Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
Not nearly enough.
Miles Kington (I think) suggested that a unit of alcohol is a measure of volume, equating to one kitchen unit.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Again, if they're not being conned?
If you want to understand voters, maybe start with a thought that they and what they are voting for might be genuine and not "a mistake" or "being conned".
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
The amount of energy required to heat one millilitre of water by 1 degree.
Close enough. It’s one gram, but as that was originally defined as the mass of one ml of water at 4 degrees C it’s essentialy the same thing.
It also depends on the temperature of the water, but I would have to look that bit up myself.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
When I was in school we had to do one of woodwork or graphical design. Get rid of those and make cooking compulsory. People should know how to make rice, pasta and other basics by the time they are 16. They should know how to make tasty and healthy food for themselves. Those who want to do the other two can have it as an additional option. Cooking is an essential life skill in a way that woodwork or graphical design isn't.
At the school I teach at it is a compulsory part of the Y7 and Y8 curriculum (as is DT). We don’t offer it higher up except as an optional extra, non exam activity. DT is done at GCSE but only by about 25% of the pupils.
Ah it must have changed in the 17 years since I did them, honestly, I'd extend the school day to accommodate it. It is that important and sadly parents can no longer be trusted to pass these skills on to their children. In an ideal school day I'd have all the kids doing 90 mins of organised physical exercise as well with no allowance for doctor notes for the fat children.
The only schools that can do that are in the independent sector, or at least those schools with boarders. Again the problem is where, and now you have to add who is going to supervise it? Making every teacher in a school spend some time each day supervising games lessons can be done (and that is how most independent schools do it) but it would cost a fortune.
One way of doing it might be by abolishing homework I suppose, but that still leaves the problem that most schools do not have the sporting facilities and/or changing rooms to have hundreds of pupils doing games or PE at the same time.
Oh I'm not saying it's feasible today but I think it should be a long term goal for any government to get schools in a position where they could do this, if that means additional funding or renting of facilities from local private schools or schools that have playing fields and equipment. If we're going to be serious about tackling obesity it starts during childhood any other strategy won't work.
WSJ News Exclusive: Google will keep its employees home until July 2021, people familiar with the matter said, making it the first major U.S. corporation to formalize such an extended timetable in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
Not nearly enough.
Miles Kington (I think) suggested that a unit of alcohol is a measure of volume, equating to one kitchen unit.
Miles Kington's masterpiece was, for me, his motto for the French Navy:
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
The amount of energy required to heat one millilitre of water by 1 degree.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
When I was in school we had to do one of woodwork or graphical design. Get rid of those and make cooking compulsory. People should know how to make rice, pasta and other basics by the time they are 16. They should know how to make tasty and healthy food for themselves. Those who want to do the other two can have it as an additional option. Cooking is an essential life skill in a way that woodwork or graphical design isn't.
At the school I teach at it is a compulsory part of the Y7 and Y8 curriculum (as is DT). We don’t offer it higher up except as an optional extra, non exam activity. DT is done at GCSE but only by about 25% of the pupils.
Ah it must have changed in the 17 years since I did them, honestly, I'd extend the school day to accommodate it. It is that important and sadly parents can no longer be trusted to pass these skills on to their children. In an ideal school day I'd have all the kids doing 90 mins of organised physical exercise as well with no allowance for doctor notes for the fat children.
So you end up with thick fit people
But the right kind of thickness.
I believe the correct parlance is “thicc”.
Oh, indeed? *Checks on the net* One learns something (or more) every day on PB. Thank you.
Very low levels of positive tests for Covid antibodies in Tokyo. Not the largest of studies (742 individuals, semi-randomly selected), but only three positive tests.
I see that everyone is very animated by the Lib Dem leadership contest. The Lib Dems post-coalition have totally lost their spark. Hard to see what anyone can do about that. They are lucky there’s not PR, cos they’d likely be behind the Greens, as has happened in eg. Scotland, Germany and Sweden.
They got nearly ten times as many votes in Scotland as the Greens at the last election.
They also got more votes than the Greens in 2016, although they ended up with five seats rather than the Greens’ six.
The Scottish Greens only put up 22 candidates in December, to the SLD’s 59. Factor in that the SLD’s got much more media coverage than the Greens (especially with their leader being a Scottish MP), that they poured cash into their five target seats, and that tons of Scottish Green supporters voted tactically for the SNP, and your stat looks far less impressive.
On your second point, the Scottish Greens MSPs not only outnumber the SLD MSPs, they are also far more prominent and effective. In terms of bums on seats, prominence and influence, the Scottish Greens are definitely in 4th place, with the SLDs a distant 5th.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
Systematic evaluation and external validation of 22 prognostic models among hospitalised adults with COVID-19: An observational cohort study
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.24.20149815v1 ... In univariable analyses, admission oxygen saturation on room air was the strongest predictor of in-hospital deterioration (AUROC 0.76; 0.71-0.81), while age was the strongest predictor of in-hospital mortality (AUROC 0.76; 0.71-0.81). No prognostic model demonstrated consistently higher net benefit than using the most discriminating univariable predictors to stratify treatment, across a range of threshold probabilities. Conclusions Oxygen saturation on room air and patient age are strong predictors of deterioration and mortality among hospitalised adults with COVID-19, respectively. None of the prognostic models evaluated offer incremental value for patient stratification to these univariable predictors...
I think we may be a bit quick to assume significant things and politics will be changed for good as a result of this year, but it's a persuasive point about 'interruptions' which allow change to occur.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Again, if they're not being conned?
If you want to understand voters, maybe start with a thought that they and what they are voting for might be genuine and not "a mistake" or "being conned".
Very laudable sentiment, but I will remind you that we are talking about Boris Johnson, a man who has spent his whole life lying to advance his ambition (and his male member), so if you don't think you have been conned, you probably have been well and truly. Besides, I believe there is strong evidence that people generally vote to keep one lot out in our FPTP system, and rarely vote because they think particularly positive about a set of politicians. It is like saying that choosing a particular estate agent to buy a house through is endorsing that company's values.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
Without wanting to sound like an advert, there are great prices available all over Europe at the moment.
The fairly upscale house we stayed in in the Dodecanese islands the other year seems to have halved its prices.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
I know people who are keen not to lose the positive impact, such as increase in volunteering and community spirit
Massively better off here. Busy, sure, and certain aspects of my job have had to be put on the shelf.
But ...
spent less moved more eaten better lost weight worked harder - got a mention in dispatches (and vouchers) for my efforts in keeping the department ticking over since the first few relaxation steps, spent more time with mates, not less chipped in with the volunteering
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
Not nearly enough.
Miles Kington (I think) suggested that a unit of alcohol is a measure of volume, equating to one kitchen unit.
Miles Kington's masterpiece was, for me, his motto for the French Navy:
"A l'eau, c'est l'heure".
That reminds me of a chant I heard at a rugby match: “you’re French; and you know you are” (to the tune “Go West”)
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
Yes, and no grandparents to hug for either of us for a few years now. We also live in our own place and can easily isolate for 14 days and continue our WFH without any trouble.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
Pineapple on a pizza is great, but anyone who cuts a pizza into an odd number of slices is not to be trusted . . .
So what would you do if you had seven people? Cut it into 14 slices, two each?
There is no situation involving pizzas and sharing where cutting each pizza into eight pieces doesn't work. People eat different amounts, some like one pizza more than another, they will figure it out.
I think we may be a bit quick to assume significant things and politics will be changed for good as a result of this year, but it's a persuasive point about 'interruptions' which allow change to occur.
I would suggest that in this case the 'interruption' is as much the government's response to COVID as COVID itself, given that the disease is far, far less harmful to the general population than the pandemic of 1920, and the tools for fighting it more powerful.
COVID alone has not broken old habits as much as those habits have been outlawed or restricted by government fiat.
No British government in modern history has ever ordered swathes of its economy to shut down or placed all of its healthy citizens under house arrest. Ever. Or imposed so many obstacles to the reopening of business or the ending of that house arrest
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
Interesting article in the Times over the weekend - can't remember which day - Companies are petrified about staff doing this as it might incur Corp tax liabilities.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
Interesting article in the Times over the weekend - can't remember which day - Companies are petrified about staff doing this as it might incur Corp tax liabilities.
That's why we didn't, I was advised not to work from another country until the legal team have figured out what it means for corporate and personal tax liability as I'd be conducting business from Italy.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
Pineapple on a pizza is great, but anyone who cuts a pizza into an odd number of slices is not to be trusted . . .
So what would you do if you had seven people? Cut it into 14 slices, two each?
There is no situation involving pizzas and sharing where cutting each pizza into eight pieces doesn't work. People eat different amounts, some like one pizza more than another, they will figure it out.
What I'm not quite working out is why on earth anyone would order pizza and then not have the whole pizza? Maybe leave one slice if you reach a standstill? What's all this if you have seven people cut your pizza into 14?
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
Interesting article in the Times over the weekend - can't remember which day - Companies are petrified about staff doing this as it might incur Corp tax liabilities.
That's why we didn't, I was advised not to work from another country until the legal team have figured out what it means for corporate and personal tax liability as I'd be conducting business from Italy.
I don't think this is a corporation tax problem for big businesses. If you are a sole contractor, however... plus your own income tax risk of course.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
That’s what I meant having read the article
That does rather assume the borders aren't closed (or the airlines, etc. don't shut down).
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
Yep that's exactly what they are doing. Hence my suggestion.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
Sicily indeed has multiple layers of culture and history, visible in the people, and great food. There are also some quite acute pockets of deprivation in some areas, that are worse than parts of Greece too, but they're easy to avoid if you want to. Our hotelier there last time was the spitting image of a Greek family friend from the Peloponnese.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
Pineapple on a pizza is great, but anyone who cuts a pizza into an odd number of slices is not to be trusted . . .
So what would you do if you had seven people? Cut it into 14 slices, two each?
There is no situation involving pizzas and sharing where cutting each pizza into eight pieces doesn't work. People eat different amounts, some like one pizza more than another, they will figure it out.
What I'm not quite working out is why on earth anyone would order pizza and then not have the whole pizza? Maybe leave one slice if you reach a standstill? What's all this if you have seven people cut your pizza into 14?
This is the problem with trying to make maths problems “relevant”.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
Yep that's exactly what they are doing. Hence my suggestion.
Yeah I had heard about it but ultimately I find Barbados to be extremely dull. It has absolutely no character of its own other than what they think rich tourists want. Which is good for those who want that, but I don't and neither would my wife, I think it would end up feeling like a gilded cage.
Perhaps unfairly, I gave up after this line about wigs in the 18th century - "It seems extraordinary to us today that people should have gone to these extremes of unnecessary effort and expense." - has the author not heard of one Donald J Trump?
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
Sicily indeed has multiple layers of culture and history, visible in the people, and great food. There are also some quite acute pockets of deprivation in some areas, that are worse than parts of Greece too, but they're easy to avoid if you want to. Our hotelier there last time was the spitting image of a Greek family friend from the Peloponnese.
There was a time when it was part of the Greek world. I seem to remember that the cathedral in Syracuse is essentially the old Greek temple.
I assume they said the same about the smoking ad ban?
It should also create opportunities for different types of industries to get more exposure as well so wont cost the full amount. Even if it did thats about $20 per head per year, money well spent if it has any measurable impact on obesity rates (it may just be slowing the growth in obesity rather than reversing it at this stage).
Happy to give the government some credit on this one, a health crisis gives cover to take some measures that wouldnt normally be open to a conservative government, and they are right to have taken some action.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
Yeah, same advice here too. SE Asia is incredible, after a vaccine it will probably be a great place to go.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Again, if they're not being conned?
If you want to understand voters, maybe start with a thought that they and what they are voting for might be genuine and not "a mistake" or "being conned".
I agree the principle but the Red Wallers voting Johnson is a special case and so it requires a special analysis. I tried to deliver this but it appears from your comment that I've failed.
I'll be back shortly to say exactly the same thing in a different way and see if I have more joy.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
Without wanting to sound like an advert, there are great prices available all over Europe at the moment.
The fairly upscale house we stayed in in the Dodecanese islands the other year seems to have halved its prices.
Yes, I spent half an hour rechecking my hotels on booking.com on Saturday morning. In one I exchanged a single room for a double, in another a double room for a mountain view double, and in a third a standard room for a room with a balcony. Making all three of these upgrades and rebooking at latest prices, I still made a saving in total of over €100.
Mr. Teacher, I do sympathise with teachers given the tendency for the political class to just hurl problems into the curriculum as things to be taught. That sort of government by headline is often not well-considered, and budgets are going to be constrained with the economic impact of the plague.
Teaching basic cookery skills is very useful, but with all these things the question that needs to be asked is: instead of what?
Do it as part of maths instead of boring shit like algebra and calculus.
There is quite a bit of maths involved in cooking of course; cutting a pizza into seven equal pieces while ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of pineapple chunks is a non trivial task...
x = number of slices that end up in the bin. x = 7.
Then, having done algebra, arithmetic and distribution, what is the value of pie?
The calorific value deals with physics and biochemistry, too.
Who knows what one calorie is defined as without looking it up?
The amount of energy required to heat one millilitre of water by 1 degree.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
Yep that's exactly what they are doing. Hence my suggestion.
Yeah I had heard about it but ultimately I find Barbados to be extremely dull. It has absolutely no character of its own other than what they think rich tourists want. Which is good for those who want that, but I don't and neither would my wife, I think it would end up feeling like a gilded cage.
You could be right. Plenty of places change character once they are "work" places.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
Sicily indeed has multiple layers of culture and history, visible in the people, and great food. There are also some quite acute pockets of deprivation in some areas, that are worse than parts of Greece too, but they're easy to avoid if you want to. Our hotelier there last time was the spitting image of a Greek family friend from the Peloponnese.
There was a time when it was part of the Greek world. I seem to remember that the cathedral in Syracuse is essentially the old Greek temple.
Sicily was a Greek colony with city states by the 6th century BCE. Its liturgy (RC) is said to be principally Greek to this day.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
I am of an age where I wouldn’t want to use up five years all in one go.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
Yep that's exactly what they are doing. Hence my suggestion.
Yeah I had heard about it but ultimately I find Barbados to be extremely dull. It has absolutely no character of its own other than what they think rich tourists want. Which is good for those who want that, but I don't and neither would my wife, I think it would end up feeling like a gilded cage.
You could be right. Plenty of places change character once they are "work" places.
But for a few weeks - what fun!
The best fun would be sending pics to your seething UK based co-workers in January.
Or spending hours looking for the best palm tree festooned zoom call background.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
Yep that's exactly what they are doing. Hence my suggestion.
Yeah I had heard about it but ultimately I find Barbados to be extremely dull. It has absolutely no character of its own other than what they think rich tourists want. Which is good for those who want that, but I don't and neither would my wife, I think it would end up feeling like a gilded cage.
You could be right. Plenty of places change character once they are "work" places.
But for a few weeks - what fun!
The best fun would be sending pics to your seething UK based co-workers in January.
Or spending hours looking for the best palm tree festooned zoom call background.
Yes. As your Slough branch colleagues put those Zoom beach scenes behind them in a virtual background.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir ( formerly Smyrna ), and other towns on that coast, like Marmaris.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a bit of British tourism over the last few years.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
I read Barbados was mulling one year work visas for remote workers to make up for tourism losses.
Yep that's exactly what they are doing. Hence my suggestion.
Yeah I had heard about it but ultimately I find Barbados to be extremely dull. It has absolutely no character of its own other than what they think rich tourists want. Which is good for those who want that, but I don't and neither would my wife, I think it would end up feeling like a gilded cage.
You could be right. Plenty of places change character once they are "work" places.
But for a few weeks - what fun!
The best fun would be sending pics to your seething UK based co-workers in January.
Or spending hours looking for the best palm tree festooned zoom call background.
Zoom actually have that as one of the options. You don't have to have a washing line or your mantelpiece or whatever as your backdrop. Does wind people up a bit! They've got the Golden Gate Bridge as an option, too.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
Getting a bit long in the tooth for it now, but I always wanted to travel the Silk Road through Samarkand to China!
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
Getting a bit long in the tooth for it now, but I always wanted to travel the Silk Road through Samarkand to China!
Take a “freedom for Hong Kong!” banner with you, and you won’t have to worry about the cost of the return trip.
I assume he’s not going to get paid whilst he’s out there?
He's entitled to paid annual leave.
Well. Yes. That we've gone down the 'how dare he take holiday' line does not surprise me given where some of the denizens have this place have shat these last few months.
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
Getting a bit long in the tooth for it now, but I always wanted to travel the Silk Road through Samarkand to China!
Take a “freedom for Hong Kong!” banner with you, and you won’t have to worry about the cost of the return trip.
I wouldn't get past Uigher-land, would I! Anyway, once in Beijing I'd head South for Vietnam and eventually, Thailand.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
You’d be brave to go anywhere out of the UK for a holiday.
I've got Sicily and Naples booked for August and September respectively. It's not that risky if you can WFH indefinitely. My wife and I were thinking about getting a two or three month lease in Sicily and working remotely from there for a while.
And I'm guessing that your wife and you are very non-high risk and as long as you don't come back and hug your grandparents at the airport then surely all is good.
By brave I wasn’t referring to the risk of contacting the virus which I think is low in most of Western Europe. It’s what happens when you get back and find you have no income. As Ian said this morning the plane is the biggest risk.
Eh? What do you mean by no income? For WFHers it's a no change scenario being quarantined or not. Obviously of your job requires in person attendance then it's a different story and yes, I think I wouldn't consider going overseas in that scenario.
Although isn't Sicily a failure of imagination? What about Barbados?
Not in the slightest, Sicily has it all. Amazing beaches, great food, lovely accomodation and incredible wine. It's probably my favourite place to go in the world.
One of my favourites too. I'm seriously considering a sabbatical. No gap year and working for myself for 12 years has left me hankering for a bit of travelling. Meandering to Sicily, via South of France, Ventimeglia, Florence, Rome and Naples is top of the agenda at the moment. Ending in a long stay there.
If you've got a year would have to be Asia for me. 5 years for the cost of 1 year in Europe.
Getting a bit long in the tooth for it now, but I always wanted to travel the Silk Road through Samarkand to China!
Amazon Prime has a rather good docco series "The Silk Road" by a French telejournalist where he traces it all the way from Venice to Xi'an. In dubbed English.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
It's an interesting question ; there seem to be genetic similarities between Muslim and Christian Palestinians and some Israelis, and judging by the Cleopatra-like appearance of various people in Izmir / Smyrna, Marmaris and elsewhere, the historical genetic similarities between there and mainland Greece may be pretty strong too.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
I always thought that comment was quite revealing about Powell's worldview - he couldn't imagine that people could exist without one group holding the "whip hand" over another. Probably got beaten a lot as a child, so much fear and repressed rage in that phrase.
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
Wow, you really don't like going out shopping, do you? I suspect in your ideal world you would rarely need to leave your house. I'm not sure that your evidence is that strong; many people still like the social aspect of browsing high street shops, especially those that are not part of the large chains. Surprisingly, I'm with HYUFD on this; we need a more level playing field between online and physical shopping. Though unlike him, I wish it would be that easy for Starmer to get the keys to No. 10.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Syracuse was a Greek colony, if memory serves. So was Saguntum (Spain) and Marseilles (Massilia, originally). As was Taras (later Tarentum). And, of course, Asia Minor was riddled with Greek cities.
Hence why another location for super greek-alike looking people is Izmir, and other parts of that coast.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a lot of British tourism over the last few years.
The Greeks actually temporarily occupied Izmir (Smyrna as was) for a short while after WW1, but were driven out by Ataturk's Turkish nationalist revival. The Smyrna campaign was part of the Greek irredentist "Megali idea" which would have included Greece taking pretty much the whole western coast line of Turkey, and Constantinople of course.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
Yes, having spent a fair time in Greece, I've heard quite a lot of this. As you say, I I think the chapter is historically closed - the Christian Greeks returned from cities like Smyrna, and many, but not all, of the people living there now look remarkably like descendants of Ionian Greeks who converted to Islam, which I think is what they are.
I've often wondered similarly about Moslem or Christian Palestinians and the Israelis. Who REALLY has the right to the land? To whose ancestors was it actually 'given'?
That's easy. None of them.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
On topic: aren't voters in the 2019 Tory gains more invested in "Boris" than the Tory party? So perhaps it's not surprising: given structural antipathy to the Tories in many of these areas, it was only seats where Johnson himself was particularly popular that the Tory candidate won. In traditional Tory seats, by contrast, "Boris" was likely less important as a selling point. A corollary of this is that replacing Johnson mid-term in an effort to bolster Tory support may have the opposite effect in some of these seats. I have a gut feeling that Sunak may be less popular in these seats than in the traditional Tory home counties, but it'd be interesting to see polling on that. There's also the Brexit factor at work, although I imagine that will fade as an issue over time, especially if it turns out to be a bit shit, as seems likely.
Indeed, according to Redfield 2019 Tory voters prefer Boris to Starmer by more than they prefer Sunak to Starmer, only 2019 LD voters prefer Sunak to Starmer by more than they prefer Boris to Starmer and the latter are very posh London and Home Counties centred
One very likely explanation for this is the similar psychological response to a change in buying behaviour, a kind of confirmation bias that is the opposite to buyers remorse. In other words, I have changed who I buy from, away from my traditional brand, and I need to keep telling myself it was the right decision, because part of me tells me it was not. "I DID make the right decision! I DID" The person will look for those reasons why they should convince themselves it was the correct decision. Clever brands will keep marketing to such folk to keep them on board. In political terms Tony Blair was the most recent to achieve this, and before him Margaret Thatcher.
As I have said many times before, Johnson is no Tony Blair, and he is definitely no Margaret Thatcher. This effect will doubtless melt away long before another GE.
That explanation doesn't explain why they "bought from him" in the first place.
There's no swing in these number. The logical thought surely is that the voters in these seats like him . . . because they like him . . . and that's why they voted for him in the first place. Not that they voted for him then decided they like him, because they voted for him.
You and Nigel are both right. They voted for Johnson because they like him and they say they still like him. The latter could be for one of two reasons. (i) It's too early to have realized the mistake. (ii) They have realized their mistake but are not yet ready to admit it. All the Red Wallers are probably in one or the other camp. We can postulate that a (iii) category - realized the mistake AND saying so - is virtually empty right now. It must be otherwise it would be showing up in the data.
The key question here - which we can't answer - is what is the split between (i) and (ii). Heavily (i) means good news for the Cons. Their strategy is predicated on the Red Wall still being in a (i) state by the time of the next election - because if these voters have not clocked their mistake by then the chances are they will repeat it. But if (as I hope) there are lots in (ii), Labour are set fair. Why? Because from (ii) it's only a matter of time before they take the decisive step to (iii) - which will duly show up in the polls and more importantly at the ballot box.
Odd that you don't have category (iv) they haven't made a mistake.
Anyway Nigel is disagreeing with that, he postulates despite the evidence to the contrary that people voted just because they disliked Corbyn and they never liked Johnson in the first place. Despite the polls saying the opposite.
There's no need for a category (iv) because in terms of impact it's the same as (i). There is no electoral difference between a Red Waller voting Tory not realizing they are being conned and one who does so positively in the knowledge of being conned - i.e. has not really been conned at all.
I happen to disagree with Nigel on the 2nd point. I think Johnson is a genuine asset when it comes to elections and I fear this will continue to be the case.
Overall such voters are probably less educated and quite limited in insight. Over time,though, the reality of Johnson being an utter shyster will percolate through to them - though some will continue to feel affection for him in the way that many Eastenders admired the Kray twins. The London dockers marching to support Enoch Powell in 1968 following his 'rivers of blood' speech also comes to mind.
I like your 1st analogy. Eastenders = Red Wallers, Johnson = Ronnie Kray. People falling for a raffish persona despite the obvious negatives. That kind of works. It shouldn't do but it does. But the 2nd one doesn't. The dockers marched for Powell out of genuine support for his racist worldview. No raffish persona with Powell at all. Quite the opposite. An introverted intellectual. It was about what he said. He said the day would soon come, if immigration continued unchecked, when the black man would hold the whip over the white man in Britain, and furthermore that this would be a bad thing, as indeed it sounds with the reference to "the whip", and the London dockers agreed. How many of their grandsons are Millwall fans today, I wonder?
The whole point of the ‘whip hand’ quote was that someone else said it to Powell
That someone else was (per Powell) a "decent, ordinary fellow Englishman" and it was indicative of what "thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking" - so I'm not seeing a good reason to assume it was not his view too.
Powell kept being told things by anonymous "man on the street" that fortunately had excellent cadence and phrasing to fit into his speeches.
Such serendipity.
"A lot of people are saying..."
Or Howard's election slogan: "Are you thinking what we're thinking?".
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
Alternatively the government needs money and this is an appropriate way to raise it - and there is not a chance of earth that Labour are going to go into the next election pledging to cut sales taxes.
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If you want to understand voters, maybe start with a thought that they and what they are voting for might be genuine and not "a mistake" or "being conned".
It also depends on the temperature of the water, but I would have to look that bit up myself.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-keep-employees-home-until-summer-2021-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-11595854201
COVIDOSE: Low-dose tocilizumab in the treatment of Covid-19
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.20157503v1
Needs randomised clinical trials, but I think some may already be ongoing.
"A l'eau, c'est l'heure".
https://unherd.com/2020/07/has-lockdown-broken-old-habits-for-good/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3
Not the largest of studies (742 individuals, semi-randomly selected), but only three positive tests.
Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 IgG Antibodies in Utsunomiya City, Greater Tokyo, after first pandemic in 2020 (U-CORONA): a household- and population-based study
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.20155945v1
When their elected representatives end up in court, also, the Greens tend to be on the good guys side, if recent court cases are any indication.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.24.20149815v1
... In univariable analyses, admission oxygen saturation on room air was the strongest predictor of in-hospital deterioration (AUROC 0.76; 0.71-0.81), while age was the strongest predictor of in-hospital mortality (AUROC 0.76; 0.71-0.81). No prognostic model demonstrated consistently higher net benefit than using the most discriminating univariable predictors to stratify treatment, across a range of threshold probabilities. Conclusions Oxygen saturation on room air and patient age are strong predictors of deterioration and mortality among hospitalised adults with COVID-19, respectively. None of the prognostic models evaluated offer incremental value for patient stratification to these univariable predictors...
I think we may be a bit quick to assume significant things and politics will be changed for good as a result of this year, but it's a persuasive point about 'interruptions' which allow change to occur.
The fairly upscale house we stayed in in the Dodecanese islands the other year seems to have halved its prices.
But ...
spent less
moved more
eaten better
lost weight
worked harder - got a mention in dispatches (and vouchers) for my efforts in keeping the department ticking over
since the first few relaxation steps, spent more time with mates, not less
chipped in with the volunteering
must have missed something .. .?
COVID alone has not broken old habits as much as those habits have been outlawed or restricted by government fiat.
No British government in modern history has ever ordered swathes of its economy to shut down or placed all of its healthy citizens under house arrest. Ever. Or imposed so many obstacles to the reopening of business or the ending of that house arrest
And later this year we shall see why, in my view.
It did however leave them free to pursue other goals. Such as living to be 11.
It can crop up in Physics too. This: http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~steve/astrophysics/webpages/barometer_story.htm
is a story I first read when I was at school and still use in lessons from time to time.
Others may be seeing the opportunity.
Happy to give the government some credit on this one, a health crisis gives cover to take some measures that wouldnt normally be open to a conservative government, and they are right to have taken some action.
I'll be back shortly to say exactly the same thing in a different way and see if I have more joy.
But for a few weeks - what fun!
Or spending hours looking for the best palm tree festooned zoom call background.
Turkey is cheaper than ever, but it seems to have lost quite a bit of British tourism over the last few years.
They've got the Golden Gate Bridge as an option, too.
I should imagine that, the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn and their ilk aside, the whole thing has little resonance in modern Greece, a century on. However it does persist in the Greek diaspora: my wife has a Greek-American friend from college who told her that her parish priest insisted on referring to Turkey in sermons as "temporarily-occupied Asia Minor".
That we've gone down the 'how dare he take holiday' line does not surprise me given where some of the denizens have this place have shat these last few months.
2% on delivered goods from online
a) Wont have any effect because even if the goods were the same price we would still buy them online because we like to have choice, your high street shop might stock 10 different models from 3 different manufacturers to choose from. Online you get a choice about 100 times wider. You also don't have to put up with pimply faced salestaff who don't know their arse from their elbow misleading you as to the best choice because its what gets them most comission or trying to upsell you. You don't have to carry the goods anywhere but get to choose when it will be delivered on the same day often.
b) It hands starmer the keys to number 10 as it will be hugely unpopular and all he has to do to rack up votes is announce he will abolish it. Who would have thought it Labour the tax cut party.
80% of the country really doesn't care if River island or whatever goes bust. If they valued it they would use it instead even precovid they were voting with their feet and buying online.
This is merely a tory tax hike as we all know it won't achieve its stated aim and unless you think that Rishi Sunak is too thick to realise that then it is all it is
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/07/mark-lutter-on-hong-kong-in-ireland.html
Such serendipity.
Trying to disentangle the ethnic history of Palestine is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands with your fingers open.
However, there have (since the eighth century, at least) always been a mix of Muslims, Jews and Christians there. In the late fourteenth century there was a period of prolonged population decline and by 1500 there were probably only around 200,000 people in the area, the majority (but not an overwhelming majority) Muslim.
It isn't until the nineteenth century that you start to get conscious attempts to impose cultural revolutions on the area, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism under Mehmet Ali (who was, ironically, Albanian) and the corresponding Ottoman countermoves. But even that wasn't deliberate - more an attempt at control and command.
Only a tiny handful of people who live in Israel today have any sort of hereditary 'right' to be there - and far from all of them are Muslim. It is one reason why the question of identity in Israel and the Palestinian Territories (and for the matter of that, the Palestinian and Israeli diasporas) is such a vexed one.