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The LDs have a better than 6% chance of taking Chesham & Amersham – politicalbetting.com
The LDs have a better than 6% chance of taking Chesham & Amersham – politicalbetting.com
What Hartlepool has done to Starmer, Chesham and Amersham can do to Johnson https://t.co/U4tWDDy7NC
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Even in the unlikely event that the LDs won the by-election it would be like the LDs winning by-elections in prior Parliaments, it won't create a crisis like Starmer.
4th like Labour in C&A?
Speaking of which, Sainz still looking genuinely quick in FP2.
Leclerc showing the signs of having missed FP1.
What ANY reason? None at all? Not the fact that it seems to be predominant in areas with relatively low vaccine take-up? And probably with a reasonable number of people who actually caught it in India and are now spreading it amongst their families in a load of mini "super spreader" events. And may find more resistance elsewhere?
And anyway what is "a third wave"? Large numbers of cases everywhere? Or actually a significant effect on public health? The almost complete lack of discussion about the (quite high likelihood) that high transmission does not equal serious public health problem is incredibly frustrating. Ministers keep referencing hospitalisations to be fair. But day after day we just get SAGE scientists appearing on the news saying that the main criteria to judge the risk of the variant is transmissibility.
The Tory vote in the seat was also down 5% at the 2019 general election against the national trend so it is clearly an area not that keen on either Brexit or Boris.
I still expect a Tory hold but the LDs to cut their majority significantly
https://twitter.com/bbcscotland/status/1395116801810305024?s=21
Why do these fuckers never get challenged on this?
I don't want to see them ripped to pieces. Just a simple polite 'but why won't vaccines prevent a third wave? In which case why are we bothering with them?'
Ministers could use TINDER to boost vaccine roll-out in the young: Dating app users may get a 'blue tick' to show they've been jabbed with scheme set to invite all over-18s next month
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9600165/Covid-19-UK-Ministers-use-TINDER-boost-vaccine-roll-young.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57189371
Does anyone actually care though?
https://twitter.com/f365/status/1395314422202212353?s=21
I think it's similar in nature, but would appear to be a one off, which means it's not nearly so serious for the BBC as it was for the NOTW (though, not Maguire's Mirror).
Reminds me of the early days of phone "hacking". It wasn't illegal (as there was no laws in place that considered it) and most people never changed the default pin, so essentially there answer phone was open.
Can't the Canuck government afford Apple products?
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau busted using fake Mac with Apple sticker
A photograph of Canada's Justin Trudeau shows him using a HP Windows laptop, which wouldn't be remarked upon, but it sporting an Apple sticker will be.
Finally, a genuine use for those logo stickers that Apple keeps on shipping. Apple is the company that wouldn't let Intel put a sticker on its computers, but believes we have a passion for the things.
Maybe some of us do, but there's passion, and there's having an outlet for that passion. Someone has got a sticker from a friend and carefully placed it on a Windows laptop. And, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used it on a virtual meeting.
Whoever placed the sticker got it in the vicinity of where Apple does, if not quite as precise as Apple's placement. Unfortunately, they haven't entirely nailed covering up the Hewlett Packard logo underneath.
And if you want to press for more details about "stickergate," there's another one in shot. Just beneath the keyboard of this HP laptop, there's what is most likely an Intel Inside sticker.
It could be one of those peculiar PC things where there's a sticker on the chassis to tell you the computer's specifications. You know, the ones you already saw on the box, the sales receipt, and when you bought the thing.
But specifications or Intel Inside, this is a PC laptop very poorly masquerading as a Mac. To be fair, Trudeau seems to be enjoying looking like he's a Mac user, and that may also be because of where he's sitting.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/19/canadian-pm-justin-trudeau-busted-using-fake-mac-with-apple-sticker
I actually have a lot of time for the traditional counties but putting boundaries down the middle of rivers in the middle of big cities is senseless. Just as London is rightfully one unit (rather than split between Surrey and Middlesex) so should be Newcastle.
By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick* was in Yorkshire.
Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:
Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."
(*It's been in Lancashire since 1974, whatever the 'Yorkshire Riding Society' – er, who? – might wish to be the case)
So, we could be at the start of a 'third wave', but that wave probably won't be very big (at least in hospitalisations and deaths). And this variant probably will end up spreading around the country, particularly if it's more transmissible (will come to dominate over the other variants).
One thing that is quite alarming (e.g. in the SAGE models from 12 May) is that they appear to be still using the early assumptions on vaccine efficacy, from February or whenver they started (if anyone knows the assumptions have been updated, please correct me - I'd be very happy to learn that). Max was apalled by that back then and I disagreed, arguing there was uncertainty still and they were not completely bonkers for worst case scenario (there were also more optimistic projections). But now, if the same assumptions are still being used, I'm as apalled as Max. From the graphs, it looks as though nothing has been updated and even the more optimistic models are pessimistic compared to where we are in reality today. That's wrong (if it is the case) and I find it both incomprehensible and indefensible.
Ferrari definitely quick. (And Verstappen getting sweary about his car balance.)
They doesn't seem that different from what journalists did back in the day which is even if somebody had set their phone to a different pin, they could use others unprotected phones to find things out.
https://twitter.com/UK_Polling/status/1387887746505715715?s=19
Credit to them for revising their model.
Warrington itself originally may be north of the river, but whether north or south of it, its one town, and it makes far more sense for me to consider Warrington as part of Cheshire than Lancashire.
I see only 4 MSPs agreed with Mr Rennie, presumably including his good self.
It isn't the most fertile Lib Dem territory the South has to offer (nor the worst) so I would be quite surprised if the Lib Dems got within 3 or 4,000 votes of the Tories unless National circumstances change dramatically in the next few weeks.
Chesham and Amersham however is a wealthy and fiscally conservative but pro Remain Home Counties seat with an aversion to HS2 and new housing, the type of seat an anti hard Brexit, NIMBY LDs led by the Orange Book Ed Davey should be doing well in
FridayThursday to appease the sponsors.They've got one of the best models of all predictors I've seen. They called the 2019 GE almost spot on, the last Canadian election almost spot on. Though they were too bullish on Biden.
LD - second with a respectable showing but not that close
LAB - will they bother?
They're not employees and - as a scientist - I'd want to be able to speak out if the government was going agaist the evidence, particularly if they claimed to be 'following the science' at the same time. I guess the option would be to resign, but then you're left with the dilemma of whether to stay and keep arguing your case from the inside or leave and give up what influence you have to turn things around. I'd also want to be able to publish the research showing X while the government was loudly proclaiming Y, even if I chose not to talk to the media.
On the other hand, scientists are often (as we've seen) not good at putting science-speak on probabilities and the like into words the public understand and can be naive about how statements are interpreted. It's part of just not being willing to rule things out or make statements that are very general. Are vaccines safe, for example? Well as a scientist I know I can only really say that there's no evidence (other than AZN with the blood clots, which is small) of notable risks and I also know that eating bacon is not absolutely safe and neither is driving a car. But the correct/most true answer, for the media and public use of language is "yes".
Chesham and most of the constituency aren't impacted at all, it really is only Amersham Old Town and Great Missenden that will see building work.
Makes no sense for me to divide towns down the middle.
The actual problem is the nature of the media, rather than the nature of the scientists.
They’re having political journalists interview scientists, who really aren’t used to that.
If a media organisation were to spend half an hour with a SAGE member and a scientific journalist, and then air the interview unedited or with the permission of the interview subject, that would of course be fine.
The OP was about Gateshead. My friend is originally from Gateshead. Does she consider it part of County Durham? No. Do many people under the age of 50? I doubt it.
They are quick enough to be in contention (& v impressive from Leclerc to get up to speed so quickly).
Of course no one knows exactly how much fuel everyone was carrying.
The Lib Dems got 2.5% of the vote in 2016 in Glasgow and were down nationally in the polling yet somehow leantossup gave them the 5th list seat. They would have had to quadruple their polling to get that
Saying that out loud then gets into a the issue of who the unvaccinated are.
Just sayin'...... Sir Ed Davey's LibDems getting the win needs some serious special pleading.
We can do this, on June 21st I think we should be one of the only places in the world to have a fully open country that doesn't rely on zero COVID measures like NZ or Oz.
There were basically just very few by-elections in Tory seats in Kennedy's time as leader simply because the Tories had relatively few MPs - aside from that, I think it was just Kensington & Chelsea right at the start of his term (Cheadle was a yellow v blue contest in a Lib Dem seat, which was held).
In terms of General Elections, the picture differed in 2001 and 2005 under Kennedy. 2001 Kennedy gains were mainly from the Conservatives (six from them, plus holding Romsey, one from Labour - balanced by two losses to the Tories). 2005 were mainly from Labour (nine from them, with two gains from and three losses to the Tories).
For Ashdown, his leadership was basically at the fag end of a Tory Government - of course the by-election gains and 1997 gains were from them.
So I don't think you can say Kennedy was just fundamentally more appealing to urban lefties. It's just that's where most of the opportunities came from during his time in office.
Seriously, I wonder if Ms Green could actually lose because voters are confused which party she's standing for.
42 LD
Would be my guess.
I think that makes almost 20-1 for the LDs good value. Indeed, I'd probably back them down to about 8-1.
That being said, you wouldn't want to do it for lots of money, but the current odds are too long.
I think the Tories will win, but it's perfectly possible that some local issue will resonate and which will enable the LDs to snatch the seat.
In 2005 do not forget the LDs were left of Labour effectively which is not the case now post Blair and post Coalition
https://twitter.com/grantshapps/status/1395295480704380930?s=21
Cons are doing pretty well in the polls... but absolutely spectacularly in places like Hartlepool and Walsall. Results which by UNS would imply they were on 55% + nationally. So they must be doing quite badly some places too. We thought that was London, but actually in the mayoral vote Con didn't do that badly. So my assumption is that the places where the Con vote has fallen quite a lot to balance the red wall is Shire Remainia.
I'm on the LDs here. I don't expect them to win, but I think anything better than 6-1 is good value.
Barnoldswick - like Saddlesworth - is Yorkshire. Regardless of which LA they are now in. Go ask the people who live there.
Is there some local housing development that is quite unpopular that the LibDems can exploit? Is the local A&E being cut? The LibDems win these kind of seats (at byelections) by finding something local that people want to protest. (And remember that, with a majority of 80, this is very much a free hit. There's no danger of letting Corbyn in.)
But there's no obvious reason that the unit of sub-geography that someone associates with should be the local government unit.
It's not just cricket. Lots of organisations still associate with the pre-1974 counties - because why change to reflect local government?
Really, I just want to be able to have a set of units we can all understand and stick to and which are immutable. I don't necessarily want this to mean anything beyond a set of lines on a map - I just want to be able to ask a quiz question like 'name the 9 teams from Cheshire which have ever been in the football league' without having to issue a subsequent explanation of what I mean by 'Cheshire'.
By the way, guess what, it's generational? In his excellent book Engel's England Matthew Engels was dismayed to find younger people baffled by the idea that Barnoldswick was in Yorkshire.
Engels asked 10 people which county it was in:
Four said Lancashire, three said Yorkshire and three didn't care... A teenage girl kindly switched off her iPad to talk to me and looked disgusted."Yorkshire? It's just the elderly people who think that."
And he, or a minion, has it illustrated with a classic Stephensonian locomotive (by the look of it, a Royal Scot or Princess). That's a bit like illustrating an announcement on broadband/internet interconnectivity with the Admiralty semaphore station on Telegraph Hill.
I suppose it saves the day when they screw up electrification yet again, like they did with the GWR main line.
There was also a suggestion (on here, I think) that low take up in some areas was due to work schedules and a lack of local vaccination centres. Well, get the centres in there to make it easy. Use the local contacts. I don't know whether Bradford is a problem area, but the Born In Bradford research and Better Start Bradford interventions mean that there is a network of scientists, doctors and the public that know each other, trust each other and are used to working together. That - and things like it elsewhere - can and should be used.
Helps when you get on at even longer odds.
Value losers aren't always losers, as you point out, but you do need to back them regularly to benefit in the way you suggest.
York itself never was in the North Riding or indeed any riding. It was an enclave of its own.
York is the traditional county town of Yorkshire, and therefore did not form part of any of its three historic ridings, or divisions
The question is how persuadable people are - once they have bullshit in their heads, it's often hard to get it out again.
In some cases, the problem *is* the community leaders....
The problem is that if you start down the road of a message that be seen by idiots as "it's all the fault of them'uns"....