The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
...The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration....
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Even the Modeller of Doom admits this is nearly over.
Dan Bloom @danbloom1 NEW: Prof Neil Ferguson says we now "don’t see any prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed, with the one caveat around variants", in a third wave this summer/autumn
I thought Neil Ferguson had avoided the doom porn and for most of this year was saying once vaccination is complete we're pretty much done in the UK and would just have to live with flu-level outbreaks.
I'd assumed Ferguson was implicated by involvement (presumably?) in the Imperial model included in the SAGE forecasts. Wasn't the doomiest of doomy models, but well, those SAGE and ex-SAGE types are all in the conspiracy, aren't they?
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Thought you lived near Leon, Sean T and Lady G? That's at least 3...
Ethnically- and gender-diverse too. Proof that the Tories don't only appeal to white males.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
Possibly places where they already weigh the labour vote like london
And yet Khan is down. My money's on the Home Counties.
I agree. Starmer’s picking up votes in blue-remainia, isn’t he?
Labour could put in a surprisingly good performance in Chesham & Amersham.
I actually doubt your last point and wrt the Home counties not sure they would win much in a GE here - potential to make the Tory vote even more efficient.
Well indeed. Analogous to Tyne and Wear. Massive swings to the Tories all this century has left 12 out of 12 Labour seats much more efficiently won.
I do think my home town seat of Sunderland central could go blue for the first time since 1963!
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
Possibly places where they already weigh the labour vote like london
And yet Khan is down. My money's on the Home Counties.
I agree. Starmer’s picking up votes in blue-remainia, isn’t he?
Labour could put in a surprisingly good performance in Chesham & Amersham.
I actually doubt your last point and wrt the Home counties not sure they would win much in a GE here - potential to make the Tory vote even more efficient.
Tory seats like Wycombe, Watford, Hastings and Rye, Milton Keynes (both), Reading West, Southampton Itchen, Worthing East and Shoreham and Crawley are all in the Home Counties and the top 100 Labour target seats.
Though yes it is mainly the LDs who are the Tories opponents in the South East
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
We have very clearly hit herd immunity already.
Today's death figures are 4 as well. That's fewer than can die in a single car accident that wouldn't reach the news, it quite possibly also is entirely made up of people dying with Covid (or dying within 28 days of having had Covid) not dying from Covid.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
...The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration....
I never claimed it was accurate, merely that the apparent discrepancy is being used to fuel the (bogus) narrative of a 'stolen' election.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Hospital admissions are a week behind and haven't been updated in a few days. No mention of this on the site. Wondering what is happening. Maybe the numbers are too good/bad?
Hospital admissions have been a week behind/slow to update for some weeks or months now. No conspiracy there, I don't think!
I also think Ferguson at least and perhaps others HAVE updated their model, using new assumptions (i.e. reflecting real-world vaccine efficacy). I was amongst those bemoaning that they hadn't, but I think they now have. So we now have to target our ire at those further up the chain not budging.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
Yes, I agree, but I would hope 2 posts and done on the subject would be acceptable as far as indulgences go. I shall not say another word on the matter, to the pleasure of all, but expressing displeasure across 2 posts is hardly excessive by PB standards I dare say. Im not a robot, everybody has an off moment.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
The 154m Census number is based on those that definitively reported having voted, you forget the 36m that didn't respond.
As the Census bureau notes.
The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
Possibly places where they already weigh the labour vote like london
And yet Khan is down. My money's on the Home Counties.
I agree. Starmer’s picking up votes in blue-remainia, isn’t he?
Labour could put in a surprisingly good performance in Chesham & Amersham.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
Possibly places where they already weigh the labour vote like london
And yet Khan is down. My money's on the Home Counties.
I agree. Starmer’s picking up votes in blue-remainia, isn’t he?
Labour could put in a surprisingly good performance in Chesham & Amersham.
I actually doubt your last point and wrt the Home counties not sure they would win much in a GE here - potential to make the Tory vote even more efficient.
Well indeed. Analogous to Tyne and Wear. Massive swings to the Tories all this century has left 12 out of 12 Labour seats much more efficiently won.
I do think my home town seat of Sunderland central could go blue for the first time since 1963!
Well yes. There is a tipping point, where votes become more and more efficiently distributed. And then suddenly they aren't at all. Labour 2005 to 2010 springs to mind.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
...The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration....
I never claimed it was accurate, merely that the apparent discrepancy is being used to fuel the (bogus) narrative of a 'stolen' election.
As are the public pronouncements of many leading Republican politicians, most of whom must be aware that they are peddling lies. Which is of rather more concern.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Hospital admissions are a week behind and haven't been updated in a few days. No mention of this on the site. Wondering what is happening. Maybe the numbers are too good/bad?
Hospital admissions have been a week behind/slow to update for some weeks or months now. No conspiracy there, I don't think!
I also think Ferguson at least and perhaps others HAVE updated their model, using new assumptions (i.e. reflecting real-world vaccine efficacy). I was amongst those bemoaning that they hadn't, but I think they now have. So we now have to target our ire at those further up the chain not budging.
The hospital admissions data isn't generally updated on weekends and bank holidays...
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
PS - So many of us are waiting for you to provide that link about the census. It really has huge betting implications.
As a byelection Batley and Spen is far harder to call. The Brexit vote was minimal as it went to the Heavy Woollen District Independents party and there really isn't the "see what you missing out on" issue that Hartlepool had.
However, were SKS to lose that byelection there would be problems as that really should be a Labour seat...
It is a seat I kinda know well through friends.
The big difference between Batley & Spen is that the Heavy Woollen Independents aren't analogous to the Brexit Party in Hartlepool.
This lot think Farage is a woke liberal, and the BNP used to be quite active here as well.
There's also a residual sympathy vote for Labour here as well, whether that lasts at the by election is another factor.
At least one member of the far right certainly was depressingly active.
There hasn't been a single poll of Greater Manchester I notice. Burnham has out performed the Labour Party there before.
Were any of the mayoral elections not forgone conclusions?
Well Tees, West of England and West Midlands seemed up in the air on the basis of the results last time not needing much change to be competitive this time, but from the looks of it at least 2 of those are actually certs. Street and Houchen have been name dropped here, but West of England's chap not so much.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Even the Modeller of Doom admits this is nearly over.
Dan Bloom @danbloom1 NEW: Prof Neil Ferguson says we now "don’t see any prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed, with the one caveat around variants", in a third wave this summer/autumn
I thought Neil Ferguson had avoided the doom porn and for most of this year was saying once vaccination is complete we're pretty much done in the UK and would just have to live with flu-level outbreaks.
Got a lot of respect for Neil Ferguson. His ‘500,000 deaths’ quote - which received much derision on here - turned out to be bang on: as a reasonable worst case scenario for UK Covid with no mitigation
He then got death threats for a year. Now he’s willing to dial down the doom
Contrast with the flailing figure of Jonathan ‘masks are dangerous because my friend in China says so’ Van Tam
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
PS - So many of us are waiting for you to provide that link about the census. It really has huge betting implications.
As a byelection Batley and Spen is far harder to call. The Brexit vote was minimal as it went to the Heavy Woollen District Independents party and there really isn't the "see what you missing out on" issue that Hartlepool had.
However, were SKS to lose that byelection there would be problems as that really should be a Labour seat...
It is a seat I kinda know well through friends.
The big difference between Batley & Spen is that the Heavy Woollen Independents aren't analogous to the Brexit Party in Hartlepool.
This lot think Farage is a woke liberal, and the BNP used to be quite active here as well.
There's also a residual sympathy vote for Labour here as well, whether that lasts at the by election is another factor.
At least one member of the far right certainly was depressingly active.
Looked at these guys' Social profile back in March, looks like the group FB and Twitter had gone pretty quiet during COVID, and their councillor was ploughing a bit of a lone furrow in Dewsbury East (weaving a rough homemade rug?) doing traditional councillor things like staring at potholes (OK, perhaps he had been ploughing a furrow after all). Looks like this year's ward candidate now has the page for pictures of him standing on streets campaigning.
An announced candidate for last year's elections in Dewsbury West was also flagged, but though she later turned up in the Yorkshire Post for a lot of community work during COVID, her Heavy Woollen affiliation was no longer mentioned there.
I am left wondering whether they have been somewhat diminished as a local political force. Let's see on Thursday.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
The 154m Census number is based on those that definitively reported having voted, you forget the 36m that didn't respond.
As the Census bureau notes.
The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration.
So much for the immense betting implications then.
With respect I did not make any claims about the veracity of the document, merely that the apparent discrepancy is being used by figures on the right to keep the 'stolen' election narrative going.
I know you and almost everybody on here would not like to face up to the fact that more than 70% of republican voters still don't think Biden got enough legit votes to win. But its true, they don't. And stuff like this is used to keep that notion going.
"'Far more likely' coronavirus came from lab, ex-MI6 chief tells LBC
Sir Richard Dearlove said aspects of the virus "point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored" though he warned this may never be proven.
The former "C" of the Secret Intelligence Service – equivalent to "M" in James Bond – also told LBC's Tom Swarbrick that more information on the coronavirus' origin will soon come out."
Talking absolute shite, IMO. (It's not impossible that the virus escaped from a lab, but the stuff about the spike being 'mucked about with' is just rubbish.)
Of course it came from the lab.
Was it mucked about with? My guess is no, but this New York article plausibly says Yes
Undo some of the 2019 losses that are now marginals and then pickup seats in the south. The analysis I posted this morning suggested they could pickup 26 on a good night.
They need a swing of around 5% to get their 50th target seat, which would be progress going into 2029.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Thought you lived near Leon, Sean T and Lady G? That's at least 3. There may be many more...
- Good point. But I tend to ignore "them" (for all sorts of reasons).
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Totally agree, and I see Neil Ferguson now thinks the NHS won't be overwhelmed. TBH the way cases are down and vaccines are up, I don't really expect a third wave in any meaningful sense (hospital/death). While I am chaffing for the next restrictions to be lifted, and think they should have been already, its only another 13 days. I will be seriously pissed off if mask wearing stays after June though.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
I didn't know there had been a vacancy for site policeman, David?
Given the tiny number of deaths now it must be quite possible that some if not all of these so-called Coronavirus deaths are naturally occurring deaths of people who by pure coincidence tested positive within last 28 days?
That wasn't true all pandemic, though its certainly been a factor which is why the real death toll is tens of thousands fewer than the 'official' one. But it must surely be a real factor now?
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
PS - So many of us are waiting for you to provide that link about the census. It really has huge betting implications.
As a byelection Batley and Spen is far harder to call. The Brexit vote was minimal as it went to the Heavy Woollen District Independents party and there really isn't the "see what you missing out on" issue that Hartlepool had.
However, were SKS to lose that byelection there would be problems as that really should be a Labour seat...
It is a seat I kinda know well through friends.
The big difference between Batley & Spen is that the Heavy Woollen Independents aren't analogous to the Brexit Party in Hartlepool.
This lot think Farage is a woke liberal, and the BNP used to be quite active here as well.
There's also a residual sympathy vote for Labour here as well, whether that lasts at the by election is another factor.
At least one member of the far right certainly was depressingly active.
Looked at these guys' Social profile back in March, looks like the group FB and Twitter had gone pretty quiet during COVID, and their councillor was ploughing a bit of a lone furrow in Dewsbury East (weaving a rough homemade rug?) doing traditional councillor things like staring at potholes (OK, perhaps he had been ploughing a furrow after all). Looks like this year's ward candidate now has the page for pictures of him standing on streets campaigning.
An announced candidate for last year's elections in Dewsbury West was also flagged, but though she later turned up in the Yorkshire Post for a lot of community work during COVID, her Heavy Woollen affiliation was no longer mentioned there.
I am left wondering whether they have been somewhat diminished as a local political force. Let's see on Thursday.
And the initial answer is - they are standing only in the ward they hold (one candidate for one seat), and the Dewsbury West lass is now standing purely as an Independent, not as a Heavy Woollen.
Got to wonder if this is a grouping still capable of 15% in a by-election?
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Are there really seats where the Tory vote is zero? Even in seats like East Ham they manage ~15%.
No, not yet. I think we can have a crack at it round here though. Can you imagine if we pulled it off at the next GE? Talk about your badge of honour! - and a great boost for house prices as people in more "diverse" areas hear about it and want a piece.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
...The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration....
I never claimed it was accurate, merely that the apparent discrepancy is being used to fuel the (bogus) narrative of a 'stolen' election.
Yes, but note that 99.46% of the argument behind the "Biden stole the election from Trump" argument is based on similar misunderstanding (too often willful) of the basic numbers.
Unholy alliance of statistical ignorance and political ideology. Which is NOT confined to Trumpsky & minions. But they are leading poster children for this nexus at the moment.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
I didn't know there had been a vacancy for site policeman, David?
What made you think that it would be advertised @TOPPING ? Its disappointing when an interesting debate falls away into personal abuse. Anyway @kle4 , who is normally very civilised, took it in the right spirit.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
I didn't know there had been a vacancy for site policeman, David?
What made you think that it would be advertised @TOPPING ? Its disappointing when an interesting debate falls away into personal abuse. Anyway @kle4 , who is normally very civilised, took it in the right spirit.
I wanted to know what the perks were.
And yes wrt @kle4: "no you fuck off" was about the right spirit.
But it would be a huge shame if @TheJezziah were to be inhibited in his posting.
So the scores on the doors for SKS are likely to be:
Overall council seats, a bit of a wash, not much change either way. Hartlepool a loss. London a clear win, probably not on the first count. Scotland small progress Wales small retreat, not nearly as bad as it looked a month ago West Midlands Mayor, a bit of a thumping. Teeside Mayor probably a loss. Greater Manchester Mayor, a clear win.
It's not a great scorecard, is it? More of a C- than a C+ I would say.
Looks more like a D- to me, and if so SKS can join Peppermint Patty in Peanuts who always gets one as well. I see the bookies are suggesting a likelihood that SKS will step down during or before 2023 - which has a double pronged likelihood - he may step down by then because he is onto a loser, or (IMHO) he could well have lost or failed to win an election by the end of 2023 - with 2022 not impossible.
However I don't think Hartlepool is lost for Labour yet
There hasn't been a single poll of Greater Manchester I notice. Burnham has out performed the Labour Party there before.
Were any of the mayoral elections not forgone conclusions?
Well Tees, West of England and West Midlands seemed up in the air on the basis of the results last time not needing much change to be competitive this time, but from the looks of it at least 2 of those are actually certs. Street and Houchen have been name dropped here, but West of England's chap not so much.
I think he's a newcomer. Previous West of England Tory Mayor is stepping down and didnt seem to have much of a profile.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
I didn't know there had been a vacancy for site policeman, David?
What made you think that it would be advertised @TOPPING ? Its disappointing when an interesting debate falls away into personal abuse. Anyway @kle4 , who is normally very civilised, took it in the right spirit.
I wanted to know what the perks were.
And yes wrt @kle4: "no you fuck off" was about the right spirit.
But it would be a huge shame if @TheJezziah were to be inhibited in his posting.
They're fantastic. You get to post any time you want, for free. And I agree.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Hospital admissions are a week behind and haven't been updated in a few days. No mention of this on the site. Wondering what is happening. Maybe the numbers are too good/bad?
Hospital admissions have been a week behind/slow to update for some weeks or months now. No conspiracy there, I don't think!
I also think Ferguson at least and perhaps others HAVE updated their model, using new assumptions (i.e. reflecting real-world vaccine efficacy). I was amongst those bemoaning that they hadn't, but I think they now have. So we now have to target our ire at those further up the chain not budging.
The hospital admissions data isn't generally updated on weekends and bank holidays...
There really is hardly anyone in hospital with Covid
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
I didn't know there had been a vacancy for site policeman, David?
What made you think that it would be advertised @TOPPING ? Its disappointing when an interesting debate falls away into personal abuse. Anyway kle4 , who is normally very civilised, took it in the right spirit.
I wanted to know what the perks were.
And yes wrt kle4: "no you fuck off" was about the right spirit.
But it would be a huge shame if TheJezziah were to be inhibited in his posting.
Actual last word, I hugely welcome Jezziah's viewpoints, as it's relatively rare here and needs to be heard, for better and ill.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Even the Modeller of Doom admits this is nearly over.
Dan Bloom @danbloom1 NEW: Prof Neil Ferguson says we now "don’t see any prospect of the NHS being overwhelmed, with the one caveat around variants", in a third wave this summer/autumn
It wasn't Ferguson who was banging on about a "third wave with more hospitalisations than the second" but it's a start. All of these scientists and their dodgy models need to have a very bright light shone on them
Well, we've had this debate before, but the groups that contributed provided different modelled sceanrios based on different assumptions of vaccine efficacy in protection and protection against onwards transmission. You seem to only focus on the most pessimistic; the modelled scenarios included things that were far, far away from 'doom'.
Now, you'll say the pessimistic assumptions were too pessimistic (I agree) and that even the most optimistic were too pessimistic (I agree again) but the models will have been put togther with the well established facts available at the time. Still too pessimistic, quite possibly, but anything beyond that is too specultive and potentially irrepsonsible - "based on flimsy evidence, we confidently say there's no chance of further problems", that is misleading the politicians making the decisions.
I was involved in a report for the NHS last year looking at a (non-infectious) condition and predicting future numbers for service planning. There seem to be some changes in incidence, but the big driver of changes in prevalence (which has increased over 50% in a decade) is increased survival times. We modelled a range of scenarios based on different impacts from new treatments extending survival further. But we also modelled a scenario in which there is no increase in incidence or survival, but changes only based on population growth and changing demographics. That showed a 10% predicted increase in the next ten years. Now, that final prediction of 10% is complete nonsense. The assumptions are demonstably false. But the commissioners found it useful as it was the one thing we could say with certainty: in ten years time you'll need, at an absolute and unrealistic minimum, a 10% increase in care capacity. The money will be allocated now, training given and the service built up. Further increases will depend on future developments in treatment and survival. But that 10% estimate, complete nonsense as it is, is useful. Without it, we'd have a range of possibilities with great uncertainties (impacts of treatments not yet even conceived) and not be able to give a hard limit on numbers at either end.
The SAGE models do the same. The worst cases are nonsense - we can say that now and could pretty much say that when they were published. But it told the policy makers and civil servants useful things. Absolute worst is similar to January. The NHS coped in January in the middle of winter. So that nonsense forecase said we would cope in any third wave. We didn't need to build Nightingale hospitals or panic buy ventilators. Importantly, we could unlock as planned and not crash the NHS, if the politicians were able to take a (very) low risk of a wave rivalling January. The roadmap did not change, so I guess we can conclude that they could (and I'm pretty sure the scientists will ithave made it clear to them what the more likely scenarios were).
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
...The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration....
I never claimed it was accurate, merely that the apparent discrepancy is being used to fuel the (bogus) narrative of a 'stolen' election.
Yes, but note that 99.46% of the argument behind the "Biden stole the election from Trump" argument is based on similar misunderstanding (too often willful) of the basic numbers.
Unholy alliance of statistical ignorance and political ideology. Which is NOT confined to Trumpsky & minions. But they are leading poster children for this nexus at the moment.
Indeed but it is effective and helps explain (amongst other things) the result of the Texas special election and why Romney got so badly treated at his own convention. And why leading republicans such as Liz Cheney are finding life difficult. And why the republicans are horribly divided.
So the scores on the doors for SKS are likely to be:
Overall council seats, a bit of a wash, not much change either way. Hartlepool a loss. London a clear win, probably not on the first count. Scotland small progress Wales small retreat, not nearly as bad as it looked a month ago West Midlands Mayor, a bit of a thumping. Teeside Mayor probably a loss. Greater Manchester Mayor, a clear win.
It's not a great scorecard, is it? More of a C- than a C+ I would say.
Looks more like a D- to me, and if so SKS can join Peppermint Patty in Peanuts who always gets one as well. I see the bookies are suggesting a likelihood that SKS will step down during or before 2023 - which has a double pronged likelihood - he may step down by then because he is onto a loser, or (IMHO) he could well have lost or failed to win an election by the end of 2023 - with 2022 not impossible.
However I don't think Hartlepool is lost for Labour yet
So the scores on the doors for SKS are likely to be:
Overall council seats, a bit of a wash, not much change either way. Hartlepool a loss. London a clear win, probably not on the first count. Scotland small progress Wales small retreat, not nearly as bad as it looked a month ago West Midlands Mayor, a bit of a thumping. Teeside Mayor probably a loss. Greater Manchester Mayor, a clear win.
It's not a great scorecard, is it? More of a C- than a C+ I would say.
If there's no Scotland progress I would be saying more a solid D. IDS was dumped for a much much better performance than this.
I had thought that Sarwar just might deliver second place behind the SNP. That is not what the polling is showing now though.
If you look at the leader ratings Sarwar is in for a good night, DRoss not so much, but Alex Salmond and Alba will be lucky to get one seat.
I think that they will get 2, 1 in the NE and 1 in Highland. An embarrassingly poor performance for the former FM.
The other thing to bear in mind is that Scottish Tories are used to having really crap leaders. Until Ruth came along it was the norm. Didn't stop them voting.
Speaking as a disgruntled Joanna Cherry supporter, don't write off their chances in Lothian - especially with carpetbagger Campbell at the top of the regional list. I know it's a Green stronghold, but in the absence of Andy Wightman there may be a route through, especially if the Edinburgh Central/West/South tactical voting from 2016 is repeated.
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
The 154m Census number is based on those that definitively reported having voted, you forget the 36m that didn't respond.
As the Census bureau notes.
The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration.
.... I know you and almost everybody on here would not like to face up to the fact that more than 70% of republican voters still don't think Biden got enough legit votes to win. But its true, they don't. And stuff like this is used to keep that notion going.
On the contrary, we're quite happy to discuss it. However, we would like you to face up to the fact that (1) registered Republicans constitute only a third of the electorate, so you're only talking about one in five voters, and (2) the main reason they persist in that belief is that their leaders persist in lying about the election.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Are there really seats where the Tory vote is zero? Even in seats like East Ham they manage ~15%.
No, not yet. I think we can have a crack at it round here though. Can you imagine if we pulled it off at the next GE? Talk about your badge of honour! - and a great boost for house prices as people in more "diverse" areas hear about it and want a piece.
Tories get 10% of the vote in Labour's safest seat (Walton) and Labour get 13% in the Tory's safest (S Holland). Nowhere near extinction time yet.
The JCVI have gone very quiet on whether they’re going to put more restrictions on AZ related to under 40s .
They were supposed to make a decision last week . Are they waiting for after the elections on Thursday ? Have no 10 pressurized them into waiting ? Seems rather strange that some under 40s are being asked to make appointments and there’s still no decision from the JCVI.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Hospital admissions are a week behind and haven't been updated in a few days. No mention of this on the site. Wondering what is happening. Maybe the numbers are too good/bad?
To know what is really going on, we wouldn't need to see the differential between the unvaccinated and vaccinated.
This data is not being published by PHE - so we wait fro the next study that is being done within the NHS....
My guesstimate is that we now have 2 epidemics - the one among the vaccinated, which is low level, pretty much no deaths and hospitalisations and another among the unvaccinated, which is bumping along, hence hospital admission still being a thing -
The reason it is 2 epidemics, is that (as far as we know), the vaccinations reduce transmission, but not as much as they reduce death and hospitalisation. So, for the very near future, we are going to see COVID circulating - we almost certainly haven't reached the stage where R is below 1 without any measures. Yet.
In 2014 a couple of days before the Heywood and Middleton by election a Ashcroft poll had Labour winning it by 19%, the actual result a 2% majority for Labour.
Speaking of COVID, found out yesterday that my apartment manger contracted it last October. Was very sick but recovered; she's maybe 40 and (it appears) in good health otherwise.
She doesn't know how or where she got it. But her job consists of managing several apartment buildings, she's always going in and out of apartments, dealing with tenants and other workers, schlepping around town all the time.
Thus are greater risk that say yours truly, who works (sporadically) at home and has mostly stayed in except for grocery shopping and solitary walks.
She's been vaccinated now, just one jab cause she'd already had the crud. Said her reaction was more than ordinary - "my immune system went a little crazy" - but she soon felt fine and now looks fit as a fiddle. Though of course long-term there could well be consequences, hopefully not serious.
Hearing about this yesterday made me both sad and mad. Sad at the situation, mad at the "leaders" who made a bad situation worse.
In 2014 a couple of days before the Heywood and Middleton by election a Ashcroft poll had Labour winning it by 19%, the actual result a 2% majority for Labour.
#ConstituencyPollingIsDifficult
I've backed Lab at 5s (6bf).
Why? No idea apart from if we Brits are as bloody-minded as we are supposed to be it will be a matter of honour to give the incumbents a shock in case anyone is being taken for granted.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Are there really seats where the Tory vote is zero? Even in seats like East Ham they manage ~15%.
No, not yet. I think we can have a crack at it round here though. Can you imagine if we pulled it off at the next GE? Talk about your badge of honour! - and a great boost for house prices as people in more "diverse" areas hear about it and want a piece.
Tories get 10% of the vote in Labour's safest seat (Walton) and Labour get 13% in the Tory's safest (S Holland). Nowhere near extinction time yet.
True. But there's 3 years to go till the GE and with the contempt that this government has for educated, left/liberal metropolitans I think "Zero Tory" is a feasible stretch goal for London NW3.
In 2014 a couple of days before the Heywood and Middleton by election a Ashcroft poll had Labour winning it by 19%, the actual result a 2% majority for Labour.
#ConstituencyPollingIsDifficult
A seat that the conservatives came third in at the byelection behind UKIP on 12% of the vote... A seat the Cons won in 2019. #ukipgatewayvote
So the scores on the doors for SKS are likely to be:
Overall council seats, a bit of a wash, not much change either way. Hartlepool a loss. London a clear win, probably not on the first count. Scotland small progress Wales small retreat, not nearly as bad as it looked a month ago West Midlands Mayor, a bit of a thumping. Teeside Mayor probably a loss. Greater Manchester Mayor, a clear win.
It's not a great scorecard, is it? More of a C- than a C+ I would say.
If there's no Scotland progress I would be saying more a solid D. IDS was dumped for a much much better performance than this.
I had thought that Sarwar just might deliver second place behind the SNP. That is not what the polling is showing now though.
If you look at the leader ratings Sarwar is in for a good night, DRoss not so much, but Alex Salmond and Alba will be lucky to get one seat.
I think that they will get 2, 1 in the NE and 1 in Highland. An embarrassingly poor performance for the former FM.
The other thing to bear in mind is that Scottish Tories are used to having really crap leaders. Until Ruth came along it was the norm. Didn't stop them voting.
Speaking as a disgruntled Joanna Cherry supporter, don't write off their chances in Lothian - especially with carpetbagger Campbell at the top of the regional list. I know it's a Green stronghold, but in the absence of Andy Wightman there may be a route through, especially if the Edinburgh Central/West/South tactical voting from 2016 is repeated.
It's hard to predict but I don't think that there is any chance of the SNP getting a single list MSP in Lothian. They didn't last time and Edinburgh Central is a probable pick up for them. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Green vote without Wightman. Some of it may well go to Alba.
Given the tiny number of deaths now it must be quite possible that some if not all of these so-called Coronavirus deaths are naturally occurring deaths of people who by pure coincidence tested positive within last 28 days?
That wasn't true all pandemic, though its certainly been a factor which is why the real death toll is tens of thousands fewer than the 'official' one. But it must surely be a real factor now?
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
Possibly places where they already weigh the labour vote like london
And yet Khan is down. My money's on the Home Counties.
I agree. Starmer’s picking up votes in blue-remainia, isn’t he?
Labour could put in a surprisingly good performance in Chesham & Amersham.
I actually doubt your last point and wrt the Home counties not sure they would win much in a GE here - potential to make the Tory vote even more efficient.
Well indeed. Analogous to Tyne and Wear. Massive swings to the Tories all this century has left 12 out of 12 Labour seats much more efficiently won.
I do think my home town seat of Sunderland central could go blue for the first time since 1963!
I'm not convinced. Sunderland Central is a university seat after all and is being gentrified, albeit slowly (believe it or not). It also contains the more middle class metropolitan liberal elite parts of Sunderland.
Plus Sunderland/Tyne and Wear generally hasn't exactly been given a ton of Tory red meat to chew on like Teesside.
The council elections on Thursday should be informative.
In 2014 a couple of days before the Heywood and Middleton by election a Ashcroft poll had Labour winning it by 19%, the actual result a 2% majority for Labour.
#ConstituencyPollingIsDifficult
I've backed Lab at 5s (6bf).
Why? No idea apart from if we Brits are as bloody-minded as we are supposed to be it will be a matter of honour to give the incumbents a shock in case anyone is being taken for granted.
Labour are definitely value now. Without the Mayoral vote this would be a toss up IMO. It'll almost certainly be a lot closer than the Survation poll but with so many postal votes in already you can see why Boris would be confident.
The JCVI have gone very quiet on whether they’re going to put more restrictions on AZ related to under 40s .
They were supposed to make a decision last week . Are they waiting for after the elections on Thursday ? Have no 10 pressurized them into waiting ? Seems rather strange that some under 40s are being asked to make appointments and there’s still no decision from the JCVI.
Meanwhile the AZ vaccine is being used for under 40 rollout which has already begun. That's the one I was given on Saturday morning.
I was tracking West Yorkshire hospital COVID admissions (across the 5 major Acute trusts that, approximately, cover the area) just to see if any local holdback was needed:
w/e 11/4 - 121 w/e 18/4 - 80 w/e 25/4 - 65
If this is reflected across the higher incidence areas, at current I'd say May 17th release is on, in full.
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Hospital admissions are a week behind and haven't been updated in a few days. No mention of this on the site. Wondering what is happening. Maybe the numbers are too good/bad?
Hospital admissions have been a week behind/slow to update for some weeks or months now. No conspiracy there, I don't think!
I also think Ferguson at least and perhaps others HAVE updated their model, using new assumptions (i.e. reflecting real-world vaccine efficacy). I was amongst those bemoaning that they hadn't, but I think they now have. So we now have to target our ire at those further up the chain not budging.
And to be fair, a lot of what's happened is that the vaccines have turned out to be even more effective than we could reasonably have hoped. Go boffins.
Challenge now is to go from 1 billion doses to 16 billion.
(And I think nudging the mid-May unlocking may well be more trouble than it's worth, though it's definitely worth looking at the June one again. After all, the Macron plan for France is to get rid of a lot of restrictions at the end of June. And whilst I am fairly confident that the vaccination lag between UK and EU will close up a fair bit in late May and June, reopening that soon will also need a degree of confidence where the UK has been cautious.)
The Speccie points out that Starmer might have to fight another nightmare seat after Thursday. Tracy Brabin will apparently step down as Batley and Spen MP if she triumphs in the West Yorkshire Mayoralty, according to the Speccie.
The 154m Census number is based on those that definitively reported having voted, you forget the 36m that didn't respond.
As the Census bureau notes.
The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration.
.... I know you and almost everybody on here would not like to face up to the fact that more than 70% of republican voters still don't think Biden got enough legit votes to win. But its true, they don't. And stuff like this is used to keep that notion going.
On the contrary, we're quite happy to discuss it. However, we would like you to face up to the fact that (1) registered Republicans constitute only a third of the electorate, so you're only talking about one in five voters, and (2) the main reason they persist in that belief is that their leaders persist in lying about the election.
Caveat - "Republican voters" are WAY more than "registered Republicans" for several reasons, for example states such as my own beloved WA that do NOT have party registration.
The Republican voters Contrarian is referring to, are folks who voted for Republican President & nominee Trumpsky. Of which 70% equates to approx. one in three voters.
Given the tiny number of deaths now it must be quite possible that some if not all of these so-called Coronavirus deaths are naturally occurring deaths of people who by pure coincidence tested positive within last 28 days?
That wasn't true all pandemic, though its certainly been a factor which is why the real death toll is tens of thousands fewer than the 'official' one. But it must surely be a real factor now?
Yes but on the other hand many will have died of Covid outside of 28 days which will not be in figures. I've kind of accepted that one balances the other.
Only 4 today - on a murder Tuesday. (Unless bank holiday moves that back to Wednesday?)
Cases now dropping like a stone WoW, deaths almost down to zero. Yet here we are sitting in the cold drinking beer while the nice warm pubs are still closed off.
The scientists have made doom porn modelling an art form. I'm still waiting for those idiots who said we'd have a third wave worse than the second wave to retract their idiot model. Their agenda is laughably transparent and it's time for them to be forced into printing retractions.
Hospital admissions are a week behind and haven't been updated in a few days. No mention of this on the site. Wondering what is happening. Maybe the numbers are too good/bad?
To know what is really going on, we wouldn't need to see the differential between the unvaccinated and vaccinated.
This data is not being published by PHE - so we wait fro the next study that is being done within the NHS....
My guesstimate is that we now have 2 epidemics - the one among the vaccinated, which is low level, pretty much no deaths and hospitalisations and another among the unvaccinated, which is bumping along, hence hospital admission still being a thing -
The reason it is 2 epidemics, is that (as far as we know), the vaccinations reduce transmission, but not as much as they reduce death and hospitalisation. So, for the very near future, we are going to see COVID circulating - we almost certainly haven't reached the stage where R is below 1 without any measures. Yet.
And yet the ONS survey last week showed a 40% reduction in cases in the community.
I see no evidence R would be meaningfully above 1 now.
Given the tiny number of deaths now it must be quite possible that some if not all of these so-called Coronavirus deaths are naturally occurring deaths of people who by pure coincidence tested positive within last 28 days?
That wasn't true all pandemic, though its certainly been a factor which is why the real death toll is tens of thousands fewer than the 'official' one. But it must surely be a real factor now?
+1
The hospital admissions and deaths are consistent with each other
The real question is the ratios of unvaccinated vs first shot (+21 days) vs both shots (+21 days)
In 2014 a couple of days before the Heywood and Middleton by election a Ashcroft poll had Labour winning it by 19%, the actual result a 2% majority for Labour.
#ConstituencyPollingIsDifficult
I've backed Lab at 5s (6bf).
Why? No idea apart from if we Brits are as bloody-minded as we are supposed to be it will be a matter of honour to give the incumbents a shock in case anyone is being taken for granted.
Labour are definitely value now. Without the Mayoral vote this would be a toss up IMO. It'll almost certainly be a lot closer than the Survation poll but with so many postal votes in already you can see why Boris would be confident.
I'll bite at 10 on betfair. Will bump £50 on it...
If you’re an MP for La République en Marche, a flag in the background isn’t sufficient.
It's a weird picture of Macron. Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough is the posture.
And why is it on an easel ? Has he just finished a painting-by-numbers Macron ?
Very odd.
Reminds me of Margritte's The Human Condition. Can we be sure it is a painting and not actually Macron hiding (partially) behind an easel? He's short, right? Add a bit of perspective...
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
Possibly places where they already weigh the labour vote like london
And yet Khan is down. My money's on the Home Counties.
I agree. Starmer’s picking up votes in blue-remainia, isn’t he?
Labour could put in a surprisingly good performance in Chesham & Amersham.
I actually doubt your last point and wrt the Home counties not sure they would win much in a GE here - potential to make the Tory vote even more efficient.
Well indeed. Analogous to Tyne and Wear. Massive swings to the Tories all this century has left 12 out of 12 Labour seats much more efficiently won.
I do think my home town seat of Sunderland central could go blue for the first time since 1963!
I'm not convinced. Sunderland Central is a university seat after all and is being gentrified, albeit slowly (believe it or not). It also contains the more middle class metropolitan liberal elite parts of Sunderland.
Plus Sunderland/Tyne and Wear generally hasn't exactly been given a ton of Tory red meat to chew on like Teesside.
The council elections on Thursday should be informative.
I have lived in Pennywell, was like a series of scenes off Shameless.
Explain the logic of Labour losing in the groups most opposed to racism (young and minorities)
If the centrists and right wing fairly tale about Corbyn being racist and Starmer being anti racist were true the opposite would happen.
Starmer seems most popular (comparatively to Corbyn) among groups most in favour of racism (older white people) the same groups were Corbyn is least popular.
I know this might be hard to hear but is it possible it is you that is wrong rather than the children Mr Skinner?
The better starting point is not to be racist because its wrong. Too many of your fellow Corbynite activists - and Corbyn himself - cannot pass this test due to being usually passive but sometimes active anti-semites.
Once you've got this "believing in something cos its right" thing down, the next barrier is not ramming your standards down other people's throats. You may be right and the other person wrong, but sneering / shouting won't change their view in your direction. Quite the opposite in fact.
Finally, don't be a screaming hypocrite. Diane Abbott was on the receiving end of some horrendous racist abuse. She was also on the end of a lot of abuse because she is a shit politician that was willfully miscategorised as racist. At the same time Luciana Berger was also on the end of some horrendous racist abuse - with much of it coming from Labour members who then insisted it wasn't racist.
Diane Abbott is an interesting one to compare with Israel.
If you're attacking Abbott/Israel alone then that seems to be racism.
If you're attacking Abbott along with Rebecca Wrong Daily, Laura Pillock, the Jezziah and the rest of them - then that's not racist.
Wrong-Daily is white. Pillock is white. Berger is BAME. Abbott is BAME. My point was that in large parts of Labour there is a hierarchy of racism where as Baddiel puts it so neatly: Jews Don't Count.
The party promoted Anas Sarwar as the first BAME leader of a political party. Scottish Labour isn't a political party, but Sarwar isn't even the first BAME Labour leader - Ed Milliband doesn't count apparently.
Because to recognise millibrand as bame they wouldn't be able to claim that even for him as Disraeli would be the first Bame leader of a political party and incidentally prime minister
Exactly. I stopped with Ed M and didn't mention Howard or the others because they weren't Labour.
This is the Labour Party. Who claims to be anti-racist. And who still has a massive bind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.
I would say "still" is unfair, given that the start of the problem can be dated precisely to September 2015.
Anyway, using hatred of Starmer by Corbynista fanboys as a crude proxy for whether he's addressing the issue, ten minutes of scanning this forum today has made me quite optimistic.
Weird given people kept going back before that time (whether they were looking for left wing or centrist anti semitism)
I guess all the anti semitism people used as a weapon against Corbyn (or centrists) that appeared before that date was part of Corbyn's evil racist plan were he went back in time and planted racist comments that seem as if they existed before Corbyn won the leadership but clever older white men with large bank accounts saw through this...
Young people and minorities haven't got this kind of magic perception which is why they can't see that Corbyn is secretly a time travelling racist.
Please don't tar young people with your brush, most are sane and a great number of them also saw through corbyn and didnt vote for him 71% in fact
Without young people Corbyn was buried, the old voted against him the young voted for him.
Vast numbers of people as always didn't vote but there is a reason Labour did better among the young.
Corbyn is the first political leader the younger generation has had.
First?
What about Ed Miliband? Nick Clegg? Tony Blair?
Every "younger generation" has always had a leader or leaders politically. The only way to define Corbyn as the first is simply by wiping out any that come before him, in which case Starmer or A N Other could be a first next time.
I've never understood why I'm supposed to think someone is greater because they had more of the young vote, as though its morally worth more.
I criticise the grey vote bribes we get and the age polarisation of recent times is a worry, but we overdo the 'please think of the children(and young people)' stuff - same reason people love youthful campaigners.
I'll never understand people criticising something without reading it, what is the point?
I was on about younger people being less racist and them being the ones who voted for Corbyn (in relatively greater numbers)
Was it really too difficult for you to go back and read the context in which is was used?
Or are my posts just useful staging posts for you to have a self righteous whine without actually reading them?
In future please read the context in which I am saying something or don't talk about my posts. Nothing worse than someone being self righteous when they don't even know what they are talking about.
You need to calm the f*ck down, take your own advice and read what I wrote.
Your post and the one which followed it led me to reflect on a tangential point of my own. It was not a criticism of you or your post and did not say as much.
Why should not one person's thoughts serve as staging for another, separate point by another? I welcomed the discussion and it led me to think about something related but different.
So f*ck you. Amazing how you just personified the very point you wanted to criticise about self righteousness.
Not everything is about you. Nor do you own a discussion or a reply to a post which was not even yours. Just because it was in a thread with yours didn't make it a criticism of you.
So vain.
Oh, and TheJezziah, that's a criticism of you btw. Since you just invented one in your imagination to whinge about clearly you need help to identify an actual criticism of you.
I would respectfully suggest you take some of your own advice and calm down. There's no need for this.
I didn't know there had been a vacancy for site policeman, David?
Oh no - not a PCC election here on PB. How do I spoil my ballot?
The JCVI have gone very quiet on whether they’re going to put more restrictions on AZ related to under 40s .
They were supposed to make a decision last week . Are they waiting for after the elections on Thursday ? Have no 10 pressurized them into waiting ? Seems rather strange that some under 40s are being asked to make appointments and there’s still no decision from the JCVI.
Meanwhile the AZ vaccine is being used for under 40 rollout which has already begun. That's the one I was given on Saturday morning.
Well maybe the JCVI won’t bother making a decision but they seemed adamant that they had to clarify the situation before the general under 40s role out begins .
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Are there really seats where the Tory vote is zero? Even in seats like East Ham they manage ~15%.
No, not yet. I think we can have a crack at it round here though. Can you imagine if we pulled it off at the next GE? Talk about your badge of honour! - and a great boost for house prices as people in more "diverse" areas hear about it and want a piece.
Tories get 10% of the vote in Labour's safest seat (Walton) and Labour get 13% in the Tory's safest (S Holland). Nowhere near extinction time yet.
True. But there's 3 years to go till the GE and with the contempt that this government has for educated, left/liberal metropolitans I think "Zero Tory" is a feasible stretch goal for London NW3.
The contempt is nowhere near as high as it needs to be. The swamp needs to be drained, but it seems highly unlikely .
If you’re an MP for La République en Marche, a flag in the background isn’t sufficient.
It's a weird picture of Macron. Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough is the posture.
And why is it on an easel ? Has he just finished a painting-by-numbers Macron ?
Very odd.
Reminds me of Margritte's The Human Condition. Can we be sure it is a painting and not actually Macron hiding (partially) behind an easel? He's short, right? Add a bit of perspective...
Lets just think about this - 10 years plus into a tory government - after austerity, covid cock ups and recent revelations - but Labour look set to lose Hartlepool in a by-election........
Labour need to change - but not in a way Jezziah would want.
Assuming the polls are true - and labour is losing significant votes in Hartlepool, doing pretty badly in the West Midlands, but ~level pegging overall, WHERE are they piling up votes?
I don’t get it.
Has anyone dug into the subsamples?
I don't think the Tories have a single voter left around my way. So that's part of it. Hopefully just a small part, though, since such a swap would be electorally inefficient for Labour.
Are there really seats where the Tory vote is zero? Even in seats like East Ham they manage ~15%.
No, not yet. I think we can have a crack at it round here though. Can you imagine if we pulled it off at the next GE? Talk about your badge of honour! - and a great boost for house prices as people in more "diverse" areas hear about it and want a piece.
Tories get 10% of the vote in Labour's safest seat (Walton) and Labour get 13% in the Tory's safest (S Holland). Nowhere near extinction time yet.
True. But there's 3 years to go till the GE and with the contempt that this government has for educated, left/liberal metropolitans I think "Zero Tory" is a feasible stretch goal for London NW3.
I think the bantz of being the only Tory in NW3 would be too strong to resist so you'll get a few thousand votes on that basis alone.
Lets just think about this - 10 years plus into a tory government - after austerity, covid cock ups and recent revelations - but Labour look set to lose Hartlepool in a by-election........
Labour need to change - but not in a way Jezziah would want.
I'm not sure if you've realised but there's no austerity. We're currently clearing the equivalent of the Amazon Magic Money Rain Forest
Comments
Though yes it is mainly the LDs who are the Tories opponents in the South East
Burnham has out performed the Labour Party there before.
Today's death figures are 4 as well. That's fewer than can die in a single car accident that wouldn't reach the news, it quite possibly also is entirely made up of people dying with Covid (or dying within 28 days of having had Covid) not dying from Covid.
I also think Ferguson at least and perhaps others HAVE updated their model, using new assumptions (i.e. reflecting real-world vaccine efficacy). I was amongst those bemoaning that they hadn't, but I think they now have. So we now have to target our ire at those further up the chain not budging.
The 154m Census number is based on those that definitively reported having voted, you forget the 36m that didn't respond.
As the Census bureau notes.
The estimates presented in this table package may differ from those based on administrative data or exit polls due to factors such as survey nonresponse, vote misreporting and methodological issues related to question wording and survey administration.
Labour 2005 to 2010 springs to mind.
Which is of rather more concern.
Which IF you assume 1% falloff (ballots cast with NOT vote for President) would bump up total turnout to about 160m.
Compared with US census ESTIMATE of 155m (as Contrarian rightly says).
Note that the Wiki number is based on actual votes cast as reported by election authorities, while the Census number is based on survey responses.
Hence the gap is NOT ipso facto prima facie evidence of fraud.
He then got death threats for a year. Now he’s willing to dial down the doom
Contrast with the flailing figure of Jonathan ‘masks are dangerous because my friend in China says so’ Van Tam
An announced candidate for last year's elections in Dewsbury West was also flagged, but though she later turned up in the Yorkshire Post for a lot of community work during COVID, her Heavy Woollen affiliation was no longer mentioned there.
I am left wondering whether they have been somewhat diminished as a local political force. Let's see on Thursday.
With respect I did not make any claims about the veracity of the document, merely that the apparent discrepancy is being used by figures on the right to keep the 'stolen' election narrative going.
I know you and almost everybody on here would not like to face up to the fact that more than 70% of republican voters still don't think Biden got enough legit votes to win. But its true, they don't. And stuff like this is used to keep that notion going.
Was it mucked about with? My guess is no, but this New York article plausibly says Yes
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
So they are 6 weeks behind us.
Undo some of the 2019 losses that are now marginals and then pickup seats in the south. The analysis I posted this morning suggested they could pickup 26 on a good night.
They need a swing of around 5% to get their 50th target seat, which would be progress going into 2029.
My point was some are trying to weaponise it to keep a narrative going.
While I am chaffing for the next restrictions to be lifted, and think they should have been already, its only another 13 days.
I will be seriously pissed off if mask wearing stays after June though.
That wasn't true all pandemic, though its certainly been a factor which is why the real death toll is tens of thousands fewer than the 'official' one. But it must surely be a real factor now?
Got to wonder if this is a grouping still capable of 15% in a by-election?
Turtleszeros all the way down.Unholy alliance of statistical ignorance and political ideology. Which is NOT confined to Trumpsky & minions. But they are leading poster children for this nexus at the moment.
And yes wrt @kle4: "no you fuck off" was about the right spirit.
But it would be a huge shame if @TheJezziah were to be inhibited in his posting.
However I don't think Hartlepool is lost for Labour yet
With a big pix of Boris in the background, substituting the Union Jack and ditching the Starry Rag.
Now, you'll say the pessimistic assumptions were too pessimistic (I agree) and that even the most optimistic were too pessimistic (I agree again) but the models will have been put togther with the well established facts available at the time. Still too pessimistic, quite possibly, but anything beyond that is too specultive and potentially irrepsonsible - "based on flimsy evidence, we confidently say there's no chance of further problems", that is misleading the politicians making the decisions.
I was involved in a report for the NHS last year looking at a (non-infectious) condition and predicting future numbers for service planning. There seem to be some changes in incidence, but the big driver of changes in prevalence (which has increased over 50% in a decade) is increased survival times. We modelled a range of scenarios based on different impacts from new treatments extending survival further. But we also modelled a scenario in which there is no increase in incidence or survival, but changes only based on population growth and changing demographics. That showed a 10% predicted increase in the next ten years. Now, that final prediction of 10% is complete nonsense. The assumptions are demonstably false. But the commissioners found it useful as it was the one thing we could say with certainty: in ten years time you'll need, at an absolute and unrealistic minimum, a 10% increase in care capacity. The money will be allocated now, training given and the service built up. Further increases will depend on future developments in treatment and survival. But that 10% estimate, complete nonsense as it is, is useful. Without it, we'd have a range of possibilities with great uncertainties (impacts of treatments not yet even conceived) and not be able to give a hard limit on numbers at either end.
The SAGE models do the same. The worst cases are nonsense - we can say that now and could pretty much say that when they were published. But it told the policy makers and civil servants useful things. Absolute worst is similar to January. The NHS coped in January in the middle of winter. So that nonsense forecase said we would cope in any third wave. We didn't need to build Nightingale hospitals or panic buy ventilators. Importantly, we could unlock as planned and not crash the NHS, if the politicians were able to take a (very) low risk of a wave rivalling January. The roadmap did not change, so I guess we can conclude that they could (and I'm pretty sure the scientists will ithave made it clear to them what the more likely scenarios were).
I think the tories have it.
Should be <1/10, perhaps even as short as 1/16.
I’m nursing a moderate loss on that market
However, we would like you to face up to the fact that (1) registered Republicans constitute only a third of the electorate, so you're only talking about one in five voters, and (2) the main reason they persist in that belief is that their leaders persist in lying about the election.
They were supposed to make a decision last week . Are they waiting for after the elections on Thursday ? Have no 10 pressurized them into waiting ? Seems rather strange that some under 40s are being asked to make appointments and there’s still no decision from the JCVI.
This data is not being published by PHE - so we wait fro the next study that is being done within the NHS....
My guesstimate is that we now have 2 epidemics - the one among the vaccinated, which is low level, pretty much no deaths and hospitalisations and another among the unvaccinated, which is bumping along, hence hospital admission still being a thing -
The reason it is 2 epidemics, is that (as far as we know), the vaccinations reduce transmission, but not as much as they reduce death and hospitalisation. So, for the very near future, we are going to see COVID circulating - we almost certainly haven't reached the stage where R is below 1 without any measures. Yet.
#ConstituencyPollingIsDifficult
Has he just finished a painting-by-numbers Macron ?
Very odd.
She doesn't know how or where she got it. But her job consists of managing several apartment buildings, she's always going in and out of apartments, dealing with tenants and other workers, schlepping around town all the time.
Thus are greater risk that say yours truly, who works (sporadically) at home and has mostly stayed in except for grocery shopping and solitary walks.
She's been vaccinated now, just one jab cause she'd already had the crud. Said her reaction was more than ordinary - "my immune system went a little crazy" - but she soon felt fine and now looks fit as a fiddle. Though of course long-term there could well be consequences, hopefully not serious.
Hearing about this yesterday made me both sad and mad. Sad at the situation, mad at the "leaders" who made a bad situation worse.
Why? No idea apart from if we Brits are as bloody-minded as we are supposed to be it will be a matter of honour to give the incumbents a shock in case anyone is being taken for granted.
*Maybe he has a portrait of Petain on the flip side?
Plus Sunderland/Tyne and Wear generally hasn't exactly been given a ton of Tory red meat to chew on like Teesside.
The council elections on Thursday should be informative.
w/e 11/4 - 121
w/e 18/4 - 80
w/e 25/4 - 65
If this is reflected across the higher incidence areas, at current I'd say May 17th release is on, in full.
Challenge now is to go from 1 billion doses to 16 billion.
(And I think nudging the mid-May unlocking may well be more trouble than it's worth, though it's definitely worth looking at the June one again. After all, the Macron plan for France is to get rid of a lot of restrictions at the end of June. And whilst I am fairly confident that the vaccination lag between UK and EU will close up a fair bit in late May and June, reopening that soon will also need a degree of confidence where the UK has been cautious.)
The Republican voters Contrarian is referring to, are folks who voted for Republican President & nominee Trumpsky. Of which 70% equates to approx. one in three voters.
Only 4 today - on a murder Tuesday. (Unless bank holiday moves that back to Wednesday?)
I see no evidence R would be meaningfully above 1 now.
The real question is the ratios of unvaccinated vs first shot (+21 days) vs both shots (+21 days)
Labour need to change - but not in a way Jezziah would want.