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Ladbrokes make the Tories odds on favourites to take Hartlepool in the first Westminster by-election
Ladbrokes make the Tories odds on favourites to take Hartlepool in the first Westminster by-election of the Parliament – politicalbetting.com
Ladbrokes: Tories are odds-on favourites to win the Hartlepool by-election. pic.twitter.com/eTBE61F8dw
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All the Tory candidate needs to do is point at Stockton, Middlesbrough and Darlington and say look what you could get if you vote the right way.
We also know from RP that the Hartlepool Labour Party isn't going to be supporting any centralist candidate imposed on them.
So I do see a Tory win and very little reason for it to be anything else.
If it is held on the same day as the local elections and Scottish, London and Welsh elections in May anyway even a Tory gain would be somewhat overshadowed
Only way I don't see it happening is is Farage's mob run a very energetic campaign.
I'd be keen to know ....why now ?
The timing of this by-election, at the likely peak of the vaccine bounce, is hardly helpful to Labour.
Perhaps even actively hostile.
Will Mike Hill be making further interventions ? Will they be inimical? He looks like a man with a grudge.
Off topic - My wife has been working at a vaccine centre. Yesterday and into today there has been a massive uptick in refusals of AZ, especially amongst Asian communities.
If the EU has screwed this up, then sod them. There have to be consequences. It makes me angry.
Looks like Lab have thrown away a PCC election too, with their candidate looking to walk away at the last minute to contest the Parliamentary seat instead.
In other news 110 deaths, I think today or tomorrow could be the last ever day we see triple digits deaths reported barring any unforeseen backdating.
I think I need to find that Gandalf gif again.
https://twitter.com/steviet1610/status/1371848912512946183
Meanwhile the usually active Paul Williams is maintaining radio silence. Whether it is because he is elbows deep in Covid doing a shift at the hospital, or region have told him to go dark, the damage has been done.
Tory PCC leaflets will all be full of "Labour's candidate not interested in the job". Labour haven't a bloody clue how to do politics, the Tories on Teesside have an excellent spin machine, its another self-imposed red fuck-up. Labour knew well in advance that Hill was heading for the Chiltern Hundreds, and still managed to not even think "what happens if the press puts our PCC candidate n=in the frame"?
https://twitter.com/hzeffman/status/1371792395927425028
Hill is facing allegations of unfair dismissal, sexual assault and harassment in an employment tribunal. He failed last year in an attempt to keep his name secret in the legal proceedings.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-mp-mike-hill-resigns-to-trigger-red-wall-by-election-0zngz8mrv
The Brexit vote will be lifelong Labour voters who couldn't bring themselves to vote Tory even to Get Brexit Done.
They should return to Labour if BXP isn't there. If they go Tory that should be major shocking news.
Symptoms have never been a factor.
and
'We will never lock you down again, ever.'
Might have some traction. Who knows.
That’s really sh1t about the vaccine centres. There’s serious international damage being done here, including to the third-world Covax effort - and with every Russian and Chinese troll operation now retwatting genuine quotes from European politicians casting doubt.
Dare I say it, but AZ need to raise their price a fraction and deploy the Big Pharma lobbyists.
Edit: No Tory gain please - knowing this lot they'll start agitating for an early election as a result.
https://twitter.com/W7VOA/status/1371866631698268163
That should concentrate minds in Europe, where they are looking to be solidly in triple figures.
But we really need a week or two more of LFT results to compare like with like.
Or maybe the end of Sturgeon.
So, why now? As e.g., opposed to the autumn, which would have been easier for Labour.
Perhaps the allegations are so incendiary that Labour felt that they had to throw him overboard asap ?
But. my point is that a man who is chucked overboard is not usually full of the milk of human kindness towards those who did the chucking.
My father is performing vaccines in South Yorkshire and is targeting Asian communities, he's not noticed any refusals, he's had a higher than normal questions about the vaccines in general but reassures them all so they take it.
That's no longer the case with the widespread use of LFTs.
The reverse sweep done nowadays is like an overhead kick in the box in football, a really impressive shot to see.
It also implies that cases in other age groups have continued to decline. So far so good.
Probably more toxic than the Brexit-ambivalent Corbyn in Hartlepool.
But if not, Starmer could find hundreds of council seats and a great performance in Scotland overshadowed by results in Wales and Hartlepool...
Can we get a SKS Exit Date market up on Betfair?
An asymptomatic care or hospital staff member testing positive has been classed as a case not a test.
coronavirus.data.gov.uk has a box labelled as 'cases' but defines its indicator as 'people who have tested positive' (which of course is not the same as positive tests, because some people may have had multiple tests).
But I do agree we have always throughout the pandemic - erroneously in my view, but put that aside - used 'cases' as shorthand for 'people who have tested positive'.
But it's only an indicator, for many reasons:
- it's not a representative sample
- there will be examples of people who are infected but not tested
- there will be false positives and false negatives
It is, however, a much stronger indicator than it was last year!
I prefer to use the slightly 'positive tests' or 'people who have tested positive' because it is much clearer exactly what we are talking about. However you define cases (as infections, as symptomatic infections, as seriously symptomatic infections, or what) this will not be the same number on any given day as 'people who tested positive'.
In fact, if we are to be even more correct, we ought to say 'new reports of people who have tested positive'!
Right, I have just heard youngest arrive home from after school club and she is a pain in the arse until she is fed - so I will go and put tea on.
It started off as Brexit. But its bigger than that. People aren't voting for Brexit cos it means Brexit. They're voting for it and then the Tories because they hope it means prosperity and pride, two things that have largely eroded away from places like Hartlepools.
If you look at the council it is a Tory / Independent coalition with just 8 Labour councillors left. People turn out to vote for lunatics and crazies in an "independent" group rather than Labour. So at the very least expect the Labour vote and turnout to be down and once they get a taste of not voting for Labour they keep doing it.
Everything down, apart from cases which are plateauing. This is because of a rise in reported cases in the 0-14 cohort
The vaccine effect is shown strongly in this graph as well - 65+ plummeting below everyone younger.
Note that this is pretty standard in US, when an incumbent is forced to resign due to allegations of sexual misconduct, for his party to actively recruit and back a woman to replace him.
That is precisely how US Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) one of the Republicans in US House who voted to impeach Trumpsky (after his Putsch) got into public office in the first place.
When a GOP state legislator (an evangelical firefighter no less) got caught up in a gay sex scandal, the party persuaded him to resign, then engineered the appointment of JHB to the vacancy. Her position was confirmed by voters at next election, then ran for Congress in 2010, won, and has been re-elected every two years since.
https://images.bfmtv.com/6tPHn3FXpxdR-yvEWMJ6bNDzla0=/0x0:810x485/1160x0/images/Graphique-du-sondage-Elabe-pour-BFMTV-le-16-mars-2021-5-988288.jpg
Fair play to the French authorities, they've managed to completely destroy the reputation in France of the cheapest, easiest to distribute, and potentially even the (based on UK real world data) best vaccine.
Twats.
However, any scientists on SAGE who are unable to understand that more testing -> more cases detected even if underlying cases remain the same will, I'm sure, be swiftly put right by their colleagues. These people are not idiots.
There are also other sources of information - the ONS random sample (lagged a bit) and detected cases in people older than school age (these may also go up if people in contact with people with positive tests get tests). Another indicator over the next few weeks will be positivity rates in the routine LFTs - if there's a real problem of increasing infection then the positivity rates will go up, if not, they won't.
In short, the trend line for case numbers will be higher than it would otherwise have been, but there will be multiple ways to get a handle on how real that is.
Which is why this graph is rather useless
https://twitter.com/mark_toshner/status/1371748297757630465
Will soon be a problem unless the government can properly communicate this PDQ.
Labour majority 2005: 11,365 Tory vote 18.4%
Tory majority 2017: 1,057. Tory vote 46.6%
Tory majority 2019: 16,306. Tory vote 63.9%
The only thing similar that I have ever seen is the way the LibDem vote used to do that. The Northern Red Wall Tories have discovered how to out LibDem the LibDems....
What is helping my father is that he speak to the Pakistani heritage people in Urdu/Punjabi and tell them he's had the vaccine and so have I and so should they because there's no way he'd let his son have a dodgy/unsafe vaccine.
Beyond insane.
Symptoms are a factor, as previously you were far less likely to be tested if asymptomatic (Idid not say it didn't happen). At the moment, the entire secondary school cohort, along with the employees of tens of thousands of businesses, are being tested a couple of times a week.
That will make a big difference to the numbers of positive tests.
https://twitter.com/chrisgreybrexit/status/1371773600609484801?s=20
https://time.com/5947134/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine-stopped/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=health_covid-19&linkId=113558838
There risks coming a point at which truth outs, the voters see that very, very bad decisions were taken for (most likely) very, very bad reasons - and vote accordingly.
The heatmap is a much more interesting thing to share that isn't getting enough attention.