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Comparing the latest polling – pollster by pollster – politicalbetting.com
Comparing the latest polling – pollster by pollster – politicalbetting.com
With Opnium showing a markedly differently CON lead than the other firms it is useful just look at all of the numbers firm by firm.
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While Yougov would give an increased Tory majority for example, Opinium would see the Tory majority fall from 80 to just 30
Chesham & Amersham
Conservative 1/25
LibDem 10/1 (15 on Betfair in a thin market).
As we close in on the 14th June and Boris decides to announce the 21st June opening, maybe with a few minor caveats, the following weeks and months will be intriguing
Lots of scientists and the media will be under the spotlight if there is only a relative minor increase in hospitalisations and sadly deaths.
I am not an expert, but it does seem it is largely the unvaccinated and young who are contracting covid now and with less severity I pose the question, is this going to see us enter into herd immunity, especially with the amazing vaccine success
"For the UK and elsewhere the pandemic’s end is in sight"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/31/rich-countries-vaccines-covid-19-manageable-health-issue-pandemic
Ok, so we've made some changes to the virus. How do we know that it has made the virus more virulent?
CV19 spread more widely, and did more damage, than SARS not because it was more transmissible, but because there are a lot of asymptomatic and presymptomatic carriers.
It is not simply am "amped up" version of a virus is nature (in the way that South African or Kent variants are more potent at evading the body's immune systems and spreading faster).
What makes it so effective is something that requires significant time in humans to observe. How works the virologists know this and design for this, when our understanding of how viruses work is so limited?
Remember, the virus is one step further away from mRNA. The virus outputs mRNA to tell our cells what to produce. We've only got to a reasonable level of understanding of mRNA this year. The designed virus hypothesis requires the Chinese researchers to be be a decade or more ahead of those in the West.
Which is possible. But it's quite hard to hide the fact that you know so very much more than other people.
No one even marginally sane goes into politics at all. No one who is not bat shit insane goes into politics to be the opposition.
I guess you and Ishmael are too busy - so how about Bill Gates or George Soros?
So the extremes are less likely to be outliers in the usual sense when a repeated sample has produced a similar result.
Opinium lead 30th April: 5
Opinium lead 14th May: 13
Opinium lead 28th May: 6
Opinium lead Xth June: ???
Opinium looks particularly susceptible to the short-term impact of stories that receive saturation coverage in the media - Wallpapergate and Cummingsgate II most recently (like World Wars, we've started numbering them!). Then the saturation coverage ends and the long-term trend reasserts itself. YouGov, by contrast, astutely filters out the most highly-engaged voters and so tends to avoid the whiplash effect produced by the volatile moods of the obsessives following every syllable of the proceedings:
Your argument proves too much; it proves that virology is just too difficult to do, and therefore there are no virologists. What point would there be in doing gain of function research if there is no way of knowing whether function has been gained!
An increased Tory majority of 100 though would be back to 1983 or 1987 levels and leave Labour even further away from power than they are now.
I can't see it here (which must be what the DM mean by their slightly oddly worded citation):
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/qrb-discovery/accepted-manuscripts
And the only Dalgleish paper that comes up on a sewarch in that journal is one of a year or so back (I checked both spellings of the name to be sure).
Question for statisticians:
As I understand it the ordinary poll is subject to a margin of error about 3 percentage points either way. So a Lab figure of 35 is consistent with 32-38.
Is this true of the small figures for smaller parties. If the real LD score is say 8% should I expect, in the absence of real change, the figures to range between 5 and 11? If true it would explain quite a bit.
Finally, while a Tory lead looks baked in nothing about current times tells us about the score once stuff happens, like ending furlough, inflation happening, dealing with deficit etc. Except that a Labour majority looks impossible most other things could happen.
Was Brabin a smart operator ? Is she going to be a good mayor ?
It's possible that Chinese virologists know a lot, lot more than Western virologists. (Although that does raise the question of why they have produced such poor vaccines )
There are lots of possibilities, from traditional animal-human transfer, to accidental release of captured virus, to escape of a recombinant virus, to engineered (weaponised) virus.
And all any of us can do is assign probabilities to them, because none of us know.
But, given the worst poll for the Tories has them with a 30 seat majority, how is Con Maj EVS?
Starmer does like The Jam btw. He especially likes the album of theirs which you said is your favourite. The one you mentioned the other day. He loves that album too.
- The election will be 2024ish rather than tomorrow (if a very early election was forced it's be a negative). This means that there's lot of time for events to change the picture, and the government has a lot of future issues ahead with debt/deficits/nhs wages/etc
- Election campaigns can change a lot.
- There's some slight disaster insurance bias. Larger bettors are probably more likely to be richer, and would likely prefer a Tory government for economic reasons - thus are less likely to be doubling up by also backing them.
Well, as we know, there's polling and there's polling so I thought I'd liven your Monday evening with another of my "European tours" of the polls.
Let's kick off in Germany with another INSA poll (changes since last poll):
CDU/CSU-EPP: 25.5% (-0.5)
GRÜNE-G/EFA: 21.5% (-0.5)
SPD-S&D: 15.5% (-0.5)
FDP-RE: 13.5% (+1)
AfD-ID: 11% (-0.5)
LINKE-LEFT: 6.5%
Another "high" number for the FDP and within just two points of the SPD - the thought the FDP might come third in front of the SPD now looks at least plausible even if still incredible.
One part of Europe where politics looks quite stable currently is Greece - remember, the Greece that was going to crash out of the Euro, the Greece whose chaos overshadowed the formation of the Coalition in 2010?
Changes since last election (2019)
ND-EPP: 47% (+7)
SYRIZA-LEFT: 25% (-6)
KINAL-S&D: 8% (unc)
KKE-NI: 7% (+2)
EL-ECR: 5% (+1)
MeRA25~LEFT: 4% (unc)
On these numbers, Mitsotakis and the New Democracy Government would be re-elected with an increased majority but the election isn't until July 2023.
Closer to home and the latest Red C poll from Ireland (changes from 2020 election)
SF-LEFT: 29% (+4)
FG-EPP: 29% (+8)
FF-RE: 14% (-8)
Greens-G/EFA: 5% (-2)
SOC DEM→S&D: 5% (+2)
LAB-S&D: 3% (-1)
S-PBP~LEFT: 2% (unc)
AONTU-*: 2% (unc)
I wonder if we are seeing a re-alignment to a new duopoly with the FF/FG split which has dominated Irish politics for decades being replaced by a new SF/FG split with FF fading away.
In Greece Syriza has now faded like Corbyn Labour.
In Ireland it certainly looks like SF on the left and pushing hardest for a United Ireland and FG on the centre right are becoming the main parties but FF, traditionally a bit more socially conservative and closest to the Catholic Church, is now fading.
FG will still need FF support to keep SF out of power however
To have one of these mutations would be highly unusual. To have multiple mutations, that occurred simultaneously (or at least where we have been completely unable to identify the precursors) is highly highly improbable.
The simple answer is probably the correct one. It is also extremely dull and unexciting:
1. The lab collected the base virus. We know they collected similar viruses
2. The lab tweaked the virus. We know they were undertaking gain of function modifications (from grant applications) including insertion of the furin cleavage site (from published papers)
3. The virus escaped from the lab
It’s a combination of stupidity, greed, negligence, and sheer bad luck. Like pretty much every other disaster that has occurred in the modern world.
To the extent that China is to be blamed it is in respect of slipshod regulation, a cover up and their willingness to encourage foreign travel at a time they knew what was coming
😂😂😂😂
They might not have known about the asymptomatic cases.
They also did much of their research, it turns out, in a BSL2 lab, which has a few masks and labcoats, like a dentist, not the BSL4 maximum security lab with its hazmat suits
The BSL2 lab is much nearer the wet market. If we're looking for an actual source, we should look at the lower level lab
So keep an eye on PMQs to see if Starmer has found anything in Cummings' testimony.
The answer is Yes. And they were getting somewhere, in making nastier viruses, according to their lovely ally and funder, Peter Daszak
"Peter Daszak on December 9, 2019: “we now found over a 100 new SARS-related coronaviruses. Some of them get into human cells in the lab, some can cause SARS disease in humanized mice models and are untreatable with therapeutic monoclonals, and you cannot vaccinate against them”."
https://twitter.com/ydeigin/status/1263535331162406916?s=20
Tonight's guest poll isn't from Europe at all but from Armenia (changes from last election);
IKD~EPP: 39% (-31)
HD-S&D: 30% (+26)
BHK-ECR: 7% (-1)
HK-*: 5% (+5)
PUD-EPP: 5% (unc)
Now, I'm sure we are all well versed in Armenian politics but to refresh a few memories - the My Step Alliance Grouping, a merger of Civil Contract and the Mission Party, won a landslide in the 2018 elections taking 70.4% of the vote and winning 88 of the 132 seats in the Armenian Parliament.
Earlier this month, My Step (Im Kayly Dashnik in Armenian) (IKD) was dissolved when Civil Contract, the party of the Prime Minister, Nikol Pashminyan, decided they would run as an independent party in the forthcoming elections on June 20th - these were brought forward from 2023 following the unrest and turmoil resulting from Armenia's defeat by Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict last year.
Civil Contract faces a new challenger in the Armenian Alliance, formed three weeks ago, a joining together of the old Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the new Reborn Armenia.
"Since 2014, Daszak's organization has received millions of dollars of funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which it has funneled to the Wuhan Inst of Virology to carry out research on bat coronaviruses"
"The second, more dangerous phase, which started in 2019, involved gain-of-function (GoF) research on coronaviruses and chimeras in humanized mice from the lab of Ralph S. Baric of the University of North Carolina."
Here is the real kicker:
"In a presentation titled "Assessing Coronavirus Threats," which was delivered four years before the pandemic in 2015, Daszak points out that experiments involving humanized mice have the highest degree of risk."
https://twitter.com/Smackenziekerr/status/1352445421323337729?s=20
What's that? Risk? Highest risk of WHAT??
The referenced paper is here
www.nationalacademies.org
But yes- being in opposition sucks. Parties that would rather have the perfect LotO rather than an imperfect PM are decadent and foolish. And yet they all do it at some point in the opposition cycle of grief.
Yet this is the research they went on to do?!
I may be misreading it, I am not a virologist. Thank God
Ireland is also intriguing - do you think we are seeing a re-alignment? FG has always seemed to me to be the Irish embodiment of liberal conservatism and has always had more strength in urban than rural areas - the latter being dominated by the socially conservative Fianna Fail. Sinn Fein's return to political prominence has shaken everything up but, as you say, it's hard to see either FF or FG working with or supporting an SF government. I feat that may only hold the line for a while and one day the UK Government may end up having to deal with an elected Sinn Fein Government in Dublin.
How do you think it will end up in Germany? I think it's 60-40 the Union still being the largest party in the next Bundestag but perfectly conceivable there will be an alternative coalition formed headed by the Greens which could command a small majority.
And Osaka has pulled out of the French Open rather than answer press questions.
Lets hope we don't get a Mexican Wave!
Gets poncho
In addition, we have the mystery of a virus whose closest relative is in a bat in Yunnan, 1000 miles from Wuhan. Bats are not sold in the Wuhan wet market, nor anywhere else in Wuhan. And somehow this virus went from Yunnan to Wuhan and evolved without infecting anyone on the way....
Of course, we do know one way the bats might have got from Yunnan to Wuhan. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was collecting infected bats in Yunnan, and bringing them back to Wuhan for study, for several years, prior to the pandemic
Such was the enthusiasm for one of the biggest walk-in vaccination events in England that queues had started to form by 8.30am"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/31/twickenham-scrum-over-18s-flock-get-covid-vaccines/
But all things considered, an 80 seat majority, up to 14 points ahead in the polls vs a divided opposition with a leader that is less charismatic than the PM, what would it take for that 1/6 shot to become EVS? Much, much too much for the EVS not to be a bet in my opinion
How will we deal with that? What does it do to science? It sure screws virology. No more "gain of function". And what will it do to our relations with China?
Here's a Telegraph article saying a lab leak "confirmation" will lead to an economic crash. I think it is hyperbolic, but it is interesting
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/05/31/wuhan-lab-leak-may-biggest-economic-shock-decades/
A By Election too
Another one at start of July
Whats your version of less shit
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-57308592
Finally a use for all of you with your Classics degrees
The Tories won 113 seats to the Lib Dems' 15, and it transpires that the main LD nexus of strength (accounting for 13 of those 15 councillors) is Aylesbury. The Conservatives appear to have a monopoly of seats in all of the three-member wards that contain the names Chesham or Amersham.
This does rather suggest that the LDs might have a better chance if Aylesbury were the vacancy to be filled (albeit that they would need to stage a charge from third place to supplant Labour, their support having collapsed in 2015 as in so many other places.) But it's actually taking place in Chesham & Amersham of course - and if both the strength of anti-Tory feeling and the Lib Dems' own strength on the ground were really that great in the constituency, then one might've expected them to win more than the square root of bugger all there.
Consequently, whilst one would expect the Conservative majority to be cut significantly both in absolute and proportional terms, there's no particular reason to suppose that the Liberal Democrats will run them close. Certainly making the Tories 1-20 favourites to hold seems entirely justified.
I can understand you defending SKS mind Tory reelection nailed on
My Dad bought me a book for Christmas called "To Be Someone" by Ian D Stone. This IDS is a massive Jam fan and also a massive Arsenal fan, so two big ticks from me, he is in the good books in that respect. Also, my Dad has bought me the book, so I am motivated to read, and enjoy, it. It's the story of a teenager growing up in London supporting the Arsenal and loving The Jam, what's not to like?
A couple of chapters in. getting a real modern left comedian vibe, not making me laugh, but making 'clever'; points. Then, a dig at Brexiteers, comparing Brexit to the numbskullery of the NF in the 70s - tough to take, but I plough on.
Then starts a chapter by stating "Paul Weller was in his mid 20s when he wrote 'I Got By in Time' " - I KNOW Weller was a teenager when that song was released, but I check wiki anyway, hoping against hope to be wrong...
No, I am right. I put the book back on the shelf and move on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omega_Man
It may well be the UK government has to deal with SF in power in Dublin but of course ironically SF has been in power in Belfast since 1998, even if not as the largest party. So the UK government has had plenty of experience of dealing with SF.
Most likely I think Germany will see another Union led government with either the Greens or the Greens and FDP, though there is a small chance of a Green led government if they get most seats with the SPD and FDP
The simple fact that Labour are doing absolutely nothing to push Cummings' deaths by incompetence agenda is slightly unbelievable. Cummings has teed the ball up in front of the posts perfectly for Starmer, but he's still hunting for the ball and the bucket of sand.
Still head and shoulders better than Corbs, RLB, Pidcock...and...Burgon!
So things change.
30 would be the second biggest Tory majority since 1987.
Personally, I hope SKS goes next year, and the Corbynites stop sniping at his replacement.
And I definitely think China tried to cover it up for as long as it could, and silence those who spoke out.
There could be all sorts of reasons for that but it's very far from unheard of in Xi's China.
But not below what's needed when the smaller Parties who don't make 5% threshold are removed from the calculations. Then it becomes really knife edge.
The FDP are very, very wary of the Greens and wouldn't join enthusiastically.
They live IN LAKE BAIKAL. And they are three metre high humanoids in silvery suits
"Another incident cited involved six unknown objects that followed a nuclear submarine in the Pacific. When the sub surfaced, so did the objects — which then lifted themselves out of the water and flew away.
"In perhaps the most compelling account, military divers in Siberia's Lake Baikal, the world's deepest lake, encountered "a group of humanoid creatures dressed in silvery suits" at a depth of 160 feet. Three humans died during the ensuing chase."
https://www.foxnews.com/story/russian-navy-reveals-its-secret-ufo-encounters
Almost as intriguing, the objects in the lake behave exactly like the objects viewed, filmed and caught on radar by the USS Omaha in 2019....
https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/2021/05/31/a-180764-sube-la-cifra-de-fallecidos-por-coronavirus-en-peru-tras-actualizacion/
Just returned home and switched on the 9.00 o clock news
And predictably both Sky and BBC using the same zero covid scientists even one saying it is going to overwhelm the hospitals
They need putting in their box as it is becoming quite ridiculous
We will plod along letting China steal our jobs, our IP and slowly but surely build a military and technological stranglehold as the century progresses.
In the wars or struggles of old, the more introspective protagonists would stop to consider if god was on their side. I sit here wondering if the creators of those UFOs have a side.