This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
A poll aggregator is not a model. Their job is not to guess the final margin. Their job is to aggregate the polls.
If you think RCP is actually running some kind of model where they selectively choose polls to guess the correct result then say that, but if that's what they're doing then you can't do what Mike's doing and use it to compare the performance of the polls in 2018 to the performance of the polls in 2016. What you'd be doing would be comparing the performance in each cycle of the magical RCP poll selector.
Every day in France figures are published for the use of intensive care units in hospitals in each of its regions to prevent scare stories about capacity running out. When The Spectator contacted the NHS to investigate reports that intensive care units were full, we were told to submit a Freedom of Information request which may or may not be answered in 28 days.
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
And you still don’t understand probabilities.
As I said last night, if I gave Trump a 0.5% probablity of winning but forecast Biden to win I could still technically say I did not rule out a Trump win
And Gallowgate would rightly ridicule you again for not understanding probabilities.
Probabilities are just forecasting the chance of something happening, it is still what you forecast is most likely to happen you should be judged on not back covering by giving a miniscule chance of something else happening if you were wrong in your main forecast
A priest friend of mine once said to me that he was always amazed at how many Christians were less concerned about the homeless dying on the streets than they were about where someone puts their dick.
Not surprising when historically even churches of many faiths are the same in that regard.
There is no culture anywhere in the world ever, secular or religious that does not have views about sexual conduct. Unsurprising and ineradicable. Nothing special to say about Christians, whose 2 billion adherents hold a variety of views, mostly well intentioned.
The comparison with homelessness is, with great respect to the priest, not a comparison that can be meaningfully made. It's not even apples and pears, it's apples and cruise liners.
Midterm results are almost completely irrelevant to the subsequent Presidential election, they are mainly midterm protests.
In 2010 for example the GOP won the House by 7%, Obama was then re elected in 2012 by 3%.
In 1994 the GOP won the House by 7%, in 1996 Clinton was re elected by 8%.
In 1982 the Democrats won the House by 12%, in 1984 Reagan was re elected by 18%.
The only time recently there was any correlation was when the GOP won in 2002 the midterms and Bush was re elected in 2004 but that was distorted by 9/11.
Trump was also not on the ballot in 2018 and while there was a shy Trump vote in 2016 in the rustbelt swing states and almost certainly will be again next month there was no shy GOP vote in 2014 or 2018 and no shy Romney vote in 2012
Mike's point wasn't about the results though, but rather the polls. He's saying the polls were accurate, by and large, at the mid-terms. That might suggest the problems the pollsters had in 2016 had been to some extent remedied by 2018.
Mind you, I wouldn't place too much faith in them even now. Some pollsters are still distinctly flaky.
It wouldn't because Trump was not on the ballot in 2018, there is no shy GOP vote just as there was no shy Romney vote in 2012, only a shy Trump vote as 2016 showed
Yes but, for example, Trump explicitly endorsed Roy Moore in Alabama and he got beat by the Democrat.
Trump put himself out there and got beat. Trump's spirit was on the ballot if not actually Trump himself.
Just one example from the last 4 years
Roy Moore was on the ballot not Trump, you could equally say Obama endorsed Martha Coakley in the Massachussetts special election of 2010 she lost to Republican Scott Brown and Obama's spirit was on the ballot if not Obama himself, Obama was still re elected in 2012 helped by far higher black turnout than Coakley got
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
And you still don’t understand probabilities.
As I said last night, if I gave Trump a 0.5% probablity of winning but forecast Biden to win I could still technically say I did not rule out a Trump win
And Gallowgate would rightly ridicule you again for not understanding probabilities.
Not just Gallowgate.
As I've said before, 538 have been around for 4 Presidential elections and the 28% chance came in once out of four.
That a 28% chance comes in once out of four is not a failure!
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
As I said yesterday school feeding in the holidays is an emergency measure. We have to go back to being a society who doesn't blame the destitute for being destitute ("they all have iPhones" etc) which means a fix for the environment that tips people into such grinding poverty that they can't feed themselves.
Until then, its just basic decency. We can afford big bungs to Tory donors, we can afford to feed hungry kids, but we're chosing not to because fuck you. Are the Tories sure that is the message they want to give people?
I believe HMG should have done this, even without labour forcing a vote, and had I been a conservative mp I would have voted with labour
A priest friend of mine once said to me that he was always amazed at how many Christians were less concerned about the homeless dying on the streets than they were about where someone puts their dick.
Not surprising when historically even churches of many faiths are the same in that regard.
There is no culture anywhere in the world ever, secular or religious that does not have views about sexual conduct. Unsurprising and ineradicable. Nothing special to say about Christians, whose 2 billion adherents hold a variety of views, mostly well intentioned.
The comparison with homelessness is, with great respect to the priest, not a comparison that can be meaningfully made. It's not even apples and pears, it's apples and cruise liners.
That its not unique to Christians was my point.
I take the point about secularists, though many religious entitites seem particularly and disproportionately fascinated by rules around shagging, which I think is a reasonable distinction.
I don't agree the comparison is apples and cruise liners. Religious or not a lot of people, and I won't deny I'm among them, get a lot more interested and worried about trivial issues, including matters of sex, than issues of actual human suffering.
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
Is there a case for a similar effect to March/April - i.e. the worse it gets with covid, the easier it is for some to realise it's not all the governments fault? (I know some on here will claim otherwise, but I don't think Johnson is running Spain, France, Belgium or even Germany - see above).
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
I'd contend that if they keep losing to "stupid people" they can't be that bright themselves...
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
It's Starmer, he's playing by 2015 rules and doesn't realise the game has changed. It's a shit fight and he has only brought piss. Labour need a leader who streams Among Us on Twitch like AOC and calls Liz Truss a minghag on the Today Show.
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
A poll aggregator is not a model. Their job is not to guess the final margin. Their job is to aggregate the polls.
If you think RCP is actually running some kind of model where they selectively choose polls to guess the correct result then say that, but if that's what they're doing then you can't do what Mike's doing and use it to compare the performance of the polls in 2018 to the performance of the polls in 2016. What you'd be doing would be comparing the performance in each cycle of the magical RCP poll selector.
If that was true then Silver should not have given his disastrous final 2016 forecast of Hillary 302 EC votes and Trump 235 EC votes then should he but let the polls speak for themselves.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
As I said yesterday school feeding in the holidays is an emergency measure. We have to go back to being a society who doesn't blame the destitute for being destitute ("they all have iPhones" etc) which means a fix for the environment that tips people into such grinding poverty that they can't feed themselves.
Until then, its just basic decency. We can afford big bungs to Tory donors, we can afford to feed hungry kids, but we're chosing not to because fuck you. Are the Tories sure that is the message they want to give people?
I believe HMG should have done this, even without labour forcing a vote, and had I been a conservative mp I would have voted with labour
Good for you BigG. It really shouldn't be a party issue. My MP supported the Government. The least he should have done as a Welsh MP was abstain.
In terms of ads Biden is putting a lot out nationally rather than on local state tv . It actually works out cheaper that way in terms of voter reach . So he does have a presence in Texas and other super pacs are still running some more locally .
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
Is there a case for a similar effect to March/April - i.e. the worse it gets with covid, the easier it is for some to realise it's not all the governments fault? (I know some on here will claim otherwise, but I don't think Johnson is running Spain, France, Belgium or even Germany - see above).
There might be something in that, as the news is pretty clear there's a second wave sweeping western Europe at least. And maybe as the US is back in the news even more as the election ramps up, focusing on their covid situation?
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
A poll aggregator is not a model. Their job is not to guess the final margin. Their job is to aggregate the polls.
If you think RCP is actually running some kind of model where they selectively choose polls to guess the correct result then say that, but if that's what they're doing then you can't do what Mike's doing and use it to compare the performance of the polls in 2018 to the performance of the polls in 2016. What you'd be doing would be comparing the performance in each cycle of the magical RCP poll selector.
If that was true then Silver should not have given his disastrous final 2016 forecast of Hillary 302 EC votes and Trump 235 EC votes then should he but let the polls speak for themselves.
It wasn't a disastrous forecast. His forecast was that Trump had a 28% chance of winning.
If a forecaster has been around for four elections then on average in how many of those four elections should a 28% chance come in? Zero out of four or one out of four?
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
And you still don’t understand probabilities.
As I said last night, if I gave Trump a 0.5% probablity of winning but forecast Biden to win 400 to 138 overall I could still technically say I did not rule out a Trump win
Pretty desperate stuff. When this type of propaganda is put out by Tories it just further demonstrates how much they fear Starmer. It reminds me of the guff that Labour supporters used to put out about Cameron. Remember those? Cameron was a chameleon, a lightweight, no experience, a SPAD. None of it worked, because the electorate eventually worked out that Gordon Brown was essentially a pretty useless leader and PM. Gordo looks like a colossus compared to Shagger, and I would say Starmer's back story is a lot lot stronger than Cameron's. The Tories didn't throw Cameron overboard because they knew he was the best they had. Labour will be even less inclined to do so with Starmer, because he is the best they have by a country mile. I can see that and I am not a Labour supporter.
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
And you still don’t understand probabilities.
As I said last night, if I gave Trump a 0.5% probablity of winning but forecast Biden to win I could still technically say I did not rule out a Trump win
And Gallowgate would rightly ridicule you again for not understanding probabilities.
Probabilities are just forecasting the chance of something happening, it is still what you forecast is most likely to happen you should be judged on not back covering by giving a miniscule chance of something else happening if you were wrong in your main forecast
If you throw a dice there is only a 1 in 6 chance of any number coming up. But one of them will come up.
In terms of ads Biden is putting a lot out nationally rather than on local state tv . It actually works out cheaper that way in terms of voter reach . So he does have a presence in Texas and other super pacs are still running some more locally .
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
So Biden is doing national ads rather than ads just focused on key swing states, not holding any rallies in the key swing states over the last week (apart from sending Obama to do a drive in event in Philadelphia yesterday) and not doing any ground game.
Meanwhile Trump has held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina within the last 10 days and has had his activists go door to door to id supporters across the MidWest.
It looks like Biden is yet again risking a Hillary, fighting to win the national popular vote which he likely will while Trump focuses on winning the Electoral College where the election is actually decided
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
A poll aggregator is not a model. Their job is not to guess the final margin. Their job is to aggregate the polls.
If you think RCP is actually running some kind of model where they selectively choose polls to guess the correct result then say that, but if that's what they're doing then you can't do what Mike's doing and use it to compare the performance of the polls in 2018 to the performance of the polls in 2016. What you'd be doing would be comparing the performance in each cycle of the magical RCP poll selector.
If that was true then Silver should not have given his disastrous final 2016 forecast of Hillary 302 EC votes and Trump 235 EC votes then should he but let the polls speak for themselves.
The North East! Not too many Tories up there for you?
Scottish Tories aren't as amoral as English Tories. Besides which they don't run things alone. My Central Buchan Ward has 1 councillor from SNP / LD / Tory / Indy and Aberdeenshire council is a Tory / LD / Indy coalition. Will be interesting to watch the blue tide recede as Brexit turns to shit and Frazerburgh / Peterhead fail to reap the promised benefits.
In terms of ads Biden is putting a lot out nationally rather than on local state tv . It actually works out cheaper that way in terms of voter reach . So he does have a presence in Texas and other super pacs are still running some more locally .
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
So Biden is doing national ads rather than ads just focused on key swing states, not holding any rallies in the key swing states over the last week and not doing any ground game.
Meanwhile Trump has held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina within the last week and has had his activists go door to door to id supporters across the MidWest.
It looks like Biden is yet again risking a Hillary, fighting to win the national popular vote which he likely will while Trump focuses on winning the Electoral College where the election is actually decided
Put like that it does seem more probable, but is really doing no ground game?
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
A poll aggregator is not a model. Their job is not to guess the final margin. Their job is to aggregate the polls.
If you think RCP is actually running some kind of model where they selectively choose polls to guess the correct result then say that, but if that's what they're doing then you can't do what Mike's doing and use it to compare the performance of the polls in 2018 to the performance of the polls in 2016. What you'd be doing would be comparing the performance in each cycle of the magical RCP poll selector.
If that was true then Silver should not have given his disastrous final 2016 forecast of Hillary 302 EC votes and Trump 235 EC votes then should he but let the polls speak for themselves.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
As I said yesterday school feeding in the holidays is an emergency measure. We have to go back to being a society who doesn't blame the destitute for being destitute ("they all have iPhones" etc) which means a fix for the environment that tips people into such grinding poverty that they can't feed themselves.
Until then, its just basic decency. We can afford big bungs to Tory donors, we can afford to feed hungry kids, but we're chosing not to because fuck you. Are the Tories sure that is the message they want to give people?
I believe HMG should have done this, even without labour forcing a vote, and had I been a conservative mp I would have voted with labour
You're a decent human being Big G. Which is why (a) you wouldn't fit in with todays crop of Tory MPs, and besides which the only gay Tory in the village insists you aren't a proper Tory like he is anyway
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
Pretty desperate stuff. When this type of propaganda is put out by Tories it just further demonstrates how much they fear Starmer. It reminds me of the guff that Labour supporters used to put out about Cameron. Remember those? Cameron was a chameleon, a lightweight, no experience, a SPAD. None of it worked, because the electorate eventually worked out that Gordon Brown was essentially a pretty useless leader and PM. Gordo looks like a colossus compared to Shagger, and I would say Starmer's back story is a lot lot stronger than Cameron's. The Tories didn't throw Cameron overboard because they knew he was the best they had. Labour will be even less inclined to do so with Starmer, because he is the best they have by a country mile. I can see that and I am not a Labour supporter.
I agree.
Labour have nobody near him at this time, even though it seems he is not cutting through by as much as one may expect
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
It's Starmer, he's playing by 2015 rules and doesn't realise the game has changed. It's a shit fight and he has only brought piss. Labour need a leader who streams Among Us on Twitch like AOC and calls Liz Truss a minghag on the Today Show.
Anyone know how to get regurgitated green smoothie out of a chromebook?
You're just the fella Labour need. I'd vote for you just on the "bringing piss to a shit fight" quote alone.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
I’d suggest that those who think that this move was unnecessary because it was already funded find out how much their income would be have their children on free school meals (which is actually a proven way of measuring poverty) and then try and live on it for three months. As it happens many of those claiming it’s unnecessary may soon have the benefit of living on UC as their jobs go, it will be interesting to see what happens then when they get sick of being called in for checks and sent for jobs flipping burgers at Mc Donald’s.
I am still expecting a wave election, with an EC landslide victory for Biden.
Judging by the specifics of the EV I suspect you may be disappointed come November 3rd.
RCP's no toss-ups map gives it 367/181, so a gentle wave rather than a tsunami. As PBers have figured however RCP is not quite what it used to be and 538 is probably a better guide.
Nate Silver's site goes 345/193 so similar ballpark but a bit less blue. Note though where the 'front line' is. There are five States where the average polling shows the candidates to be within 3 points of each other - NC/Ga/Iowa/Ohio/Texas. This is not where Trump wants to be fighting the battle. He wants it down around Pa but Biden is 6points clear there and it gets much worse for him as you go on down the line of States where he wants to be attacking - in Wisconsin he is also down 6, and in Nev/Min/Mich it's down 8. NH he's down 10 and out of it.
It's going to take a huge effort, probably some luck or a mighty fickle electorate for Trump to get the front line down where it needs to be for him. By contrast, a ripple of three points in Biden's favour picks up five juicy targets and takes his ECV vote well over 400.
Now that would be a wave!
Well...good luck with that!
As I said i'm more interested in how people are actually voting, plenty of evidence the polling may be...a bit off.
Not to mention the Biden campaign has pulled ads from TX, and have sent not just Obama but also Bernie to "safe" PA.
Wait,what? Biden has *expanded* ad spending in Texas, and also in Georgia, Iowa and Ohio; it's Trump that's pulling TV advertising completely in Ohio and Iowa from the above list, plus New Hampshire, and also reduced it significantly in Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Point is, the Conservatives can be the most transparently bad government and yet 40% of the population will vote for them. Being competent and decent doesn't get other parties anywhere because that 40% don't care about competence and decency. In the Westminster system 40% is enough to win you an outright majority.
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
The only time I ever experienced serious racism was in Scotland.
In terms of ads Biden is putting a lot out nationally rather than on local state tv . It actually works out cheaper that way in terms of voter reach . So he does have a presence in Texas and other super pacs are still running some more locally .
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
So Biden is doing national ads rather than ads just focused on key swing states, not holding any rallies in the key swing states over the last week and not doing any ground game.
Meanwhile Trump has held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina within the last week and has had his activists go door to door to id supporters across the MidWest.
It looks like Biden is yet again risking a Hillary, fighting to win the national popular vote which he likely will while Trump focuses on winning the Electoral College where the election is actually decided
Put like that it does seem more probable, but is really doing no ground game?
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
I'm reasonably confident that the left would insist I am not even centre-left anymore. So that isn't me. But you can't just dismiss this as a stereotype. Listen to LBC - a *lot* of English people say exactly what @OnlyLivingBoy posted above. Which is of course the very goal that the right were aiming to achieve.
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
It's Starmer, he's playing by 2015 rules and doesn't realise the game has changed. It's a shit fight and he has only brought piss. Labour need a leader who streams Among Us on Twitch like AOC and calls Liz Truss a minghag on the Today Show.
Anyone know how to get regurgitated green smoothie out of a chromebook?
You're just the fella Labour need. I'd vote for you just on the "bringing piss to a shit fight" quote alone.
Terri Coverley : Right, we don't exchange insults with bloody Simon arsepipes... tittytwat.
Oliver Reeder : Is that honestly the best swearing you can come up with?
Glenn Cullen : This is a bucket of shit. If someone throws shit at us, we throw shit back at them. We start a shit fight. We throw so much shit at them, that they can't pick up shit, they can't throw shit, they can't do shit.
Hugh Abbott : That's top swearing Glenn, well done.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
If that's what you take from my post then I think it says it all. I'm just observing that having lived in both countries, the English seem much more ready to imagine the worst of their fellow countrymen, especially the poor. Anyway,if you knew your Trainspotting, you would know that the English are not scum, but wankers. 😉
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
And you still don’t understand probabilities.
As I said last night, if I gave Trump a 0.5% probablity of winning but forecast Biden to win 400 to 138 overall I could still technically say I did not rule out a Trump win
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
Is there a case for a similar effect to March/April - i.e. the worse it gets with covid, the easier it is for some to realise it's not all the governments fault? (I know some on here will claim otherwise, but I don't think Johnson is running Spain, France, Belgium or even Germany - see above).
There might be something in that, as the news is pretty clear there's a second wave sweeping western Europe at least. And maybe as the US is back in the news even more as the election ramps up, focusing on their covid situation?
The governments problem is they can’t agree a line or objective in relation to the pandemic, they keep moving their own goal posts and then proceed to score own goals by piss poor communication and a set of muppet like ministers who haven’t got a clue. There is no magic solution just calm steady management and a true understanding and challenge of the science, something johnson is incapable of.
Does anyone have a number as to how many of these 'hungry children' there are ?
I suspect the Trussell Trust would be happy to oblige you of that detail.
So do you have any idea as to the number ?
No I don't, and I expect that evidence of child malnutrition through the pandemic is ratcheting up on a daily basis. From anecdotal personal experience (my wife is involved with a fostering agency). I suspect levels of child malnutrition are unacceptable. It is not just as a result of child poverty issues, but parents who prioritise booze and fags over basic nutritional needs. We have also found that young parents ( my wife specialises in parent and child placements) are not equipped with basic food preparation and cooking skills, and Happy Meals don't come cheap.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
As I said yesterday school feeding in the holidays is an emergency measure. We have to go back to being a society who doesn't blame the destitute for being destitute ("they all have iPhones" etc) which means a fix for the environment that tips people into such grinding poverty that they can't feed themselves.
Until then, its just basic decency. We can afford big bungs to Tory donors, we can afford to feed hungry kids, but we're chosing not to because fuck you. Are the Tories sure that is the message they want to give people?
I believe HMG should have done this, even without labour forcing a vote, and had I been a conservative mp I would have voted with labour
You're a decent human being Big G. Which is why (a) you wouldn't fit in with todays crop of Tory MPs, and besides which the only gay Tory in the village insists you aren't a proper Tory like he is anyway
Hear-hear to the first point. Decent, though sadly misguided about the Tories.
Today's Conservative & Unionist Party is neither conservative nor unionist. I
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
The only time I ever experienced serious racism was in Scotland.
Savanta is concerning but let's see more polls before making a judgment, that's me clutching at straws.
It is true that Savanta got 2019 completely wrong
One poll, taken when the main story was "Boris Standing Up For Britain Against Evil Brussels". That will be a popular stance, right up to the moment tangible consequences hit.
In terms of ads Biden is putting a lot out nationally rather than on local state tv . It actually works out cheaper that way in terms of voter reach . So he does have a presence in Texas and other super pacs are still running some more locally .
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
So Biden is doing national ads rather than ads just focused on key swing states, not holding any rallies in the key swing states over the last week and not doing any ground game.
Meanwhile Trump has held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina within the last week and has had his activists go door to door to id supporters across the MidWest.
It looks like Biden is yet again risking a Hillary, fighting to win the national popular vote which he likely will while Trump focuses on winning the Electoral College where the election is actually decided
Put like that it does seem more probable, but is really doing no ground game?
Did you not notice how the discussion suddenly switched from the Texas TV market to 'key swing states' ? It's pointless to argue with someone who, rather than countering an argument, switches the basis of the debate. As a rhetorical tactic, it's effective; as analysis, utterly useless.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
As an ex-Tory (of the genuine One Nation variety) I was incandescent at some Tory/Brexit-Party-Lite MP who stood up in parliament yesterday arguing against the extension of free school meals saying something to the effect that we should not "nationalise children" and that parents have to "take responsibility". As I understand it, to be eligible for free school meals you have to be on around £7000 per year. Yep, £7k a year! MPs who claim that they don't get paid enough, are currently on £86k a year plus (still) generous allowances. They therefore gross more per month than these parents are getting in a year.
No wonder socialism exists; it is an impractical and often destructive philosophy, but when w****** like this MP take this sort of position, it is understandable why some people believe in it.
Point is, the Conservatives can be the most transparently bad government and yet 40% of the population will vote for them. Being competent and decent doesn't get other parties anywhere because that 40% don't care about competence and decency. In the Westminster system 40% is enough to win you an outright majority.
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
I don't think necessarily that people don't care about competence, they also need to believe a change would lead to an increase in competence, and when it comes to technical delivery of policy they may be more inclined to blame officials, at least whilst the competence of the opposition may still be under the shadow of the Corbyn years.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
As I said yesterday school feeding in the holidays is an emergency measure. We have to go back to being a society who doesn't blame the destitute for being destitute ("they all have iPhones" etc) which means a fix for the environment that tips people into such grinding poverty that they can't feed themselves.
Until then, its just basic decency. We can afford big bungs to Tory donors, we can afford to feed hungry kids, but we're chosing not to because fuck you. Are the Tories sure that is the message they want to give people?
I believe HMG should have done this, even without labour forcing a vote, and had I been a conservative mp I would have voted with labour
You're a decent human being Big G. Which is why (a) you wouldn't fit in with todays crop of Tory MPs, and besides which the only gay Tory in the village insists you aren't a proper Tory like he is anyway
I am not a HYUFD look alike and hopefully have a social conscious
Point is, the Conservatives can be the most transparently bad government and yet 40% of the population will vote for them. Being competent and decent doesn't get other parties anywhere because that 40% don't care about competence and decency. In the Westminster system 40% is enough to win you an outright majority.
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
Is there a case for a similar effect to March/April - i.e. the worse it gets with covid, the easier it is for some to realise it's not all the governments fault? (I know some on here will claim otherwise, but I don't think Johnson is running Spain, France, Belgium or even Germany - see above).
There might be something in that, as the news is pretty clear there's a second wave sweeping western Europe at least. And maybe as the US is back in the news even more as the election ramps up, focusing on their covid situation?
The governments problem is they can’t agree a line or objective in relation to the pandemic, they keep moving their own goal posts and then proceed to score own goals by piss poor communication and a set of muppet like ministers who haven’t got a clue. There is no magic solution just calm steady management and a true understanding and challenge of the science, something johnson is incapable of.
Yes, but that would explain there being a reduction in support, whereas support is pretty steady it seems. So regardless of that being the problem the government has, why hasn't that problem hurt it (yet)?
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
Point is, the Conservatives can be the most transparently bad government and yet 40% of the population will vote for them. Being competent and decent doesn't get other parties anywhere because that 40% don't care about competence and decency. In the Westminster system 40% is enough to win you an outright majority.
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
I don't think necessarily that people don't care about competence, they also need to believe a change would lead to an increase in competence, and when it comes to technical delivery of policy they may be more inclined to blame officials, at least whilst the competence of the opposition may still be under the shadow of the Corbyn years.
Elections are competitive events, so - in this case - a Labour opposition needs to make the case that they are competent and decent. Maybe they aren't good enough in this respect. Problem with the current Westminster setup it doesn't make any difference whether they are because enough people will turn out for the Conservatives who simply don't care about competence and decency.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
Its amazing why those migrants are prepared to risk their lives to cross the channel rather than staying in France seeing how terrible everything is in England.
I am still expecting a wave election, with an EC landslide victory for Biden.
Judging by the specifics of the EV I suspect you may be disappointed come November 3rd.
RCP's no toss-ups map gives it 367/181, so a gentle wave rather than a tsunami. As PBers have figured however RCP is not quite what it used to be and 538 is probably a better guide.
Nate Silver's site goes 345/193 so similar ballpark but a bit less blue. Note though where the 'front line' is. There are five States where the average polling shows the candidates to be within 3 points of each other - NC/Ga/Iowa/Ohio/Texas. This is not where Trump wants to be fighting the battle. He wants it down around Pa but Biden is 6points clear there and it gets much worse for him as you go on down the line of States where he wants to be attacking - in Wisconsin he is also down 6, and in Nev/Min/Mich it's down 8. NH he's down 10 and out of it.
It's going to take a huge effort, probably some luck or a mighty fickle electorate for Trump to get the front line down where it needs to be for him. By contrast, a ripple of three points in Biden's favour picks up five juicy targets and takes his ECV vote well over 400.
Now that would be a wave!
Well...good luck with that!
As I said i'm more interested in how people are actually voting, plenty of evidence the polling may be...a bit off.
Not to mention the Biden campaign has pulled ads from TX, and have sent not just Obama but also Bernie to "safe" PA.
Wait,what? Biden has *expanded* ad spending in Texas, and also in Georgia, Iowa and Ohio; it's Trump that's pulling TV advertising completely in Ohio and Iowa from the above list, plus New Hampshire, and also reduced it significantly in Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Point is, the Conservatives can be the most transparently bad government and yet 40% of the population will vote for them. Being competent and decent doesn't get other parties anywhere because that 40% don't care about competence and decency. In the Westminster system 40% is enough to win you an outright majority.
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
I don't think necessarily that people don't care about competence, they also need to believe a change would lead to an increase in competence, and when it comes to technical delivery of policy they may be more inclined to blame officials, at least whilst the competence of the opposition may still be under the shadow of the Corbyn years.
And Starmer's 'the gentleman in Whitehall knows best' mentality is not an attraction to those who think the gentlemen in Whitehall are neither competent nor interested in the plebs of proletown.
A priest friend of mine once said to me that he was always amazed at how many Christians were less concerned about the homeless dying on the streets than they were about where someone puts their dick.
Not surprising when historically even churches of many faiths are the same in that regard.
There is no culture anywhere in the world ever, secular or religious that does not have views about sexual conduct. Unsurprising and ineradicable. Nothing special to say about Christians, whose 2 billion adherents hold a variety of views, mostly well intentioned.
The comparison with homelessness is, with great respect to the priest, not a comparison that can be meaningfully made. It's not even apples and pears, it's apples and cruise liners.
Churches can be criticised in this respect, though, not for having views on sex, but for obsessing on the categorisation of sexual activity (in/out of marriage, homosexual/heterosexual) and yet saying way too little on conduct and, real world, consequences.
Flipping it around, I remember Nicky Campbell - who I don't generally mind too much - interviewing a no sex before marriage abstainer like she was some kind of alien, and thinking that treatment was just all wrong. She was entitled to and in all probability doing something that would be positive for how she engaged with the world, but that's doesn't mean that, in the current world, I think she was doing something either entirely sufficient or strictly necessary for decent relationship morality - there are plenty of terrible relationship behaviours that do not involve sex before marriage and plenty of soul sustaining relationships that could be held up as examples but that did involve sex before marriage.
I love the angst of the bewildered commentaries. Voters keep telling them but it never sinks in.
I cannot say I would have expected the Tories to retain a lead this long, and my prediction of them regularly being behind by the end of 2020 may be under threat.
But people do need to seek to understand it more than gnashing their teeth at it or concluding voters are stupid. OK, let's say that's the case, why are they stupid, how to enlighten them or appeal to the stupid?
Is there a case for a similar effect to March/April - i.e. the worse it gets with covid, the easier it is for some to realise it's not all the governments fault? (I know some on here will claim otherwise, but I don't think Johnson is running Spain, France, Belgium or even Germany - see above).
There might be something in that, as the news is pretty clear there's a second wave sweeping western Europe at least. And maybe as the US is back in the news even more as the election ramps up, focusing on their covid situation?
The governments problem is they can’t agree a line or objective in relation to the pandemic, they keep moving their own goal posts and then proceed to score own goals by piss poor communication and a set of muppet like ministers who haven’t got a clue. There is no magic solution just calm steady management and a true understanding and challenge of the science, something johnson is incapable of.
Yes, but that would explain there being a reduction in support, whereas support is pretty steady it seems. So regardless of that being the problem the government has, why hasn't that problem hurt it (yet)?
Because they’re still more afraid of labour than the effects of the pandemic, all fine if your sat at home on 80% thinking you’re going to walk back into your job in a few months time.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
I'm reasonably confident that the left would insist I am not even centre-left anymore. So that isn't me. But you can't just dismiss this as a stereotype. Listen to LBC - a *lot* of English people say exactly what @OnlyLivingBoy posted above. Which is of course the very goal that the right were aiming to achieve.
Oh a radio call-in is all we need to judge whole countries by now - very scientific!
Point is, the Conservatives can be the most transparently bad government and yet 40% of the population will vote for them. Being competent and decent doesn't get other parties anywhere because that 40% don't care about competence and decency. In the Westminster system 40% is enough to win you an outright majority.
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
I don't think necessarily that people don't care about competence, they also need to believe a change would lead to an increase in competence, and when it comes to technical delivery of policy they may be more inclined to blame officials, at least whilst the competence of the opposition may still be under the shadow of the Corbyn years.
Elections are competitive events, so - in this case - a Labour opposition needs to make the case that they are competent and decent. Maybe they aren't good enough in this respect. Problem with the current Westminster setup it doesn't make any difference whether they are because enough people will turn out for the Conservatives who simply don't care about competence and decency.
I don't think 40-42% don't care about competence or decency at all, given that is a historically pretty high level for the Tories to reach in recent decades rather than their core of support. As concerns about competence and decency rise, it doesn't seem improbable that they could drop 5% or similar, more or less, and end up losing.
In terms of ads Biden is putting a lot out nationally rather than on local state tv . It actually works out cheaper that way in terms of voter reach . So he does have a presence in Texas and other super pacs are still running some more locally .
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
So Biden is doing national ads rather than ads just focused on key swing states, not holding any rallies in the key swing states over the last week (apart from sending Obama to do a drive in event in Philadelphia yesterday) and not doing any ground game.
Meanwhile Trump has held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina within the last 10 days and has had his activists go door to door to id supporters across the MidWest.
It looks like Biden is yet again risking a Hillary, fighting to win the national popular vote which he likely will while Trump focuses on winning the Electoral College where the election is actually decided
I don't know where this idea that Biden is not concentrating on key states is coming from - it's the complete inverse of the truth.
Here's a link to the full report: https://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases-101520/, headline 'Biden Continues to Dominate Advertising'. Biden has spent nearly twice as much ($55m to $31m) over that period, and Dem PACs have also outspent Rep PACs.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
As an ex-Tory (of the genuine One Nation variety) I was incandescent at some Tory/Brexit-Party-Lite MP who stood up in parliament yesterday arguing against the extension of free school meals saying something to the effect that we should not "nationalise children" and that parents have to "take responsibility". As I understand it, to be eligible for free school meals you have to be on around £7000 per year. Yep, £7k a year! MPs who claim that they don't get paid enough, are currently on £86k a year plus (still) generous allowances. They therefore gross more per month than these parents are getting in a year.
No wonder socialism exists; it is an impractical and often destructive philosophy, but when w****** like this MP take this sort of position, it is understandable why some people believe in it.
And smart Conservatives have recognised this for centuries. Conservative social reform may have been late, half-hearted and based on partisan survival, but reform staved off revolution.
Increasingly, I feel like the old bloke you see in the background of "Tomorrow belongs to me" in Cabaret. This is not going to end well.
Pretty desperate stuff. When this type of propaganda is put out by Tories it just further demonstrates how much they fear Starmer. It reminds me of the guff that Labour supporters used to put out about Cameron. Remember those? Cameron was a chameleon, a lightweight, no experience, a SPAD. None of it worked, because the electorate eventually worked out that Gordon Brown was essentially a pretty useless leader and PM. Gordo looks like a colossus compared to Shagger, and I would say Starmer's back story is a lot lot stronger than Cameron's. The Tories didn't throw Cameron overboard because they knew he was the best they had. Labour will be even less inclined to do so with Starmer, because he is the best they have by a country mile. I can see that and I am not a Labour supporter.
I agree.
Labour have nobody near him at this time, even though it seems he is not cutting through by as much as one may expect
Still early days. Do we really need an inspirational Tony Blair figure for 2024? By the time we get to 2024, the last thing we will need or want is another bull******, uninspiring and competent will fit the bill perfectly.
A priest friend of mine once said to me that he was always amazed at how many Christians were less concerned about the homeless dying on the streets than they were about where someone puts their dick.
Not surprising when historically even churches of many faiths are the same in that regard.
There is no culture anywhere in the world ever, secular or religious that does not have views about sexual conduct. Unsurprising and ineradicable. Nothing special to say about Christians, whose 2 billion adherents hold a variety of views, mostly well intentioned.
The comparison with homelessness is, with great respect to the priest, not a comparison that can be meaningfully made. It's not even apples and pears, it's apples and cruise liners.
Not really right. Christianity's USP is that it all comes down to one principle: Love your neighbour as yourself, which means that all moral issues are apples. Christians can't say Yeah well, some people are OK with gays and some people a bit less so, way of the world, guv, and claim to be Christians.
I am still expecting a wave election, with an EC landslide victory for Biden.
Judging by the specifics of the EV I suspect you may be disappointed come November 3rd.
RCP's no toss-ups map gives it 367/181, so a gentle wave rather than a tsunami. As PBers have figured however RCP is not quite what it used to be and 538 is probably a better guide.
Nate Silver's site goes 345/193 so similar ballpark but a bit less blue. Note though where the 'front line' is. There are five States where the average polling shows the candidates to be within 3 points of each other - NC/Ga/Iowa/Ohio/Texas. This is not where Trump wants to be fighting the battle. He wants it down around Pa but Biden is 6points clear there and it gets much worse for him as you go on down the line of States where he wants to be attacking - in Wisconsin he is also down 6, and in Nev/Min/Mich it's down 8. NH he's down 10 and out of it.
It's going to take a huge effort, probably some luck or a mighty fickle electorate for Trump to get the front line down where it needs to be for him. By contrast, a ripple of three points in Biden's favour picks up five juicy targets and takes his ECV vote well over 400.
Now that would be a wave!
Well...good luck with that!
As I said i'm more interested in how people are actually voting, plenty of evidence the polling may be...a bit off.
Not to mention the Biden campaign has pulled ads from TX, and have sent not just Obama but also Bernie to "safe" PA.
Wait,what? Biden has *expanded* ad spending in Texas, and also in Georgia, Iowa and Ohio; it's Trump that's pulling TV advertising completely in Ohio and Iowa from the above list, plus New Hampshire, and also reduced it significantly in Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Savanta is concerning but let's see more polls before making a judgment, that's me clutching at straws.
It is true that Savanta got 2019 completely wrong
As I said yesterday this weeks 'shenanigans' will not show in the polls before the weekend and I would be surprised if there is not a greater narrowing.
However, reading anything into one poll or even several will not change the fact there is no GE before 2024
GE 2024 will not be fought over todays backdrop, but more how quickly into 2021-22 we recover from the covid crisis and see rising employment and hopeful a better outlook post brexit, especially if a deal is struck soon
And on brexit, I really do not care about the details of a deal, I just want any deal to move the dial forward
The odds Silver gave Trump in his projection was almost the same as the odds of hitting an open ended straight from the flop in Texas Holdem Poker.
I wonder if HYUFD would advise anyone holding an open-ended straight draw on the flop they have to fold in all circumstances as they're clearly not winning?
Genuine question: are most schools open and able to offer meals during the school holidays? If not, how are free school meal vouchers to be utilised? Are they to especially open and staff kitchens and facilities - with all that associated overhead that requires, plus the children needing to travel to and from school - or are they "general" vouchers to be spent by the kids/parents at supermarkets and corner shops to get the kids food?
It is different in school holidays (and at weekends) as children are under the care of their parents at that time, or that of a third party. The state doesn't look after kids outside of school. That doesn't make the expense easier to meet of course - but it is a shift. At present, we recognise free school meals for 190 lunches a year (normal school days) and the argument is now to increase it to 261 lunches a year.
There was a good post on here yesterday about how we've shied away from food vouchers in the past, as for some reason it's considered subsistence-like and demeaning, toward cash benefits. UC is designed to get workers used to budgeting and spending their own money to help them transition into salaried work.
I think the Covid-19 crisis is one thing (and I'd continue support for now until that was over in the Spring) and, personally, in the longer-term, I wouldn't object to a mixture of both - cash and child food vouchers - that is part of the overall UC assessment for each individual.
It just feels like it's not been fully thought-through at present.
The PB lefties continue to obsess about the top 10% and the bottom 10%.
If they ever met the middle 80% they would realise that they talk about different things.
And PB tories obsess about keeping as much of their money as possible regardless, shafting immigrants and asylum seekers and believing the EU is the devil incarnate.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
If that's what you take from my post then I think it says it all. I'm just observing that having lived in both countries, the English seem much more ready to imagine the worst of their fellow countrymen, especially the poor. Anyway,if you knew your Trainspotting, you would know that the English are not scum, but wankers. 😉
Try substituting black for English in your post. It might give you a clue.
RCP is garbage, they leave out most of the polls. There's no point in using them for any kind of comparison, and their data shouldn't brought up in any conversation except "WTF happened to RCP, that site used to be pretty good back in the day"
Yet RCP was closer to the final result than 538 in 2016, 538 had Hillary winning with over 300 EC votes.
It seems most on here have learnt nothing from 2016, then the final Wisconsin average had Hillary up by 7% but Trump won the state by 0.7% for example
And you still don’t understand probabilities.
As I said last night, if I gave Trump a 0.5% probablity of winning but forecast Biden to win I could still technically say I did not rule out a Trump win
And Gallowgate would rightly ridicule you again for not understanding probabilities.
Probabilities are just forecasting the chance of something happening, it is still what you forecast is most likely to happen you should be judged on not back covering by giving a miniscule chance of something else happening if you were wrong in your main forecast
If you throw a dice there is only a 1 in 6 chance of any number coming up. But one of them will come up.
James O'Brien going on the government's backflip to blame the kids for being hungry. Why? he asks.
Its simple. Work doesn't pay. Universal Credit doesn't work. But they insist both are fine therefore kids can't be hungry unless they are feckless iPhone owners. They can't feed these hungry kids because to do so is to admit that work doesn't pay and UC doesn't work and their whole pack of cards falls down.
As this goes on, I suspect the UC mirage will dissipate anyway. Its one thing for Tory voters to insist UC - of which they know nothing Jon Snow - is largesse when its other people complaining about penury, another thing when its them being dumped onto it and discovering they are entitled to fuck all AND now being blamed for their situation by their former allies.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
The only time I ever experienced serious racism was in Scotland.
I am sorry to hear it. What happened?
Thanks, obviously well over it now. I was thirteen in Dumfries. Weekend shopping trip. Four local boys heard me asking for something in WHSmith with an English accent.
They then followed me down a side alley and one of them punched me in the side of my face calling me a "English c**t" whilst laughing.
I didn't react just wriggled free and escaped to the police station, who were understanding and sympathetic - and found the incident on CCTV - but couldn't do anything.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
I am still expecting a wave election, with an EC landslide victory for Biden.
Judging by the specifics of the EV I suspect you may be disappointed come November 3rd.
RCP's no toss-ups map gives it 367/181, so a gentle wave rather than a tsunami. As PBers have figured however RCP is not quite what it used to be and 538 is probably a better guide.
Nate Silver's site goes 345/193 so similar ballpark but a bit less blue. Note though where the 'front line' is. There are five States where the average polling shows the candidates to be within 3 points of each other - NC/Ga/Iowa/Ohio/Texas. This is not where Trump wants to be fighting the battle. He wants it down around Pa but Biden is 6points clear there and it gets much worse for him as you go on down the line of States where he wants to be attacking - in Wisconsin he is also down 6, and in Nev/Min/Mich it's down 8. NH he's down 10 and out of it.
It's going to take a huge effort, probably some luck or a mighty fickle electorate for Trump to get the front line down where it needs to be for him. By contrast, a ripple of three points in Biden's favour picks up five juicy targets and takes his ECV vote well over 400.
Now that would be a wave!
Well...good luck with that!
As I said i'm more interested in how people are actually voting, plenty of evidence the polling may be...a bit off.
Not to mention the Biden campaign has pulled ads from TX, and have sent not just Obama but also Bernie to "safe" PA.
Wait,what? Biden has *expanded* ad spending in Texas, and also in Georgia, Iowa and Ohio; it's Trump that's pulling TV advertising completely in Ohio and Iowa from the above list, plus New Hampshire, and also reduced it significantly in Nevada, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
Its amazing why those migrants are prepared to risk their lives to cross the channel rather than staying in France seeing how terrible everything is in England.
Because they speak English not French and their relatives are in England not France, don’t be so bloody stupid.
James O'Brien going on the government's backflip to blame the kids for being hungry. Why? he asks.
Its simple. Work doesn't pay. Universal Credit doesn't work. But they insist both are fine therefore kids can't be hungry unless they are feckless iPhone owners. They can't feed these hungry kids because to do so is to admit that work doesn't pay and UC doesn't work and their whole pack of cards falls down.
As this goes on, I suspect the UC mirage will dissipate anyway. Its one thing for Tory voters to insist UC - of which they know nothing Jon Snow - is largesse when its other people complaining about penury, another thing when its them being dumped onto it and discovering they are entitled to fuck all AND now being blamed for their situation by their former allies.
UC isn't fuck all.
The biggest problem with UC though is the taper rate (and it's predecessors were worse) which means that people on it are punitively taxed if they earn more.
This is the sort of thing that will cling to the Conservatives like a bad smell. It will be a reminder to wavers of why the "nasty party" shouldn't get their vote.
Astounding result. Like asking "Do you agree that everything should be nice and nothing should be nasty?" More illuminating if the question said either "forever" or "for the duration of covid 19" (or gave the choice). If the former, has it ever been in a Labour manifesto and why has it never been enacted by a Labour government?
Holiday provision for free school meals has been enacted by the Labour government here in Wales.
This really shouldn't be a party political issue, but a moral conscience issue. Hungry children is not a good look for any political party. Scapegoating idle and feckless adults is fair game, but deliberately voting to malnourish children doesn't go down well with the mums.
As my wife has just put it "there is an inability for too many people in England to put themselves in other people's shoes". I have no problem if England wants to descend into the right wing pit - that's free choice. I've had enough of it. "If you don't like it go and live somewhere else" say some Tories. OK, I will.
It is remarkable how some people are so devoid of empathy. They simply assert that of course you can feed a family easily on benefits, and fall back on lazy stereotypes about booze and fags, feckless parents and the like. The poverty line for a single parent with one kid is about £200 per week after housing costs. Many millions of families on benefits including those in work are below that level, especially after post-2010 cuts. That £200 has to cover not just food but travel costs, clothing including school uniform, utilities, school trips, furniture and appliances, internet access and phone bills, and any sudden and lumpy costs like repairing your car. It's really not hard to see how that leaves many struggling to provide food at times, and indeed it is easy to find accounts by those affected explaining in great detail. And yet, through sheer arrogance and lack of empathy, people who have never wondered how they will stretch the last tenner to the end of the week, or how they will afford a winter coat for their child, or seen their kid bring the only one in her class who doesn't go on the school trip, are happy to bleat on about how people just need to be better at budgeting. It's really disgusting, and I don't blame you for moving to Scotland, where in all honesty people actually are nicer.
Lol - stereotyping a whole country comes do easily to the left. The English are just scum, as someone once said.
Its amazing why those migrants are prepared to risk their lives to cross the channel rather than staying in France seeing how terrible everything is in England.
I know, right? The way the lefties paint us as The Worst People On Earth, you'd almost think they were secretly trying to put them off coming...
Genuine question: are most schools open and able to offer meals during the school holidays? If not, how are free school meal vouchers to be utilised? Are they to especially open and staff kitchens and facilities - with all that associated overhead that requires, plus the children needing to travel to and from school - or are they "general" vouchers to be spent by the kids/parents at supermarkets and corner shops to get the kids food?
It is different in school holidays (and at weekends) as children are under the care of their parents at that time, or that of a third party. The state doesn't look after kids outside of school. That doesn't make the expense easier to meet of course - but it is a shift. At present, we recognise free school meals for 190 lunches a year (normal school days) and the argument is now to increase it to 261 lunches a year.
There was a good post on here yesterday about how we've shied away from food vouchers in the past, as for some reason it's considered subsistence-like and demeaning, toward cash benefits. UC is designed to get workers used to budgeting and spending their own money to help them transition into salaried work.
I think the Covid-19 crisis is one thing (and I'd continue support for now until that was over in the Spring) and, personally, in the longer-term, I wouldn't object to a mixture of both - cash and child food vouchers - that is part of the overall UC assessment for each individual.
It just feels like it's not been fully thought-through at present.
Completely reasonable question. I suspect primary schools are close enough to most people’s homes that delivering school means there is both reasonable & possible - staff availability would be the only barrier & so long as the school is happy for kitchen staff to bring their children to school in the mornings any problems could be sorted out.
Secondary schools are another matter though, especially in rural areas.
Food vouchers are (rightly imo) seen as stigmatising. Cash is better, where possible. A major problem with the current benefit system is that the government simultaneously sees UC as a benefit to prevent people starving in the street /and/ a stick to beat the poor with by withholding it for every possible infraction. It cannot be both.
RCP have been pushing a measure that showed Trump ahead in battleground states versus where he was at the same stage in the race against Clinton.
That has now flipped to Biden being 4.2% ahead versus Clinton's 3.8% lead at the same stage.
Oops, that's not quite fitting the preferred narrative.
It would still see Trump re elected actually but by a narrower victory margin than 2016, Biden would win Michigan which Trump won by 0.23% but Trump would hold Pennsylvania which he won by 0.72% and Wisconsin which he won by 0.77% assuming the same error and UNS
1. if you take the 538 numbers above and look at the two on there who arguably were amongst the closest in 2018 (IBD / Hill), their current polls have quite small leads for Biden (+2/+4);
2. The one state where we have the most breakdown on voters - North Carolina - is showing under-40s significantly underweight vs their share of the electorate (20pc of early votes / mail ballots cast vs 40pc of the electorate). Older voters are overweighted. There is no reason to see why NC should be exceptional (but see 3 below). Just because someone is registered as a Democrat does not mean they will vote Democrat - especially in older age groups. I’d say that lack of younger voter turnout would be concerning for Biden;
3. What hasn’t been discussed too much here is the fact that many college and university campuses in the States don’t have their students there and / or admissions have been delayed. For a number of swing states, that could make a difference. While these students may be at their parents home, you don’t have the GOTV operations present that many student groups organise
Comments
https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/1319192488708550656?s=20
If you think RCP is actually running some kind of model where they selectively choose polls to guess the correct result then say that, but if that's what they're doing then you can't do what Mike's doing and use it to compare the performance of the polls in 2018 to the performance of the polls in 2016. What you'd be doing would be comparing the performance in each cycle of the magical RCP poll selector.
From today's Speccie.
The comparison with homelessness is, with great respect to the priest, not a comparison that can be meaningfully made. It's not even apples and pears, it's apples and cruise liners.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronavirustheukeconomyandsocietyfasterindicators/22october2020
As I've said before, 538 have been around for 4 Presidential elections and the 28% chance came in once out of four.
That a 28% chance comes in once out of four is not a failure!
I take the point about secularists, though many religious entitites seem particularly and disproportionately fascinated by rules around shagging, which I think is a reasonable distinction.
I don't agree the comparison is apples and cruise liners. Religious or not a lot of people, and I won't deny I'm among them, get a lot more interested and worried about trivial issues, including matters of sex, than issues of actual human suffering.
But that we do it doesn't make it not weird.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
His latest ad is narrated by Sam Elliott and is really Biden’s closing message about bringing the country together . It’s being shown during the World Series and apparently cost 4 million dollars to air in that slot .
If a forecaster has been around for four elections then on average in how many of those four elections should a 28% chance come in? Zero out of four or one out of four?
Multiply Belgium's numbers by six.
Meanwhile Trump has held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina within the last 10 days and has had his activists go door to door to id supporters across the MidWest.
It looks like Biden is yet again risking a Hillary, fighting to win the national popular vote which he likely will while Trump focuses on winning the Electoral College where the election is actually decided
Pollster A forecast a Trump victory in state A of 8%.
Pollster B forecast a Biden victory of 0.5% in state A.
The actual result is that Trump wins by 1%.
Who’s the better pollster?
RCP have been pushing a measure that showed Trump ahead in battleground states versus where he was at the same stage in the race against Clinton.
That has now flipped to Biden being 4.2% ahead versus Clinton's 3.8% lead at the same stage.
Oops, that's not quite fitting the preferred narrative.
Donald Trump Has Even Lost His Polling Advantage on “Handling the Economy”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/trump-economy-polls-loses-lead-biden.html
RCP is a poll aggregator.
538 is both a poll aggregator and a forecaster. These are separate roles and they produce different numbers.
This is 538's polling average, made by averaging the polls, weighted by pollsters' past results.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/
This is their forecast. You'll notice it has numbers for Popular Vote, which are different numbers to the numbers in their polling average.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/
gayTory in the village insists you aren't a proper Tory like he is anywayLabour have nobody near him at this time, even though it seems he is not cutting through by as much as one may expect
It is true that Savanta got 2019 completely wrong
https://twitter.com/segal_eran/status/1318614894657286146
You're just the fella Labour need. I'd vote for you just on the "bringing piss to a shit fight" quote alone.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-10/trump-biden-television-advertising-battleground-states
I don't know what the answer is, except in Scotland to become independent.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1319028944847372289
https://time.com/5889093/joe-biden-michigan-campaign/
Hugh Abbott : So, how do we respond to this?
Terri Coverley : Right, we don't exchange insults with bloody Simon arsepipes... tittytwat.
Oliver Reeder : Is that honestly the best swearing you can come up with?
Glenn Cullen : This is a bucket of shit. If someone throws shit at us, we throw shit back at them. We start a shit fight. We throw so much shit at them, that they can't pick up shit, they can't throw shit, they can't do shit.
Hugh Abbott : That's top swearing Glenn, well done.
Anyway,if you knew your Trainspotting, you would know that the English are not scum, but wankers. 😉
Today's Conservative & Unionist Party is neither conservative nor unionist. I
It's pointless to argue with someone who, rather than countering an argument, switches the basis of the debate. As a rhetorical tactic, it's effective; as analysis, utterly useless.
No wonder socialism exists; it is an impractical and often destructive philosophy, but when w****** like this MP take this sort of position, it is understandable why some people believe in it.
Not sure you have got off on the right foot though... quoting facts n'all.
Flipping it around, I remember Nicky Campbell - who I don't generally mind too much - interviewing a no sex before marriage abstainer like she was some kind of alien, and thinking that treatment was just all wrong. She was entitled to and in all probability doing something that would be positive for how she engaged with the world, but that's doesn't mean that, in the current world, I think she was doing something either entirely sufficient or strictly necessary for decent relationship morality - there are plenty of terrible relationship behaviours that do not involve sex before marriage and plenty of soul sustaining relationships that could be held up as examples but that did involve sex before marriage.
Not sure if this link will work, but here's a chart of local TV ads from 28/Sep to 11/Oct, from the Wesleyan Media Project: https://images.dailykos.com/images/871229/story_image/ad-spend-9-28-thru-10-11-e16030462443561.png?1603062879
Here's a link to the full report: https://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/releases-101520/, headline 'Biden Continues to Dominate Advertising'. Biden has spent nearly twice as much ($55m to $31m) over that period, and Dem PACs have also outspent Rep PACs.
The PB lefties continue to obsess about the top 10% and the bottom 10%.
If they ever met the middle 80% they would realise that they talk about different things.
Increasingly, I feel like the old bloke you see in the background of "Tomorrow belongs to me" in Cabaret. This is not going to end well.
However, reading anything into one poll or even several will not change the fact there is no GE before 2024
GE 2024 will not be fought over todays backdrop, but more how quickly into 2021-22 we recover from the covid crisis and see rising employment and hopeful a better outlook post brexit, especially if a deal is struck soon
And on brexit, I really do not care about the details of a deal, I just want any deal to move the dial forward
I wonder if HYUFD would advise anyone holding an open-ended straight draw on the flop they have to fold in all circumstances as they're clearly not winning?
It is different in school holidays (and at weekends) as children are under the care of their parents at that time, or that of a third party. The state doesn't look after kids outside of school. That doesn't make the expense easier to meet of course - but it is a shift. At present, we recognise free school meals for 190 lunches a year (normal school days) and the argument is now to increase it to 261 lunches a year.
There was a good post on here yesterday about how we've shied away from food vouchers in the past, as for some reason it's considered subsistence-like and demeaning, toward cash benefits. UC is designed to get workers used to budgeting and spending their own money to help them transition into salaried work.
I think the Covid-19 crisis is one thing (and I'd continue support for now until that was over in the Spring) and, personally, in the longer-term, I wouldn't object to a mixture of both - cash and child food vouchers - that is part of the overall UC assessment for each individual.
It just feels like it's not been fully thought-through at present.
Its simple. Work doesn't pay. Universal Credit doesn't work. But they insist both are fine therefore kids can't be hungry unless they are feckless iPhone owners. They can't feed these hungry kids because to do so is to admit that work doesn't pay and UC doesn't work and their whole pack of cards falls down.
As this goes on, I suspect the UC mirage will dissipate anyway. Its one thing for Tory voters to insist UC - of which they know nothing Jon Snow - is largesse when its other people complaining about penury, another thing when its them being dumped onto it and discovering they are entitled to fuck all AND now being blamed for their situation by their former allies.
They then followed me down a side alley and one of them punched me in the side of my face calling me a "English c**t" whilst laughing.
I didn't react just wriggled free and escaped to the police station, who were understanding and sympathetic - and found the incident on CCTV - but couldn't do anything.
The biggest problem with UC though is the taper rate (and it's predecessors were worse) which means that people on it are punitively taxed if they earn more.
Secondary schools are another matter though, especially in rural areas.
Food vouchers are (rightly imo) seen as stigmatising. Cash is better, where possible. A major problem with the current benefit system is that the government simultaneously sees UC as a benefit to prevent people starving in the street /and/ a stick to beat the poor with by withholding it for every possible infraction. It cannot be both.
A few things:
1. if you take the 538 numbers above and look at the two on there who arguably were amongst the closest in 2018 (IBD / Hill), their current polls have quite small leads for Biden (+2/+4);
2. The one state where we have the most breakdown on voters - North Carolina - is showing under-40s significantly underweight vs their share of the electorate (20pc of early votes / mail ballots cast vs 40pc of the electorate). Older voters are overweighted. There is no reason to see why NC should be exceptional (but see 3 below). Just because someone is registered as a Democrat does not mean they will vote Democrat - especially in older age groups. I’d say that lack of younger voter turnout would be concerning for Biden;
3. What hasn’t been discussed too much here is the fact that many college and university campuses in the States don’t have their students there and / or admissions have been delayed. For a number of swing states, that could make a difference. While these students may be at their parents home, you don’t have the GOTV operations present that many student groups organise