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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » LAB remains an odds-on favourite to win most votes at EURO2014 but don’t rule out Ukip
One consequence of this is that the Conservative vote is in sharp decline and this is enabling the yellows to make local gains at the expense of the blues while losing badly to the red team. This could be the pattern for the May 2nd elections when the Tories are defending twice as many seats as the LDs and LAB combined.
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EDIT - Ah ha, they don't appear until someone comments...
Nigel Farage will tell activists at their spring conference later that the party has an appeal beyond disaffected Conservative voters.
He is expected to focus on what he sees as the impact of immigration in working-class communities. He is also due to voice his criticism of recent press regulation changes...
Mr Farage is expected to focus, in his speech at lunchtime in Exeter, on what he sees as the impact of immigration in working-class communities: putting pressure on public services and squeezing wages. " http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21908204
UKIP could attract the disaffected vote from all quarters. I'm backing them in a variety of ways.
That said the Sun and indeed the rest of the right wing press will flirt with Ukip as long as they dare before turning on them and then backing the Conservatives.
Edit - Test - Passed.
"David Cameron will next week make a speech on immigration in an effort to persuade voters that the Coalition is determined to deter Romanians and Bulgarians from coming next year. "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9949520/Romanian-immigrants-face-giving-fingerprints.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21908204
Qualifying starts imminently.
It's clearly the last chance for the punters to give the government a good kicking before they have to make a real choice that matters the following year.
Does you avatar indicate an excess of chomping on Tesco horse burgers or are you in competition for hunting Scottish Liberal Democrats ??
Man 'feigned heart attacks to get free lunches' http://soa.li/2JREaqh
We'll know in a few days how many candidates UKIP are putting up and where.
"Peter Scott, who has died aged 82, was a highly accomplished cat burglar, and as Britain’s most prolific plunderer of the great and good took particular pains to select his victims from the ranks of aristocrats, film stars and even royalty.
According to a list of 100 names he supplied to The Daily Telegraph, he targeted figures such as Soraya Khashoggi, Shirley MacLaine, the Shah of Iran, Judy Garland and even Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother — although he added apologetically that, in her case, the authorities had covered up by issuing a “D-notice ”.
In 1994 Scott wrote to the newspaper to say that he would consider it “a massive disappointment if I were not to get a mention in [its] illustrious obituary column”. He explained that he derived much pleasure from reading accounts of the exploits of war heroes, adding: “I would like to think I would have fronted the Hun with the same enthusiasm as I did the fleshpots in Mayfair.” He added that he had been a Telegraph reader since 1957, when newspapers were first allowed in prisons, “on account of its broad coverage on crime”..." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9949054/Peter-Scott.html
[NB for those unaware it's actually a small part of the Bane of Souls cover].
Is there an easy way of tracking a discussion? It's not always clear who is replying to what.
Generally we seem to be adding @yourname when we're replying in Vanilla.
"When will Cameron be dragged kicking and screaming to reverse his "closet racists" comment."
Possibly at the same time as Rotherham council do?
We should have known you most favoured burglar would be of the cat variety !!
"Among Left-leaning ‘Hampstead’ liberals like me, there has long been what you might call a ‘discrimination assumption’ when it comes to the highly charged issue of immigration.
Our instinctive reaction has been that Britain is a relentlessly racist country bent on thwarting the lives of ethnic minorities, that the only decent policy is to throw open our doors to all and that those with doubts about how we run our multi-racial society are guilty of prejudice. And that view — echoed in Whitehall, Westminster and town halls around the country — has been the prevailing ideology, setting the tone for the immigration debate.
The fault lies with our leaders, not with the people who came for a better life. There has been a huge gap between our ruling elite's views and those of ordinary people on the street. But for some years, this has troubled me and, gradually, I have changed my mind.
Over 18 months of touring the country to talk to people about their lives for a new book, I have discovered minority Britons thriving more than many liberals suppose possible. But I also saw the mess of division and conflict we have got ourselves into in other places.
I am now convinced that public opinion is right and Britain has had too much immigration too quickly. For 30 years, the Left has blinded itself with sentiment about diversity. But we got it wrong..."
Whether the UK crash was caused by global forces, the banks or Brown's policies the people will still have to pay for it. And a brave politician would suggest why shouldn't we pay for it, when it was most of us who spent the five years prior to the crash spending money we hadn't earned yet.
I know I did.
A word of warning though: Markets tend to be volatile. Do not read too much into one day, week or month....
I've had a quadruped burglar in my fridge. I don't know who started it - but someone managed to get the door open - and then ate the contents. 3 macaroni cheese, a packet of roast chicken slices, 3 lots of bubble and squeak, a load of carrots and french beans, 2 boxes of mushrooms...
I assume it was a cat that thought it was a good idea and the dogs joined in this midnight feast given the wide range of things devoured. The only things left were eggs and some sad looking leeks that really ought to have gone into the compost heap the week before.
Little buggers
Should "Vanila" be tweeked in this direction perhaps "Noted" might be used or perhaps at the risk of an "Ave it" avalanche we might have "smiley's" enabled ?
As far as I'm aware, Rotherham council are an elected organisation and if they disagreed with the social workers' spokesperson, they would have said so. In fact, I believe that the Rotherham action was far more damaging to the individuals concerned than a few disparaging and generalised remarks.
Can you see the difference?
RT @LauraNoonanIRL: "Are you a journalist?" taxi asks "Everybody here is journalist, you are waiting for our bankruptcy" #Cyprus
Next year, I'd expect UKIP to top the poll, and quite likely win some council seats in places like Havering, Bexley, and Bromley.
We'll agree to differ on this, but here's a small challenge ... ask around (not just political anoraks) and see which was most memorable on a national scale.
The media know what they're doing when they run "human interest" stories. That's why Ed (and Dave) have started using real stories to illustrate their points.
Knockabout political debating is swiftly ignored by most.
So much snooow here too. It seems to have formed a covering on the duck hut , which is interesting as it is a wire 1" mesh or so, so you might expect snow to fall through into it.
Mortgage providers discriminate all the time so I wouldn't see a problem in discriminating in the 'reverse' way.
Have some red kung-fu pandas playing in the snow :^)
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02510/red-pandas_2510367k.jpg
"It is to Labour’s eternal shame that the deal was done in Ed Miliband’s Westminster office. So if Miliband ever makes it all the way to 10 Downing Street, he has forsaken the right to criticise the dictators of the world.
Don’t tell off China, Russia or Syria about freedom of speech, Ed. Don’t criticise Mugabe. You have lost the right to do all that, Ed..." http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tony-parsons-free-press-leveson-1779811#.UU1t27SegQk.twitter
George Parker was hinting at it the other night - good stuff, its appalling. Dangerous Dogs Act meets Ivan Lewis Journalist licenses.
Clegg and Milliband forced it through, Conservatives do not have a majority alone.
Do you think Milliband acted wisely in this press regulation? Is this how he will function as PM?
But most of all would you now agree with those of us here opposed to Levesons recommendations?
But it's all because of Hugh Grant?!? Isn't it???
Derpity derp derp.;^)
That being the case, ending all 'Green' energy subsidies would seem like A Good Idea, with as many coal-fired power stations are we require being re-opened.
Societies boom when energy is cheap and plentiful, and die when the reverse applies.
http://nextgrandminimum.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/sorry-global-warming-alarmists-the-earth-is-cooling/
So until the BBC comes out and admits on the telly-box that global warming flat-lined in 1998 it's tricky for politicians to tell the truth.
If it is cooling rather than flat-lining then apart from the electoral consequences it's a bit of a shame about all those thousands of people who are going to freeze to death but oh well.
Thank you for raising a smile this snowy morning - after writing about a cat burglar to find yourself a victim of cats burglary and dogs guilty of receiving. Fridge locks (to make them childproof - is that good enough?) are available for less than a fiver.
Does this mean a pets-imposed slimming campaign this weekend or are you snow free?
This is correct, everything I read and everyone I've heard opposes Osborne's sub-prime lending scheme. Though I imagine those hoping to personally benefit might be supportive.
For all the PR imitation of Thatcher's "the lady's not for turning" in recent weeks its clear that the government have U-turned and have given up any attempts to reduce borrowing and rebalance the economy.
As many have stated before the 1970s seem to be replaying themselves.
Perhaps it should be remembered that Antony Barber left parliament in 1974.
I don't see a discredited George Osborne hanging about the backbenches too long.
I can't recall the last time that happened when the unions weren't inflicting it on us.
When China's largest solar panel business goes bust - as have many others over the last few years - the writing is on the wall.
I thought it was established it was Russian oligarchs? Or was that just a rumour?
Yes, snow can bridge quite extra-ordinaary distances.
Snow is wet and so is sticky. Metal is a better conductor of heat than air and so snowflakes first stick to the wire mesh, stay there and then further flakes stick to first flakes etc. I have seen quite big snow "bridges" across a crevasse in the Alps.
That's a fair point but the public always favour the government giving people more money.
I said on Thursday that the budget might work politically.
Its certainly not going to work economically.
LOL
I've enough to make a sandwich and a couple of tins so shopping will wait until tomorrow - no snow just parky.
I wouldn't mind - but they'd also scoffed 10x dog roll meat, dog mixer, leftovers, cat biscuits. They have hollow legs. I even put a half full box of cat biscuits on the mantlepiece to keep it temporarily out of reach as I tried to cook my tea and it was discovered/raided in 30 mins.
Honestly - I can't carry my shopping in without it being intercepted by a furry between the taxi and my front door - the other week, I treated myself to a hot pastry and it was stolen from the carrier bag in the 30 secs it took me to plop the bag down at the front door and find my keys.
While the UK is currently cold, the heat is instead melting sea-ice in Baffin Bay - temperatures were about 20C warmer than average there during the last week.
Yet on here, Labour is blamed for both.
It really is a funny old world!
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
The Antarctic sea ice minimum extent appears to have passed. Ice was quite extensive throughout the austral summer period. Monthly average sea ice extent for February 2013 was 3.83 million square kilometers (1.48 million square miles) and minimum daily sea ice extent for the Antarctic region was 3.68 million square kilometers (1.42 million square miles) on February 20. Unusual circulation patterns, likely resulting from higher-than-average pressure in the Bellingshausen Sea, pushed sea ice in the northwestern Weddell Sea far to the north, as we mentioned in our February post. Extent was also well above average for the Ross Sea region relative to the entire 1979 to 2013 satellite record.
Would you care to bet on whether the Arctic sea-ice will reach a new minimum this year?
Nice and warm in the arctic then - perhaps we should send all the people who are going to freeze to death here over there?
I have a theory about the weather. It is just random and is nothing to do with long term global warming that has been brought about by man. If you look back over the last 200 years, I suspect that you find extreme weather events, bad summers, bad winters etc. The ice caps are melting more than previously found, but global temperatures may get colder again at some point.
That just shows how broke people are. It doesn't make trying to refloat the housing bubble a good idea.
One plus point for Labour is that government subsidies in the housing markety may well push up prices overall, so shifting more homes into the £2 million plus band and providing a bigger pool of possible mansion tax payers.
What you just said was nonsense by the way.
You appear to think that the globe is not warming. If you have the courage of your convictions you'd enter into a bet of some sort on it. I suspect you just believe what you read on websites and newspapers that tell you Greenies are bad people who want to tax you for no good reason.
Dear me I hadn't thought of that aspect.
Dubious Romanians using it to buy holiday homes at the same time as the Chelsea bankers get subsidised Lithuanian nannies.
Are Cameron and Osborne trying to drive every working class Conservative into voting UKIP?
"Such is the strength of Blairites’ concerns about Messrs Miliband and Balls that I’m told that some would even prefer five more years of Mr Cameron in No 10. For they fear Mr Miliband could be so unpopular that Labour would be out of power for years after.
I suspect they are right. Clearly Mr Miliband wants something like a Ministry of Truth to ‘guide’ the Press, while Mr Balls would borrow incontinently and turn Britain into an economic basket-case like Greece."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2297743/The-spectre-Red-Eds-Thought-Police.html#ixzz2OMApo34g
10:06AM
"Yet on here, Labour is blamed for both."
But PB is a Tory stronghold where some of the usual suspects have been posting for years and they see it as their site.
No, Greenies are just the gullible, naive idiots, used by unscrupulous and wilfully ignorant politicians to increase the taxes they inflict and impose on the rest of us and provide a propaganda-rich justification for doing so.
Sanity requires the cheapest energy possible - the impact of the UK's 1% of the global population on the Earth's climate is too small to be measured - even if we returned to the Stone Age (beware - methane is more powerful than CO2)
"If you're interested in a reasoned debate then I'll have one."
Global warming flat-lined in 1998. Even the BBC admits it but only tucked away in a corner of their website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
The data-rigging explicitly admitted to in the 10s of thousands of climategate emails was aimed at hiding that flat-lining. *If* that data-rigging in advertently did more that that. *If* it has hidden a cooling instead of flat-lining then this country is even more ****ed than it was already by the economic suicide bill.
A question for people to ponder. What do you think/feel/guess the answer is?
RT @DavidWooding: Love this Mandelson quote: "Can't quite remember which member of govt claimed to have abolished boom and bust. Well, we abolished boom."
The snow's more disruptive, though. It's a pain in the arse to clear it, and walking the hound is more difficult when the usual sort of route is too deep with snow for him to walk in.
https://twitter.com/ChrisMasonBBC/status/315401941939286016/photo/1
The accompanying photo looks terrible - little Ed melting, coy smile and all, before the gaze of his fop master.
I would rather there had been a debate on that for some of the last 10-15 years or so - and then actually done something effective - then the sham debate of whether global warming is happening or not.
Arctic sea ice was much, much lower than today in Viking times - hence their naming and colonisation of Greenland.
It's just random - and largely caused by variations in Solar Output and long-term oscillations in ocean currents, the triggers for which we do not understand.
In short, keeping a coal-fired power station (or 20) open in the UK won't make any difference whatsoever.
Furthermore, polar bear populations are rising, not falling (save in one area: which gets the publicity?) and if the fabled North West passage was again opened to shipping (it seems to have been, back in centuries past) global trade would increase and we'd all be a tiny bit better off.
Given the economic mess we're in, mind, that's chaff to a drowning man with a millstone round his neck.
Mike writes: "One thing we are learning from Vanilla is that a sizeable part of PBs audience do not follow the comment threads." - I can well believe that, but why is it apparent from Vanilla (genuine question)? As Plato says, we aren't having much coherent discussion - I think we're seeing that although the Reply option was messing up New Disqus sequencing, not having a Reply function just kills debate. Even if people indicate who they're replying to, hunting for the original (available with an immediate link in Disqus) so one can track the argument is too tedious.
What we now have is the equivalent of a house that was rented by an artist after the estate agent has been around to tidy it up. The semi-organised chaos has been replaced by a pleasingly orderly arrangement - but a sterile one.
What do youthink/feel/guess is the answer to why the BBC admits global warming flat-lined in 1998 but only tucked away in a corner of their website?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Global-warming-The-missing-energy
So blinded by partisan prejudice are some posters on here that they seriously believe the press deal done earlier this week is all the fault of Labour and the LibDems, even though only 15 Tory MPs did not support it. If every Labour MP had voted against, it still would have passed. But somehow it is all Labour's fault. Wonderful stuff!
This is a problem for people who use tree rings as a proxy for past temperatures before we have thermometer measurements, but it's not an issue for the recent temperature trend.
The recent temperature trend is positive, but there is enough noise in the year to year values that it is never a statistically significant trend over short time periods.
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/1314/#Comment_1314
I don't think most of our resident leftards have realised that the Earth wobbles around it's axis. Add to which solar-flares and Pacific weather patterns are their latest gotta-get fashion accessories...!
Explaining to people that things change on a [sub-] daily basis is difficult enough. Trying to explain that these events may, or may not, indicate a long-term trend is pointless. As a tip - as I don not recognise your "handle" - wait for Mark Senior to post a bet and then accept; free-money...!
:muppets:
On the contrary, the global temperatures recorded by NASA (ie the best and most accurate ever recorded) show no rise since 1998, and a small decline over that period.
The previous 200 years or so show periods of warming and cooling, with particularly cold winters in 1912 (S pole); 1941/2 (Russia); 1947 (Europe); 1962/3 and 1981/2 (UK).
Now that the myth of global warming has been well and truly debunked, it takes, it seems, even longer for The True Believers to grasp that their god was false.
"they seriously believe the press deal done earlier this week is all the fault of Labour and the LibDems"
Who pushed for Leveson?
Who used Leveson to stir up the feeling that the newspapers should be punished for stuff like the Milly Dowler story - already illegal - and then leveraged that public sympathy to wangle the principle of state control of the press through the door?
The Tories being useless doesn't disguise who was driving the process.
The Met Office use the 1961-1990 baseline for comparisons, which happens to have been one of the coldest 30 year means around. They claim this is because it's the global standard, which isn't true. Coincidentally a lot of MetOffice employees are pro-AGW funded, including a good friend of mine.
Anyway, against the CET which is the longest running temperature series in the world there's little empirical doubt that there's a cooling trend over the last 5 or 6 years. Whether that's a blip remains to be seen, but if you think human impact on the gas which makes up just 0.38% of the earth's atmosphere is going to affect global climate then you're welcome to the view. Ever since I read the full IIRC report on the day it was published I began to doubt my previous AGW views. Why? Because it was immediately obvious to me that this wasn't proper science, but polemicised at best, scaremongering at worst.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
Not really sure what this has to do with UKIP but if they wanted to propose that the whole global warming debate has been one massive hyped up con, involving huge wastage of public money, obfuscation and downright lies ... they'd have a case.
You can reply by linking the time, but it's still not 'fluent'. I reckon a reply function may come along with tinkering.
The other thing for me - as feedback, not a grumble - is the amount of white space/font size etc (the new disqus was bad for that as well). I can only see 2/3 'average' comments on screen at a time, which means it's harder to follow, and 'scrollier'.
My ideal would be ye olde version that we got a memory lane jaunt on during the switchover, but with reply*. But I know that wasn't manageable.
*and without the emoticons...
"Such is the strength of Blairites’ concerns about Messrs Miliband and Balls that I’m told that some would even prefer five more years of Mr Cameron in No 10. For they fear Mr Miliband could be so unpopular that Labour would be out of power for years after.
That's exactly what I have been saying for the last six months. I've also said that while UKIP are gowing nicely there time will be 2020.
I'm guessing Ukip sympathizers will have a dramatically different split on belief/disbelief over global warming so in theory it might be worth them taking a punt but it's tricky because (i assume) the majority still believe the hype - especially pretty much everyone under 30 from being brain-washed at school or under 35 if they went to uni.