something so profound as Scottish independence. Just not credible, surely.
Depends who else throws their hat into the ring when the time comes.
That's the problem for SNP. Most of the credible alternatives (Blackford, Alyn Smith, Joanne Cherry) are stuck down in Westminster or, in the case of Angus Robertson, in neither Parliament. John Swinney is certainly capable but he's been round the ring once already and I'm struggling to think of anyone else although Humza Yousaf probably fancies his chances. I don't.
Have we had your view on the 'new' SCon leadership yet? What think ye of Jackson Coleslaw's (ht SandyRentool I think) abilities to lead a charge against something so profound as Scottish independence
Tbh I wouldn't fancy his chances against Nicola. I am hoping that proves not to be an issue.
He's been up against her most of the last year so the SCons can't say they weren't warned. Unfair q I know, but was there anyone in the ranks that you think might have been an improvement (assume you think Ballantyne wasn't a proper option)?
I don't pay as much attention as I should to local government but no one stands out. A friend of mine did work with Margaret Mitchell and was impressed by her and Gordon Lindhurst is a friend from his time at the bar and very amusing but no is the short answer.
Mr. Teacher, then I'm glad I didn't tell you about my mechanical calculator.
If you can use log tables, or even worse a slide rule, that really dates you.
Guilty on all charges, m'lud.....
My poor wife (no, not because of that) had a truly awful maths teacher who never got around to teaching logarithms. When confronted by them in her Higher Maths she had to try to work out what they were in the exam hall. Didn't go brilliantly.
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
Logs are needed for certain very useful types of graph in physics (exponential relationships and anything where you don’t know the power are the two main ones) so sometimes I have to give a crash course version to those not doing A-level maths.
Using logs for multiplying and dividing multi digit numbers is a dying art though, except in the trivial case of checking calculations by looking at the powers of ten.
I go past a portrait of John Napier on my way into the Advocates Library. A clever chap by all accounts.
I occasionally go past his house (Merchiston castle) on my daily constitutional. In arithmetic manipulation of percentages - proportions or rates of growth - a natural log transform is essential imo.
That imo is a huge shame. I think the writing was on the wall when they rescheduled so that Broadcasting House and Pienaar clashed. You may dislike BH (I do) but it is quite clear who the BBC preferred.
I hope he continues with the political stuff.
The rumours are that Times Radio has a very large 'talent' budget, and is offering large pay rises and editorial freedom to a lot of well-known broadcasters to jump ship.
I do not understand why British media have gone so quiet (relatively) about coronavirus
It's not like it's gone away. The latest stats, deaths, crimes, videos, rumours (which often turn out to be true, or even WORSE than they appear) are absolutely terrifying.
This thing is right on the edge of being a global pandemic. A highly, highly contagious disease which spreads fast, kills 1-2% of those affected, and we have no vaccine. The rate of spread on that poor cruise ship shows what the virus can do.
Already it is screwing China's economy, with all that means for the rest of us. Global supply chains are about to break. Hong Kong is falling apart. Millions are in lockdown,
Why is this not absolutely dominating the news? The political fate of Lisa Nandy or Keir Starmer is utterly trivial in comparison.
Yes, me too.
I think we're in a phoney war phase. Speculation has been flung around that this could be on the scale of Spanish flu, or worse. With a global population approaching 8 billion, that could be of an order of half a billion dead. But it's too early to say yet whether this will come to pass, or whether the deaths will be not noticeably statistically greater than background noise. How many elderly Chinese people die of respiratory illnesses in a given winter? I have no idea. So I don't know if 1,000-odd deaths from Coronavirus is significant yet.
It could be terrible. Or it could be a lot of sound and fury over nothing. Really too early to tell.
Indeed - and it has been suggested that Corbyn had wanted to stand down in mid- 2018 but was prevailed upon by Lansmann and Mcdonnel to stay on. If so, they have much to answer for.
I heard that at a party meeting from an actual bloke who was told it by an actual mate of the actual Jon Lansman. I presume the reason they imposed on Jeremy was because they had no suitable person of the required political persuasion and pliability to take over. McDonnell must have doubted his own ability to hoover up the votes in a general election.
Provided she is in an isolation block, then surely it matters little whether in a male or female prison?
I as can not be mixed sex.
And I have the same issue re sex on other topics eg marriage. This whole business of civil partnerships, same sex marriage etc, to try and overcome historic bigotry is nonsense.
Marriage should be independent of the state. If you want to make a commitment to someone in a church or a civil service that is fine but the state should not be involved. If a church wants to limit it to same sex that is fine, just don't join in if you are not happy with bigots. Similarly if I want marry a rabbit and someone is will perform a ceremony that is also fine. Nobody else's business (unless there is subsequent cruelty involved!)
Unfortunately this does screw up a lot of laws.
Marriage is a very simple way to give two people a set of rights and responsibilities in relation to each other. Civil Partnerships do the same thing which is why there were a number of heterosexual couples who wanted the same thing: marriage in all but name I suppose.
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
I did say it screwed up a lot of laws!
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
But, I submit, m'lud, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree! In the reign of James the Second, It was generally reckoned As a rather serious crime To marry two wives at a time.
Does that mean I am allowed to marry the rabbit?
Is the rabbit over 18?
The mental capacity to consent must be an issue. Our pet rabbits were brain dead when they were alive.
Yes, that's a real case. The one posted earlier was a hypothetical one.
Men who sexually assault women are allowed in women’s prisons, where they offend again, because they say they’re now a woman.
Islamic extremists are let out halfway through sentences for plotting terrorism, because they pretend to be deradicalized, and commit terrorist acts days later.
Really it’s quite incredible. Normal people are totally baffled by it, while politicians seem to defend it while getting irate about name calling on social media
I don't believe it follows that because so many traditional Labour voters in those seats voted Tory in 2019 that they will do so again.The big swings in those areas are likely to be due to 'Get Brexit Done' and 'Stop Corbyn' factors. Neither of those factors will apply in 2023/2024, and it is far too premature to assume that previous loyalties will not reassert themselves.Swings which occurred over a period of two and a half years may be reversed over a later four to five year period. For that reason, I suspect it may be a mistake to take the Tory majorities in places such as Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield at face value. It is not simply a matter of how big the Tory majorities are in such seats but also of how how firm such Tory support proves to be. LibDem support during periods of surge - as we saw again last year post the EU elections - tends to be 'easy come - easy go' , and much the same may be true of the Tory vote in these heartlands. We simply do not know.
I think you are forgetting the psychological element. For many people it was a massive psychological barrier to stop voting Labour. Once that barrier is broken it is much easier to not vote Labour next time. Just look at Lab's shares in Scotland e.g.:
Motherwell and Wishaw
2010 - 61% 2015 - 32% 2017 - 38% 2019 - 32%
Glasgow South
2010 - 52% 2015 - 30% 2017 - 37% 2019 - 30%
I think Lab can retake some of the most marginal red wall seats but Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield will be out of reach for good.
I don't think the comparison with Scotland really works - simply because the SNP is viewed by many as a left of centre alternative. That clearly does not apply to the Tories.
True but there are a lot of similarities with both groups of voters feeling neglected by Labour. I think in the red wall the "break" has been much more about culture than economics and it is going to take a lot more than better economic policies to win these voters back.
A key policy is immigration - a lot of the Labour members are in favour of completely open borders and it is going to be heard to reconcile this with the red wall seats.
We need evidence from a non-Brexit election with the Corbyn factor no longer present. Given that Labour held these seats by comfortable majorities in June 2017, it is far from obvious that they cannot do so again in 2024.
The whole "lets find something bad that someone once said online several years ago when they were a student, so we can hound them out of their current job" schtick is thankfully now starting to wean thin very quickly.
Exactly. It's a toddler's version of cogent political argument. And once that technique is broken, it will never work again.
It's the least we can do to avenge Sir Roger Scruton.
The whole "lets find something bad that someone once said online several years ago when they were a student, so we can hound them out of their current job" schtick is thankfully now starting to wear thin very quickly.
I do not understand why British media have gone so quiet (relatively) about coronavirus
It's not like it's gone away. The latest stats, deaths, crimes, videos, rumours (which often turn out to be true, or even WORSE than they appear) are absolutely terrifying.
This thing is right on the edge of being a global pandemic. A highly, highly contagious disease which spreads fast, kills 1-2% of those affected, and we have no vaccine. The rate of spread on that poor cruise ship shows what the virus can do.
Already it is screwing China's economy, with all that means for the rest of us. Global supply chains are about to break. Hong Kong is falling apart. Millions are in lockdown,
Why is this not absolutely dominating the news? The political fate of Lisa Nandy or Keir Starmer is utterly trivial in comparison.
You do not understand because you are scared of your own shadow hence you would prefer people to catastrophise any particular issue so you can feel worse about it.
In terms of voteshare, yes. What should have given more cause for concern at the time was that it was the third election running where they won fewer seats than in 1992.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
The new leader has a lot of work to do.
All valid commentary. Yes, bums on seats counts the most. Other things are more of academic interest. I'm not massively bullish for next time - how can one be? - but I can see us winning (outright) if the next few years are a horror story. Which they might be. Short of that, we could still win but it depends. The main thing I'm uncertain about is what is going on in the heads of these WWC ex Labour Leaver types who went for "Boris". What are they wanting from him and will he deliver it? If they are expecting a serious transformation in their material life prospects, he is almost certain to let them down. So this is therefore what I hope they are expecting. But it might not be. It might be more along the lines of just get us out of that terrible EU, toughen up on immigration, and then OK lots of Borissey gesture and theatre stuff to amuse and entertain us would be nice too. In which case I am sorely afraid that he is eminently capable of delivering and may thus be hard to shift.
We are in agreement. Corbyn was shit and was never going to win a general election.
If only all exchanges on PB were so straightforward.
Very sensible. Leaving that last post of yours and its responses well alone. What a savvy PB-er you are. Always said so.
Multi-tasking actually.
And I see that YOU have dodged commenting on the post you were referencing there - the one where I point to your and ilk voting behaviour on Dec 12 (Con) and ask the pointed question -
Can such people justify hanging onto their Remainer status? Should they not be stripped of it?
Comments
I think it was during my economics course at University that I actually found out what a logarithm was. I had been taught to use the books we were given with the tables but as was all too often the course we were not taught why.
You are far less likely to vote Labour or LD at the next general election than a southern Remainer who voted Tory just to keep Corbyn out
Another leader would have appealed to voters differently and thereby raised the number of people voting Labour to a level sufficient to form the next government.
The classic example is with new cancer drugs. If NICE has determined they aren’t value for money they aren’t prescribed on the NHS. Which is fair enough.
But why prevent someone paying for it themselves (full system cost) and have it administered by the NHS?
Yup, near enough..,
Keeping the state out of it also means the state not acknowledging your relationship which can get bad if there is a crisis and one partner finds they have no legal rights to be involved.
Winning the voteshare is no good if all you do is pile up supermajorities in safe seats and lose marginals. Just ask Stanley Baldwin in 1929, Clement Attlee in 1951 and Hilary Clinton in 2016.
You might correctly point out Corbyn clung on to many marginals in 2017. But the point is on that voteshare they should not have been marginal. Labour had a less efficient vote than any other party except the Liberal Democrats.
I repeatedly said that the following election would be won by the party that forfeited fewer votes. I was wrong on one point. For a sixth consecutive election, the Tory voteshare rose. But because Labour’s voteshare was so shockingly inefficient, they were always going to suffer badly with quite a small loss of votes.
And, indeed, given in 2019 there was a swing to them in many seats, the situation is actually worse than it looks. On a 5% UNS (comparable to Thatcher) they take 56 seats. That would still leave them a long way from government. On a 5% swing the Tories take 55 seats. That puts them in Blair style territory.
The new leader has a lot of work to do.
You give a logical argument above as to why these seats are safer.
However the order on the list of targets by majority (as per your previous post/argument) isn't. The reason being is the order swapped once so they can swap back again. The seats were won from a low position on the list so you can't argue now they are now safer because of their higher position on the list. They're contradictory arguments.
The latest response by you is a more persuasive argument (whether one agrees with it or not)
You get to the top of any big organisation by being highly political. Competence is a bonus.
Using logs for multiplying and dividing multi digit numbers is a dying art though, except in the trivial case of checking calculations by looking at the powers of ten.
Change to the new boundaries and things are far worse for Labour.
The problem you describe exists anyway with non married couples, particularly those who think their is such a thing as a common law marriage.
This is the problem we tinker and tinker and tinker to solve the new issues. You still need to introduce some rules especially when it comes to children and money, but get rid of all the other crap.
I am married, but as far as I am concerned it is a commitment between myself and my wife and nobody else's business (except maybe the courts if we split up and fight over the money, the children have moved on)
What if I decide to marry 2 wives? Why shouldn't I? (I've given up on the idea of a rabbit)
To marry two at once is Burglaree!
In the reign of James the Second,
It was generally reckoned
As a rather serious crime
To marry two wives at a time.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison
The attack lines just write themselves...
Now I am in favour of gender neutral loos as it solves the gender issue, but not the ones I have gone into. Those ones have just pandered to PC.
The last one I used was all cubicles. Now I am a bit of a hygiene fetish so I don't like using cubicles and I don't need to. What is more this takes up more space, costs more, causes men to queue when shouldn't need to and makes the queue longer for women. Losses all around.
What is wrong with a single entrance, with screened off urinals, cubicles, disabled cubicles and baby changing room?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/downing-st-refuses-to-say-if-boris-johnson-agrees-with-adviser-who-suggested-black-people-are-mentally-inferior-and-backed-compulsory-contraception/ar-BB1057UO?ocid=spartanntp
https://twitter.com/JPonpolitics/status/1229350893138608128?s=20
Once it was explained what a logarithm was I was bewildered why it was not explained on the first day. It made it so much easier to understand and made mistakes less likely. Really poor.
Motherwell and Wishaw
2010 - 61%
2015 - 32%
2017 - 38%
2019 - 32%
Glasgow South
2010 - 52%
2015 - 30%
2017 - 37%
2019 - 30%
I think Lab can retake some of the most marginal red wall seats but Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield will be out of reach for good.
I hope he continues with the political stuff.
A key policy is immigration - a lot of the Labour members are in favour of completely open borders and it is going to be heard to reconcile this with the red wall seats.
The working class isn't a homogenous mass. A quarter of the vote, give or take, in Yvette Cooper's seat has always voted Tory. Younger people are not so suspicious of furriners and non-whites. They are more socially liberal.
Brexit, up here, was voted for by the Boomers, who have gone Tory for Brexit, and, yes, an aversion to Corbyn.
Still, you could be right, it's not impossible.
I think we're in a phoney war phase.
Speculation has been flung around that this could be on the scale of Spanish flu, or worse. With a global population approaching 8 billion, that could be of an order of half a billion dead. But it's too early to say yet whether this will come to pass, or whether the deaths will be not noticeably statistically greater than background noise. How many elderly Chinese people die of respiratory illnesses in a given winter? I have no idea. So I don't know if 1,000-odd deaths from Coronavirus is significant yet.
It could be terrible. Or it could be a lot of sound and fury over nothing. Really too early to tell.
Though I am far from an expert on this!
Islamic extremists are let out halfway through sentences for plotting terrorism, because they pretend to be deradicalized, and commit terrorist acts days later.
Really it’s quite incredible. Normal people are totally baffled by it, while politicians seem to defend it while getting irate about name calling on social media
It's the least we can do to avenge Sir Roger Scruton.
If only all exchanges on PB were so straightforward.
And I see that YOU have dodged commenting on the post you were referencing there - the one where I point to your and ilk voting behaviour on Dec 12 (Con) and ask the pointed question -
Can such people justify hanging onto their Remainer status? Should they not be stripped of it?
Yes, we have no bananas.