Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
I would not be at all surprised. The week-on-week specimen numbers look to be dropping again (even taking data lag into account). I know we need to bear motivated reasoning in account, but it does look to me like an isolated spike in the national figures that’s already subsiding back into the floor.
Hmmm....
Never been able to make head nor tail of that graph.
Look at the peak and thickness of the different colour bands. I think @Andy_Cooke is right, there does look to have been a smallish peak in cases over the last two weeks, but no sign yet that it's resulting in higher hospitalisations other than those few vaccine refusers in Bolton.
What I think is interesting, is that we get that sharp peak on the 10th - which only reverses the fall of a couple of weeks, look at the 26th.
But just after that peak on 10th, the "sub-peak" (11th-12th) is lower. Yes, we are in a weekend and data to fill in, but it hints at a resumption of the fall. We shall see in a day or so.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
Well according to what people tell opinion polls, yes. I think people give answers that make them seem more liberal than they are.
Seems to me the main thing about the poll is they like Boris and don’t like Sir Keir. The don’t like Labour much, but more than they do it’s leader. They prefer the Conservatives to Labour, and Boris to the Conservatives.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
The Boundary Commission reports on July 1. Not sure of the procedure after that, but even if they then only need to form new associations, then adopt candidates, it will be very tight for September.
Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
I would not be at all surprised. The week-on-week specimen numbers look to be dropping again (even taking data lag into account). I know we need to bear motivated reasoning in account, but it does look to me like an isolated spike in the national figures that’s already subsiding back into the floor.
Hmmm....
Never been able to make head nor tail of that graph.
Look at the peak and thickness of the different colour bands. I think @Andy_Cooke is right, there does look to have been a smallish peak in cases over the last two weeks, but no sign yet that it's resulting in higher hospitalisations other than those few vaccine refusers in Bolton.
What I think is interesting, is that we get that sharp peak on the 10th - which only reverses the fall of a couple of weeks, look at the 26th.
But just after that peak on 10th, the "sub-peak" (11th-12th) is lower. Yes, we are in a weekend and data to fill in, but it hints at a resumption of the fall. We shall see in a day or so.
We'll have to wait and see if the Indian variant seed cases in the rest of the country cause any additional transmission. I think some parts of London will be particularly susceptible, as Stodge has pointed out take up of vaccines in Newham is pretty poor. We could see some small to medium rise in cases over the next two weeks before it starts falling again as acquired immunity pushes those areas towards herd immunity.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
If a new variant becomes dominant its likely because it is more infectious.
Though a more infectious but less dangerous variant may be no bad thing.
I think that is true when there is a certain level of prevalence of the virus. Once prevalence drops below a certain level, as others have pointed out, you don't have a general sea of virus in which two strains compete, but separated pools of local outbreak clusters, essentially of just one strain. Once we reach these isolated clusters, the more numerous strain is not necessarily so because of greater transmissibility, but may be so because of happenstance.
The same effect is true in evolution in general. It is not always 'survival of the fittest'. Sometimes it is survival of the luckiest.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
I would not be at all surprised. The week-on-week specimen numbers look to be dropping again (even taking data lag into account). I know we need to bear motivated reasoning in account, but it does look to me like an isolated spike in the national figures that’s already subsiding back into the floor.
Hmmm....
Never been able to make head nor tail of that graph.
Look at the peak and thickness of the different colour bands. I think @Andy_Cooke is right, there does look to have been a smallish peak in cases over the last two weeks, but no sign yet that it's resulting in higher hospitalisations other than those few vaccine refusers in Bolton.
What I think is interesting, is that we get that sharp peak on the 10th - which only reverses the fall of a couple of weeks, look at the 26th.
But just after that peak on 10th, the "sub-peak" (11th-12th) is lower. Yes, we are in a weekend and data to fill in, but it hints at a resumption of the fall. We shall see in a day or so.
We'll have to wait and see if the Indian variant seed cases in the rest of the country cause any additional transmission. I think some parts of London will be particularly susceptible, as Stodge has pointed out take up of vaccines in Newham is pretty poor. We could see some small to medium rise in cases over the next two weeks before it starts falling again as acquired immunity pushes those areas towards herd immunity.
I agree but it strikes me that this variant was seeded here over a month ago now. At what point do we file this one with the Brazilian and Spanish variants as NBD?
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellasie I, Jah, Rastafari!
Boris Johnson as Rastafarian God? Talk about cultural appropriation!
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
The better question would have been “what punishment should the offence attract?” but open questions appear to be a criminal offence in and of themselves in journalistic circles these days.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Are you aware of Sydney Dekker's work on safety? He had a book called A Just Culture, which is about not blaming the person who messes up (unless the person did so intentionally), but looking for systems reasons that might have lead them to think a wrong decision or action was the right one.
More recently, he has moved on from that to highlighting the need to move from punitive to restorative justice in the workplace.
The next election will probably be on the old boundaries
There may be an incentive for BoZo to change them, but there is no incentive for sitting MPs who want to keep a seat to reduce the numbers available.
The boundaries are based on 650 MPs, all sitting MPs will nominally retain their seats but probably with a slightly different set of voters.
Might depend on what the first draft of the new boundaries looks like. Could damage a few first-time incumbency bonuses I suppose. Also, if the census population numbers are markedly different to those used for apportioning seats, because of pandemic-induced population movements, then it might cause a degree of upset here and there.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
I didn't hear the interview, so no idea what was said, but in general non-violent crimes of this type are best served by a non-custodial sentence. If violent then the rules on ABH/GBH/Scottish equivalent would supervene.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
If a new variant becomes dominant its likely because it is more infectious.
Though a more infectious but less dangerous variant may be no bad thing.
I think that is true when there is a certain level of prevalence of the virus. Once prevalence drops below a certain level, as others have pointed out, you don't have a general sea of virus in which two strains compete, but separated pools of local outbreak clusters, essentially of just one strain. Once we reach these isolated clusters, the more numerous strain is not necessarily so because of greater transmissibility, but may be so because of happenstance.
The same effect is true in evolution in general. It is not always 'survival of the fittest'. Sometimes it is survival of the luckiest.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
I didn't hear the interview, so no idea what was said, but in general non-violent crimes of this type are best served by a non-custodial sentence. If violent then the rules on ABH/GBH/Scottish equivalent would supervene.
What I don't get is why violence towards a woman is deserving of a greater punishment than violence towards a man.
Everyone always seems to be very surprised, almost outraged, by the occurrence of hail, whatever the time of year. You can often get hail in spring, because you have relatively cold and moist air moving in off the sea, over land rapidly warming up under increasingly strong sunlight. That's a recipe for convection, hence spring showers, and if the convection is strong enough, hail.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
When I saw they were arguing for longer sentences it did make me wonder why they used to say sending people to prison didn’t work, or that the death penalty is no deterrent.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
The next election will probably be on the old boundaries
There may be an incentive for BoZo to change them, but there is no incentive for sitting MPs who want to keep a seat to reduce the numbers available.
The boundaries are based on 650 MPs, all sitting MPs will nominally retain their seats but probably with a slightly different set of voters.
Might depend on what the first draft of the new boundaries looks like. Could damage a few first-time incumbency bonuses I suppose. Also, if the census population numbers are markedly different to those used for apportioning seats, because of pandemic-induced population movements, then it might cause a degree of upset here and there.
I don't think it's based on the census, it's based on the electoral roll from what I remember but happy to be corrected.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The thermal summer is approximately 10 June to 10 September in England, not miles off the astrological summer. A daylight summer is daft because it makes no account of thermal lag - which is a crucial element in the foundation of summery weather.
The next election will probably be on the old boundaries
There may be an incentive for BoZo to change them, but there is no incentive for sitting MPs who want to keep a seat to reduce the numbers available.
The boundaries are based on 650 MPs, all sitting MPs will nominally retain their seats but probably with a slightly different set of voters.
Might depend on what the first draft of the new boundaries looks like. Could damage a few first-time incumbency bonuses I suppose. Also, if the census population numbers are markedly different to those used for apportioning seats, because of pandemic-induced population movements, then it might cause a degree of upset here and there.
I don't think it's based on the census, it's based on the electoral roll from what I remember but happy to be corrected.
The opinion polls suggest that Labour is currently attracting around 33%. Given the absolutely torrid time that Labour has had over the last month, it strikes me that it is remarkably resilient. If I just read posts on here for my political information, I'd expect Labour to be on around 10% - awful leader, divided, woke-obsessed etc.
I don't think you can write off a party that attracts 33% even when it is regarded as screamingly unpopular by most commentators, on here and elsewhere, and is being slaughtered in the press. Obituaries are premature.
The Tories were on the same back in the early naughties and people were writing them off all the time. The question is can Labour repeat their recovery?
Yes, I agree. And Labour was in the same place after 1983, written off, dead in the water. Both our major parties have proved very resilient. And yes, I do expect Labour to stage a recovery. Maybe not enough for 2023/24, but I wouldn't rule it out.
It just strikes me as notable that even at such a low ebb, which even its supporters acknowledge, around a third of people would still vote Labour.
I think Labour are in a much deeper, darker hole than in 1983 because of the additional problems of Scotland & the Red Wall.
That said, the right leader can make a huge, huge difference (the Jacinda Effect).
The problem Labour face is that it is their opponents who are benefitting from the Jacinda Effect.
Both Nicola and Boris (in their very different ways) have turned out to be excellent vote-getters for Labour's opponents.
My guess is that Labour's best chance of recovery is when one of those two goes. Preferably both, from Labour's POV.
Scotland will be very hard imo, Sturgeon or not, but 100% agreed about Johnson. Without him, and I mean HIM, this rather odd manifestation of the Tory Party would imo lose much of their appeal to WWC leavers in particular and apolitical floaters in general. That's a lot of seats.
I do not think Boris is quite at 'HIM' status to be fair !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellasie I, Jah, Rastafari!
Boris Johnson as Rastafarian God? Talk about cultural appropriation!
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Don't you know you're only working class nowadays if both parents work to pay for the private school fees for Jemima and Tarquin, while having a subscription to the Guardian.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Are you aware of Sydney Dekker's work on safety? He had a book called A Just Culture, which is about not blaming the person who messes up (unless the person did so intentionally), but looking for systems reasons that might have lead them to think a wrong decision or action was the right one.
More recently, he has moved on from that to highlighting the need to move from punitive to restorative justice in the workplace.
Yes, I have long been thinking that Restorative Justice is the way forward in the workplace. My experience of the current way of investigating workplace conflicts is inadequate, and unnecessarily confrontational, often being resolved by the bullied or harassed being driven out, leaving the bully in place.
There has to be a better way to resolve workplace conflicts. One that is fairer and also cheaper, as suspensions and wrongful dismissal cases can be eye watering expensive and damaging to an organisation.
Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
I would not be at all surprised. The week-on-week specimen numbers look to be dropping again (even taking data lag into account). I know we need to bear motivated reasoning in account, but it does look to me like an isolated spike in the national figures that’s already subsiding back into the floor.
Hmmm....
Never been able to make head nor tail of that graph.
Look at the peak and thickness of the different colour bands. I think @Andy_Cooke is right, there does look to have been a smallish peak in cases over the last two weeks, but no sign yet that it's resulting in higher hospitalisations other than those few vaccine refusers in Bolton.
What I think is interesting, is that we get that sharp peak on the 10th - which only reverses the fall of a couple of weeks, look at the 26th.
But just after that peak on 10th, the "sub-peak" (11th-12th) is lower. Yes, we are in a weekend and data to fill in, but it hints at a resumption of the fall. We shall see in a day or so.
We'll have to wait and see if the Indian variant seed cases in the rest of the country cause any additional transmission. I think some parts of London will be particularly susceptible, as Stodge has pointed out take up of vaccines in Newham is pretty poor. We could see some small to medium rise in cases over the next two weeks before it starts falling again as acquired immunity pushes those areas towards herd immunity.
I agree but it strikes me that this variant was seeded here over a month ago now. At what point do we file this one with the Brazilian and Spanish variants as NBD?
Yes, I think that's where it's heading. A marginal increase in transmission that looks worse in India and Indian/Pakistani areas of the UK because there's no such thing as personal space or social distancing in those places.
The odd one is why Bolton seems so badly effected but we're not really seeing it in Wembley, Ealing or Harrow. There's definitely something that needs investigating within that difference.
Everyone always seems to be very surprised, almost outraged, by the occurrence of hail, whatever the time of year. You can often get hail in spring, because you have relatively cold and moist air moving in off the sea, over land rapidly warming up under increasingly strong sunlight. That's a recipe for convection, hence spring showers, and if the convection is strong enough, hail.
Hail is just rude.
No-one wants to be shat on by ice balls from the sky.
The next election will probably be on the old boundaries
There may be an incentive for BoZo to change them, but there is no incentive for sitting MPs who want to keep a seat to reduce the numbers available.
The boundaries are based on 650 MPs, all sitting MPs will nominally retain their seats but probably with a slightly different set of voters.
Might depend on what the first draft of the new boundaries looks like. Could damage a few first-time incumbency bonuses I suppose. Also, if the census population numbers are markedly different to those used for apportioning seats, because of pandemic-induced population movements, then it might cause a degree of upset here and there.
The first draft of boundaries for England are out next month. The other commissions may take a bit longer.
The boundaries are based on the number of electors in March 2020. Some seats are definitely disappearing particularly in Wales which loses 8 seats
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
I didn't hear the interview, so no idea what was said, but in general non-violent crimes of this type are best served by a non-custodial sentence. If violent then the rules on ABH/GBH/Scottish equivalent would supervene.
Well, what tends to happen in practice is that an aggravation is added to an existing offence. So you might be guilty of a racially aggravated assault or a religiously aggravated assault. The problem with this kind of approach is that the prosecutors in court then get their hands tied by policy. So they are not allowed to accept a guilty plea without the aggravation. So you end up with a lot of fairly silly trials.
What I don't like is the political gesturism of it all, playing politics with the criminal justice system. I think it is a bad idea in general. I don't have any particular problem with misogyny being an aggravation, I just don't like any of them.
But Philips, the Shadow Minister for domestic violence about to launch this exciting new policy had clearly not thought any of this through. What she was concerned about was that misogyny was not being treated like racism, disability discrimination or any other bad thing. It was embarrassing.
Looks like the crazy mother fuckers are going to, at the very least, cripple Roe.
Good. The unborn child is a human being worthy of protection.
Yes. The idea that it is obvious and self evident what the law should say about the balance of rights as between the unborn and the adult world, or that it should stay where it is and never change makes no sense.
It is obvious that the unborn child is worthy of protection. It isn't obvious exactly how much.
The fact that every word of what I have just written is bitterly contested is fascinating.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The "summer starts on Midsummer's Day" brigade should be taken out and shot.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
I'm not really that interested in what class people are as it means different things to different people. My point is the political landscape can at least as easily be defined by age and wealth (assets not income), as class, Brexit or historic constituency voting.
That this cohort of pensioners is (on average) far richer than those who go before them is surely not in doubt? Again whether that is down to "luck" or "hard work" does not matter much, it is in their economic interests to protect their wealth and that impacts the political sphere.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Are you aware of Sydney Dekker's work on safety? He had a book called A Just Culture, which is about not blaming the person who messes up (unless the person did so intentionally), but looking for systems reasons that might have lead them to think a wrong decision or action was the right one.
More recently, he has moved on from that to highlighting the need to move from punitive to restorative justice in the workplace.
Yes, I have long been thinking that Restorative Justice is the way forward in the workplace. My experience of the current way of investigating workplace conflicts is inadequate, and unnecessarily confrontational, often being resolved by the bullied or harassed being driven out, leaving the bully in place.
There has to be a better way to resolve workplace conflicts. One that is fairer and also cheaper, as suspensions and wrongful dismissal cases can be eye watering expensive and damaging to an organisation.
The problem with "just culture" is that it means reseting the entire viewpoint of HR, management, aggrieved parties etc. etc.
It is also only about mistakes, not ill intentioned acts.
It is very effective in air accident investigation, because of buy-in by all parties. Even there, though, there have been problems with outside bodies (such as police forces) trying to find "the guilty party" and being upset at being rebuffed,
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The "summer starts on Midsummer's Day" brigade should be taken out and shot.
Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm. Everyone knows that.
Why the big panic about whether the Indian variant become “the dominant variant”. Something’s got to be the dominant variant. Unless somebody can demonstrate evidence that the “Indian” variant is more harmful and/or vaccine evasive than those it replaces (beyond just “lots of people have died in India in Indian specific circumstances”) what’s the problem? Might even be doing us a favour if it’s less harmful.
If a new variant becomes dominant its likely because it is more infectious.
Though a more infectious but less dangerous variant may be no bad thing.
I think that is true when there is a certain level of prevalence of the virus. Once prevalence drops below a certain level, as others have pointed out, you don't have a general sea of virus in which two strains compete, but separated pools of local outbreak clusters, essentially of just one strain. Once we reach these isolated clusters, the more numerous strain is not necessarily so because of greater transmissibility, but may be so because of happenstance.
The same effect is true in evolution in general. It is not always 'survival of the fittest'. Sometimes it is survival of the luckiest.
Its worked for me so far.
Evolution always works. It is tautological, for it teaches the survival of survivors. Whether you ascribe it to luck, fitness or anything else is metaphysics.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Are you aware of Sydney Dekker's work on safety? He had a book called A Just Culture, which is about not blaming the person who messes up (unless the person did so intentionally), but looking for systems reasons that might have lead them to think a wrong decision or action was the right one.
More recently, he has moved on from that to highlighting the need to move from punitive to restorative justice in the workplace.
Yes, I have long been thinking that Restorative Justice is the way forward in the workplace. My experience of the current way of investigating workplace conflicts is inadequate, and unnecessarily confrontational, often being resolved by the bullied or harassed being driven out, leaving the bully in place.
There has to be a better way to resolve workplace conflicts. One that is fairer and also cheaper, as suspensions and wrongful dismissal cases can be eye watering expensive and damaging to an organisation.
The problem with "just culture" is that it means reseting the entire viewpoint of HR, management, aggrieved parties etc. etc.
It is also only about mistakes, not ill intentioned acts.
It is very effective in air accident investigation, because of buy-in by all parties. Even there, though, there have been problems with outside bodies (such as police forces) trying to find "the guilty party" and being upset at being rebuffed,
In the US and elsewhere, the attempt by ambitious DAs to criminalize medical mistakes - particularly those made by nurses in appalling conditions of stress and fatigue - is incredibly damaging not just to the individuals involved, but also to the prospect of organizational learning and improved patient care.
Reports of rockets now being launched at Israel from Lebanon.
That's an unexpected and unhelpful escalation if so.
Hezbollah taking an opportunity to break dance with Israel? Why is that unexpected?
Israel and Hezbollah haven't had much in the way of actual conflict in recent years. There's been only isolated incidents for the past fifteen years, so a major escalation now if it occured would not be a positive development.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been more successful than Israel-Palestine ones.
Leon and Doug are spot on: that John Burn-Murdoch thread on Twitter is excellent. I wonder if we could see positive tests nationwide start falling again this week? We were within an ace of it today…
I would not be at all surprised. The week-on-week specimen numbers look to be dropping again (even taking data lag into account). I know we need to bear motivated reasoning in account, but it does look to me like an isolated spike in the national figures that’s already subsiding back into the floor.
Hmmm....
Never been able to make head nor tail of that graph.
Look at the peak and thickness of the different colour bands. I think @Andy_Cooke is right, there does look to have been a smallish peak in cases over the last two weeks, but no sign yet that it's resulting in higher hospitalisations other than those few vaccine refusers in Bolton.
What I think is interesting, is that we get that sharp peak on the 10th - which only reverses the fall of a couple of weeks, look at the 26th.
But just after that peak on 10th, the "sub-peak" (11th-12th) is lower. Yes, we are in a weekend and data to fill in, but it hints at a resumption of the fall. We shall see in a day or so.
We'll have to wait and see if the Indian variant seed cases in the rest of the country cause any additional transmission. I think some parts of London will be particularly susceptible, as Stodge has pointed out take up of vaccines in Newham is pretty poor. We could see some small to medium rise in cases over the next two weeks before it starts falling again as acquired immunity pushes those areas towards herd immunity.
I agree but it strikes me that this variant was seeded here over a month ago now. At what point do we file this one with the Brazilian and Spanish variants as NBD?
Yes, I think that's where it's heading. A marginal increase in transmission that looks worse in India and Indian/Pakistani areas of the UK because there's no such thing as personal space or social distancing in those places.
The odd one is why Bolton seems so badly effected but we're not really seeing it in Wembley, Ealing or Harrow. There's definitely something that needs investigating within that difference.
Can't speak for now. But 15 years ago or so, when I worked in employment training in Bolton, there were several locally notorious factories and garment producers paying well below minimum wage. That may be a factor like Leicester.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Are you aware of Sydney Dekker's work on safety? He had a book called A Just Culture, which is about not blaming the person who messes up (unless the person did so intentionally), but looking for systems reasons that might have lead them to think a wrong decision or action was the right one.
More recently, he has moved on from that to highlighting the need to move from punitive to restorative justice in the workplace.
Yes, I have long been thinking that Restorative Justice is the way forward in the workplace. My experience of the current way of investigating workplace conflicts is inadequate, and unnecessarily confrontational, often being resolved by the bullied or harassed being driven out, leaving the bully in place.
There has to be a better way to resolve workplace conflicts. One that is fairer and also cheaper, as suspensions and wrongful dismissal cases can be eye watering expensive and damaging to an organisation.
The problem with "just culture" is that it means reseting the entire viewpoint of HR, management, aggrieved parties etc. etc.
It is also only about mistakes, not ill intentioned acts.
It is very effective in air accident investigation, because of buy-in by all parties. Even there, though, there have been problems with outside bodies (such as police forces) trying to find "the guilty party" and being upset at being rebuffed,
In the US and elsewhere, the attempt by ambitious DAs to criminalize medical mistakes - particularly those made by nurses in appalling conditions of stress and fatigue - is incredibly damaging not just to the individuals involved, but also to the prospect of organizational learning and improved patient care.
PS I don't see the need to reset HR and management perspectives as a 'problem', more as a challenge.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
I'm not really that interested in what class people are as it means different things to different people. My point is the political landscape can at least as easily be defined by age and wealth (assets not income), as class, Brexit or historic constituency voting.
That this cohort of pensioners is (on average) far richer than those who go before them is surely not in doubt? Again whether that is down to "luck" or "hard work" does not matter much, it is in their economic interests to protect their wealth and that impacts the political sphere.
Yeah I agree, but most pensioners are protecting their wealth for their kids and grandkids, not themselves. You could just as easily point out that when they were 20 somethings, they had to stay living with their parents until they got married, save up and didn’t have wealthy grandparents to leave them big inheritances
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
I'm not really that interested in what class people are as it means different things to different people. My point is the political landscape can at least as easily be defined by age and wealth (assets not income), as class, Brexit or historic constituency voting.
That this cohort of pensioners is (on average) far richer than those who go before them is surely not in doubt? Again whether that is down to "luck" or "hard work" does not matter much, it is in their economic interests to protect their wealth and that impacts the political sphere.
I agree, undeniably folk like to hold on to their assets, even when due to windfall house price rises.
Of course if inflation does pick up, and interest rates too, then we will see some real pain coming out of that inequality.
If the new boundaries are just an expensive rebranding with no material changes, then of course, BoZo will be all for it...
They aren't, the boundaries are an equalisation of elector population per constituency.
It's overdue and it's not that easy to fix things up in our system (and if existing boundaries are slanted in one direction that redressing that would not even be unfair as such, though if memory serves said imbalance may not be as much of a thing anymore anyway), but expect see a lot of 'it's a fix for the Tories' takes.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The "summer starts on Midsummer's Day" brigade should be taken out and shot.
Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm. Everyone knows that.
I thought it was generally recognised when you pass by Honiton when heading to the West Country.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Don't you know you're only working class nowadays if both parents work to pay for the private school fees for Jemima and Tarquin, while having a subscription to the Guardian.
Don't be silly. That makes you part of Labour's core vote.
Everyone always seems to be very surprised, almost outraged, by the occurrence of hail, whatever the time of year. You can often get hail in spring, because you have relatively cold and moist air moving in off the sea, over land rapidly warming up under increasingly strong sunlight. That's a recipe for convection, hence spring showers, and if the convection is strong enough, hail.
Hail is just rude.
No-one wants to be shat on by ice balls from the sky.
Make it work for you. Stand under a sturdy umbrella and hold out your freshly made gin and tonic to collect the ice
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
Part of the huge charm of Jess Phillips is exactly that she talks human and is capable of having more than one idea at a time when not all ideas exactly fit.
We all know what she means, bless her, she wants women more protected - hooray; and would like a world where the philosophy of punishment wasn't directed and dictated by the editor of Sun and Mail. So she is easily got on the horns of a dilemma. Gosh.
Most politicians avoid this by saying nothing interesting and talking in Martian.
Jess Phillips is a star. She is so good I sometimes wish there was a Labour party I could vote for in general elections. If she was leader I would break a habit and do so.
Reports of rockets now being launched at Israel from Lebanon.
That's an unexpected and unhelpful escalation if so.
Hezbollah taking an opportunity to break dance with Israel? Why is that unexpected?
Israel and Hezbollah haven't had much in the way of actual conflict in recent years. There's been only isolated incidents for the past fifteen years, so a major escalation now if it occured would not be a positive development.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been more successful than Israel-Palestine ones.
There were 2 or 3 missiles out of there the other day - is this something more than that?
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The "summer starts on Midsummer's Day" brigade should be taken out and shot.
Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm. Everyone knows that.
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
If you won't open up because of vaccine refuseniks, how do you ever open up?
Reports of rockets now being launched at Israel from Lebanon.
That's an unexpected and unhelpful escalation if so.
Hezbollah taking an opportunity to break dance with Israel? Why is that unexpected?
Israel and Hezbollah haven't had much in the way of actual conflict in recent years. There's been only isolated incidents for the past fifteen years, so a major escalation now if it occured would not be a positive development.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been more successful than Israel-Palestine ones.
In large part because Hezbollah sent the IDF home last time with a bloody nose.
Reports of rockets now being launched at Israel from Lebanon.
That's an unexpected and unhelpful escalation if so.
Hezbollah taking an opportunity to break dance with Israel? Why is that unexpected?
Israel and Hezbollah haven't had much in the way of actual conflict in recent years. There's been only isolated incidents for the past fifteen years, so a major escalation now if it occured would not be a positive development.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been more successful than Israel-Palestine ones.
There were 2 or 3 missiles out of there the other day - is this something more than that?
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Thing I dislike about England is that class is so bloody important to all and sundry. It isn't even a good predictor of voting behaviour any more.
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
Not a snowball's chance.
Boris won't want to be perceived as a failure by not getting 21/6 done. Nor is it necessary to delay it.
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
Anti-vaxxers are a minority. So we can guess which side Labour will take.
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think people just wont do it. If there is another lockdown because of anti-vaxxers there will be massive rule breaking. Absolutely massive. No one will give two fucks about the rules.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Thing I dislike about England is that class is so bloody important to all and sundry. It isn't even a good predictor of voting behaviour any more.
And class in England has never been a good indicator of what we call class in America.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Well it seems to be a subjective issue, but I’d agree 100% you can be a working class millionaire & a penniless member of the upper class. For me it’s about schooling, upbringing, connections, and many more intangibles, but it’s not about current net worth. Winning the lottery or losing your fortune doesn’t change your class status
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Quite so, though it can pass down a further tier fairly easily. For example, an academic friend sees herself as working class, despite her parents being teachers, because her grandparents were miners.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The "summer starts on Midsummer's Day" brigade should be taken out and shot.
Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm. Everyone knows that.
"Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm"... at 9pm, now we are no longer in the EU free travel zone.
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think people just wont do it. If there is another lockdown because of anti-vaxxers there will be massive rule breaking. Absolutely massive. No one will give two fucks about the rules.
It won't be another lockdown, it will be no big crowds at sports events, concerts, theatres, nightclubs, maybe no bar service. Those type of rules are not easy to break.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
I didn't hear the interview, so no idea what was said, but in general non-violent crimes of this type are best served by a non-custodial sentence. If violent then the rules on ABH/GBH/Scottish equivalent would supervene.
What I don't get is why violence towards a woman is deserving of a greater punishment than violence towards a man.
I think the problem with "Misogyny" being an offence is that it misogyny is a characteristic of opinion, not an action. It's not even a primary opinion - it is a emergent characteristic of underlying opinions: a thoughtcrime.
I just don't see that working, and the definition will be on wheels.
Unless anyone has a workable defition? (Genuine question)
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Well it seems to be a subjective issue, but I’d agree 100% you can be a working class millionaire & a penniless member of the upper class. For me it’s about schooling, upbringing, connections, and many more intangibles, but it’s not about current net worth. Winning the lottery or losing your fortune doesn’t change your class status
Yes, and that is why class is so pernicious in Britain. In America or Australia money counts more than origins, but in Britain you cannot escape so easily.
Though one thing that I like about the Midlands is that there is a more American attitude. Money equals class much more here, not least because the rest of the country looks down on the Midlands.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Thing I dislike about England is that class is so bloody important to all and sundry. It isn't even a good predictor of voting behaviour any more.
It's getting there again but not in a way that Labour likes to talk about.
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
Now we need Starmer to say the same and put Labour behind that otherwise the government will just use opposition votes to keep us locked down to protect the c***s who chose not to have the vaccine.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think people just wont do it. If there is another lockdown because of anti-vaxxers there will be massive rule breaking. Absolutely massive. No one will give two fucks about the rules.
But the pubs, restaurants, bars and other hospitality will bleed to death with a thousand cuts under that scenario. The only way back for these businesses is to axe social distancing on June 21st. We have got no way around that. I want these businesses to thrive again. I have no issues breaking the rules today if necessary, I went to a house party with way more than the number of people allowed under the April rules.
We have to make the old normal come back for the sake of pubs, bars, restaurants, clubs and other hospitality businesses. Rule breaking doesn't help them.
"One Cabinet minister warned that missing the June 21 milestone could become Mr Johnson's 'Theresa May moment' – a reference to her failed Brexit deadline. 'This freedom date is burned on people's brains in the same way as her date for leaving the EU,' the source said. 'When she missed it, she was finished.' "
Brood X cicadas have emerged after 17 years underground - as many as 1.5 million of the insects have come out of the ground per acre of land, meaning that tens of billions in total have emerged, from Michigan to West Virginia.
Seattle Times ($) - Report: Microsoft investigated Gates before he left board
Board members at Microsoft Corp. made a decision in 2020 that it wasn’t appropriate for its co-founder Bill Gates to continue sitting on its board as they investigated the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Citing unnamed sources, The Journal reported online Sunday that board members looking into the matter hired a law firm in late 2019 to conduct an investigation after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship with Gates over several years.
The Journal reported that Gates resigned before the board’s investigation was finished, citing another person familiar with the matter.
An unnamed spokeswoman for Gates acknowledged to The Journal that there was an affair almost 20 years ago, and that it ended “amicably.” The spokesperson told The Journal that “his decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter.””
When he left Microsoft’s board last year, Gates said he was stepping down to focus on philanthropy.
In an email sent to The Associated Press late Sunday, Microsoft said that it “received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000. A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm, to conduct a thorough investigation. Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.”
Comment - Have always had a lot of respect for Bill the Billionaire's father, who was a highly successful Seattle attorney & moderate, country-club Republican (a "Dan Evans Republican" as we say in WA) who led unsuccessful effort to pass a statewide initiative establishing an upper-income state income tax.
Never had much respect for Bill Gates as a person. Always thought he was more lucky than visionary and more into ego gratification than philanthropy. All of which I thought & said (if not here) long BEFORE Melinda lowered the boom on him.
2023 seems entirely plausible if things are going well and would be consistent with 1983, 1987, 2001 and 2005.
May or June 2023 would be earlier than those precedents. October 2023 would be more reasonable - and also the earliest realistic date to rely on boundary changes
Yes I think late Summer or Autumn 2023 would make sense too, especially as it would be on new boundaries. Only loses just over a year from the last possible date and loses less than a year from the expected 2024 date.
For the betting markets late Summer or Autumn 2023 would count as an early election, but it would be historically quite normal being roughly four years in.
The new boundaries will not be implemented before July 2023 - probably too late for a Summer election.
Summer is June to August, or 21 June to 21 September depending upon how you measure it.
So if the new boundaries come in July then a late Summer election would be entirely possible.
There are more summers than that. The Irish definition starts summer at the beginning of May (or at half-past two on the second Tuesday in June, lasting for three hours, if you're being unkind). Or you can use a long summer definition, May-September.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
The "summer starts on Midsummer's Day" brigade should be taken out and shot.
Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm. Everyone knows that.
"Summer starts when you start drinking in the airport at 9am before boarding your Ryanair flight to Benidorm"... at 9pm, now we are no longer in the EU free travel zone.
Summer starts when your flight is delayed and you spend 6 months trying to get compensation from the Airline.
Interesting polling from Yougov in "Red Wall" seats. Not much difference to the rest of us it seems, and quite "Woke" on many issues. Interesting too that there still is a national plurality that Brexit was the wrong decision.
Same as most other areas though, they think Sir Keir’s a dud
Yes, not as pro-immigration as the country as a whole*, but still a plurality in favour:
"We did find a significant gap between residents of the Red Wall and Britain as a whole on the topic of immigration. Here, Red Wall residents are fairly split on their assessments, with a slight lean toward more positive views. While 40% agree that immigration has “generally been good for the country”, 33% believe that it has on the whole been a bad thing."
*which obviously means that other parts are more strongly pro-immigration than average.
Something like +7 compared to +24 I think
So an overall positive view of immigration, wouldn't you agree?. Presumably parts of the country are significantly more pro than +24 too.
I find it quite a positive poll. The "Red Wall" is not very different to the rest of the country, and quite open to "Woke" and other views, has a more positive view of the Labour Party than is generally made out, thinks Starmer is heading in the right direction, albeit not taken to him personally. The country is not as polarised as it is made out to be, at least on a macro-scale. Indeed one of the conclusions that I would draw is the need to champion inclusiveness and diversity as a core British value.
I must have a fossick through the data tables, as I suspect that much of the modest difference found between the Red Wall and UK as a whole is due to the age structure of the demographics of the seats rather than anything more fundamental.
The big divider is age not class or colour or colour of wall. Hardly surprising when we have the richest cohort of pensioners ever, and the first generation of workers who will do less well than their parents since the big wars.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
My parents are both in their mid 70s, both still work part time. When they were full time they never earnt big money - local govt Admin/Woolworths & a labourer/sports coach. 15% interest rates when they were skint & paying a mortgage. 0.1% now they’ve paid the house off & have decent savings. So they’re now quite rich, through having modest tastes and living within their means. But they’re still working class, ex council house kids who never earnt more than 40k pa - lefties are trying to say they’re wrongly defined as working class in polls though.
Yes but their economic interests are essentially aligned with a millionaire banker now - inflate assets and squeeze the workers through rents and taxes.
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
Well they aren’t voting Tory, but I don’t see why being sensible and saving their whole life transformed them from being working class to something else. Class isn’t about bank balance - if Prince Harry goes skint and works in McDonalds, he won’t be working class.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
Yes, very frequently people want to self declare as working class, as that is how they see themselves. It is quite common with University academics to do so for example, and in many liberal professions.
The one thing I really hate about England is the idea that Class isn't linked to how much money you have *now*, but how much money you had growing up. Frank Skinner for example is considered to be Working Class, despite being a sodding Multi-Millionare
Quite so, though it can pass down a further tier fairly easily. For example, an academic friend sees herself as working class, despite her parents being teachers, because her grandparents were miners.
There are but two categories within British Society now. Johnsonian patriots and anyone else (liberal traitors).
And to be honest, I am more comfortable with that, than the notion of class based on wealth, education or social standing.
I'm glad that Sir Kir Royale is taking a stand against "biphobia"
I hear biphobia everywhere and it needs to be dealt with.
"You know who I hate? People who aren't certain. I hate them with their Oh I like pizza but I ALSO like lasagne. Fuck them and their improved choice of partners"
It reminded me of that embarrassment of an interview with Jess Philips this morning on R4.
"We want a new criminal offence of aggravated misogyny." "So you want more people to go to jail? "Err". " So do you think Jail works now?" "Not really."
I mean the Today program tried really quite hard to make this sound like a big deal. They said it was about 3 times. But what it boiled down to was that she wanted the political gesture of being able to show that she cared but not an actual consequence.
If Jess Philips is the best Labour has got they better keep SKS.
But that is a false presentation of a question. Aggravated misogyny can be a criminal offence without requiring jail.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
So why didn't she say that then? It might have been a better look than a deer in the headlights, especially when you got the distinct impression that Justin was really trying to help her and sound genuinely excited about Labour finally having a policy of some sort.
I didn't hear the interview, so no idea what was said, but in general non-violent crimes of this type are best served by a non-custodial sentence. If violent then the rules on ABH/GBH/Scottish equivalent would supervene.
What I don't get is why violence towards a woman is deserving of a greater punishment than violence towards a man.
I think the problem with "Misogyny" being an offence is that it misogyny is a characteristic of opinion, not an action. It's not even a primary opinion - it is a emergent characteristic of underlying opinions: a thoughtcrime.
I just don't see that working, and the definition will be on wheels.
Unless anyone has a workable defition? (Genuine question)
As I have said, I hate the whole concept of aggravations in this way but I don't in principle see it any more difficult than it is for other aggravations where it is inferred from the conduct. So if you call your victim a racial slur then you are deemed to have been racially aggravated. If you use misogynistic language towards your female victim (such as the threat of rape that was mentioned) then it will be inferred that there was a misogynistic motive.
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But just after that peak on 10th, the "sub-peak" (11th-12th) is lower. Yes, we are in a weekend and data to fill in, but it hints at a resumption of the fall. We shall see in a day or so.
Seems to me the main thing about the poll is they like Boris and don’t like Sir Keir. The don’t like Labour much, but more than they do it’s leader. They prefer the Conservatives to Labour, and Boris to the Conservatives.
Community service or Restorative Justice would be suitable punishments for example.
There may be an incentive for BoZo to change them, but there is no incentive for sitting MPs who want to keep a seat to reduce the numbers available.
Woke is a distraction and reflection of age.
The same effect is true in evolution in general. It is not always 'survival of the fittest'. Sometimes it is survival of the luckiest.
Professor Lamb did define a "High Summer" season, from 18th June - 9th September, based on weather circulation patterns in the first half of the 20th century, but please don't use a definition of summer that starts on the summer solstice. It's nonsensical. If you want to have a summer season defined by measurements of the length of the day, then the summer solstice needs to be in the middle of the summer season, and so summer would start on the cross-quarter day of 6th May.
More recently, he has moved on from that to highlighting the need to move from punitive to restorative justice in the workplace.
Unusual spring
If the new boundaries are just an expensive rebranding with no material changes, then of course, BoZo will be all for it...
Those with assets are voting Tory, those without are split roughly 50-50.
And what about interest rates pensioners paid/what they receive now? How’s that them being so lucky?
There has to be a better way to resolve workplace conflicts. One that is fairer and also cheaper, as suspensions and wrongful dismissal cases can be eye watering expensive and damaging to an organisation.
The odd one is why Bolton seems so badly effected but we're not really seeing it in Wembley, Ealing or Harrow. There's definitely something that needs investigating within that difference.
No-one wants to be shat on by ice balls from the sky.
The boundaries are based on the number of electors in March 2020. Some seats are definitely disappearing particularly in Wales which loses 8 seats
What I don't like is the political gesturism of it all, playing politics with the criminal justice system. I think it is a bad idea in general. I don't have any particular problem with misogyny being an aggravation, I just don't like any of them.
But Philips, the Shadow Minister for domestic violence about to launch this exciting new policy had clearly not thought any of this through. What she was concerned about was that misogyny was not being treated like racism, disability discrimination or any other bad thing. It was embarrassing.
It is obvious that the unborn child is worthy of protection. It isn't obvious exactly how much.
The fact that every word of what I have just written is bitterly contested is fascinating.
That this cohort of pensioners is (on average) far richer than those who go before them is surely not in doubt? Again whether that is down to "luck" or "hard work" does not matter much, it is in their economic interests to protect their wealth and that impacts the political sphere.
It is also only about mistakes, not ill intentioned acts.
It is very effective in air accident investigation, because of buy-in by all parties. Even there, though, there have been problems with outside bodies (such as police forces) trying to find "the guilty party" and being upset at being rebuffed,
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire has been more successful than Israel-Palestine ones.
That may be a factor like Leicester.
Of course if inflation does pick up, and interest rates too, then we will see some real pain coming out of that inequality.
@AllieHBNews
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Tuesday’s Daily MAIL: “Now Vaccine Refuseniks Threaten Freedom” #TomorrowsPapersToday
Tory MPs and Cabinet ministers warn Johnson not to put back 21st June unlocking in order to protect anti-vaxxers.
We all know what she means, bless her, she wants women more protected - hooray; and would like a world where the philosophy of punishment wasn't directed and dictated by the editor of Sun and Mail. So she is easily got on the horns of a dilemma. Gosh.
Most politicians avoid this by saying nothing interesting and talking in Martian.
Jess Phillips is a star. She is so good I sometimes wish there was a Labour party I could vote for in general elections. If she was leader I would break a habit and do so.
Give them all the jab and try and turn this around.
It isn't even a good predictor of voting behaviour any more.
Boris won't want to be perceived as a failure by not getting 21/6 done. Nor is it necessary to delay it.
Of course, plenty of folk around the country had already sussed that for themselves
I just don't see that working, and the definition will be on wheels.
Unless anyone has a workable defition? (Genuine question)
Though one thing that I like about the Midlands is that there is a more American attitude. Money equals class much more here, not least because the rest of the country looks down on the Midlands.
We have to make the old normal come back for the sake of pubs, bars, restaurants, clubs and other hospitality businesses. Rule breaking doesn't help them.
D Mail
The UK is facing a shortage of Cadbury 99 Flakes after a surge in demand for soft-serve ice creams topped with the crumbly, chocolate treat.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57149071
Board members at Microsoft Corp. made a decision in 2020 that it wasn’t appropriate for its co-founder Bill Gates to continue sitting on its board as they investigated the billionaire’s prior romantic relationship with a female Microsoft employee that was deemed inappropriate, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Citing unnamed sources, The Journal reported online Sunday that board members looking into the matter hired a law firm in late 2019 to conduct an investigation after a Microsoft engineer alleged in a letter that she had a sexual relationship with Gates over several years.
The Journal reported that Gates resigned before the board’s investigation was finished, citing another person familiar with the matter.
An unnamed spokeswoman for Gates acknowledged to The Journal that there was an affair almost 20 years ago, and that it ended “amicably.” The spokesperson told The Journal that “his decision to transition off the board was in no way related to this matter.””
When he left Microsoft’s board last year, Gates said he was stepping down to focus on philanthropy.
In an email sent to The Associated Press late Sunday, Microsoft said that it “received a concern in the latter half of 2019 that Bill Gates sought to initiate an intimate relationship with a company employee in the year 2000. A committee of the Board reviewed the concern, aided by an outside law firm, to conduct a thorough investigation. Throughout the investigation, Microsoft provided extensive support to the employee who raised the concern.”
Comment - Have always had a lot of respect for Bill the Billionaire's father, who was a highly successful Seattle attorney & moderate, country-club Republican (a "Dan Evans Republican" as we say in WA) who led unsuccessful effort to pass a statewide initiative establishing an upper-income state income tax.
Never had much respect for Bill Gates as a person. Always thought he was more lucky than visionary and more into ego gratification than philanthropy. All of which I thought & said (if not here) long BEFORE Melinda lowered the boom on him.
And to be honest, I am more comfortable with that, than the notion of class based on wealth, education or social standing.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/05/17/stereotypical-image-red-wall-residents-accurate