Tory elections expert Lord Hayward reckons that new boundaries give a 5-10 seat bonus to his party – politicalbetting.com
Surprise, surprise – Proposed electoral map boundary changes will benefit the Tories. pic.twitter.com/wNadBcIfDI
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Back in 2005 a 2% Lab lead resulted in a Lab majority of 66 whilst in 2010 a Tory lead of 7% led to the Tories to being just short of a majority,
No side effects from Second AZ dose except for the mildest of mild headaches.
Still seeing the same things - cases up in the younger groups, hospitalisations up in the younger groups.
Deaths are still falling
The changes in what is these days called Lancashire look a complete dogs breakfast though, designed to alienate everyone in every seat! Not as bad as 2013's shambles, but still not going to go down well. Hyndburn probably more likely to stay Tory, the others harder to say and one Tory seat (Wyre & Preston N, Ben Wallace) goes completely.
Not sure NW Tories are going to be massively enthused by what the BC has thrown up here...
The glittering prize of a biosecurity state (to "protect the NHS") is now just three months away. Of course the scare stories are going to get more lurid and the screaming ever louder between now and then.
Meanwhile, it's already blindingly obvious to anyone who can read the NHS stats that the Delta variant isn't a serious threat. You only have to compare the hospitalisation and death counts for March-April 20 and September-October 20 with April-May 21 to see that the first two were genuinely powerful surges, whereas the third (and I chose this interval because the initial seeding of Delta into the UK reportedly happened in late March-early April) is a barely noticeable blip by comparison.
The only real excuse for further prevarication is to pursue an utterly mad Zero Covid policy, i.e. to attempt total suppression of the disease forever. If that's what the public health establishment and the Government wants then they ought at least to have the decency to say so.
AFAICS most of them had bigger second waves than wave one, and a good number have never really got case levels back under control after that at all until now - and several are still running at 100-150 now.
Only perhaps Germany / Portugal got their spring case rates on a 7-day basis (normally our numbers are 14 days) below our current peak spot in Bolton. Germany /Portugal had horrific peaks at Christmas - in Germany's case an awful peak relative to wave 1. Belgium too, but they did not take the lessons.
Dave’s only mistake was to back the wrong horse.
What matters is the difference the new boundaries would make in a range of credible scenarios where there is a genuine contest for power - I.e. where the two main parties are at least close in terms of support.
If the Tories are going to win anyway, then it’s academic.
The important thing is the boundaries are up to date, and fairly reflect contemporary (or near contemporary) population distributions.
Very possible, though.
They are far too out of date, and the process is independent and provides challenge. Yes, the parameters are there, but I'm not sure that opening the range of division size a little more would benefit anyone really and the principle is sound.
There's also something about movement / borders being kept open.
Do these numbers tell us something about different likely levels of 'Long Covid'.
CCHQ in the Cameron/Osborne era convinced itself Labour was cheating, by grabbing all the Welsh seats. Since then, the Conservatives have tried actually campaigning in Wales, and in 2019 won 14 seats against Labour's 22 (with the remaining 4 for Plaid Cymru).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88cihHeNBkU
Agreeing to a deal which drew a border down the Irish Sea was pure Johnson: no attention to detail
...
The [Northern Ireland] protocol was yet one more device dreamed up by the EU to try to punish Britain, to make life so miserable that other countries would think twice before emulating Britain and holding an in-out referendum. Boris Johnson resigned as foreign secretary in 2018 to frustrate the Chequers agreement because he could see Theresa May was falling into a trap – the backstop – which would enable the EU to keep Britain within its regulatory orbit. But then he stumbled headlong into a trap that was just as deep, and contained just as many sharpened sticks.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/08/theresa-may-saw-irish-protocol-toxic-trap-couldnt-boris/ (£££)
But yes, a long low wave can contain as many deaths as a shorter higher one.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1402303375732006912?s=20
Elected {everything} was an attempt to avoid a Squirearchy.
Why?
Dilution of the new encomenacy boost, as is often talked about on the site, a new MP, and especially a new party, can expect to gain a few hundred votes above the national trend. a few hundred votes may not be a lot, but if its concentrated in the marginals, then it does.
The Tories picked up 58 seats last time, so could expect a boost in each of those, but if now some are safe seats and some are hopeless, and the others lose one bit and gain another then it will not have the same affect.
(P.S. Sorry for the spelling of encomabancy, spell check does not recognise it as a word)
On the basis of these boundaries there ought, presumably, to be more than enough of them to go around?
Shades of Charlie Kennedy's decapitation strategy?
Malc is right imo on this - Murray did no more than nearly a whole football team of journalists, and I think the only ones that have been gone for are Murray and one other who are both broadly sympathetic to Salmond.
I don't see much that sets a precedent elsewhere in the EU.
He didn’t name names, and you couldn’t work out names from his posts.
You could, if you already knew the names, work backwards, but that’s the wrong way around.
At the time of Murray’s sentencing at the High Court in Edinburgh last month, Lady Dorrian said his repeated breaches, which included refusing to remove blog posts despite legal warnings from the Crown Office, represented a "contempt of considerable gravity".
Murray's offending posts were written over a period of a month and remained up, unredacted, despite him being told they could potentially lead to the identification of women who had made complaints about Mr Salmond, who was eventually acquitted of all 13 charges.
Lady Dorrian explained: "It appears from the posts and articles that he was in fact relishing the task he set himself, which was essentially to allow the identities of complainers to be discerned – which he thought was in the public interest – in a way which did not attract sanction."
I think it makes the long low wave very clear to reduce the number of countries:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/08/apple-private-relay-feature-to-be-withheld-in-china
Scotland's Crown Office is hardly Credibility Central.
It seems Residents' Association candidates picked up a fair number of votes too
http://mygov.elmbridge.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=43&RPID=524517817
http://mygov.elmbridge.gov.uk/mgElectionResults.aspx?ID=42&RPID=524517828
Instead, you just whinge. It's no wonder Boris keeps winning....
The Blair Government's original excuse for leaving the Welsh MPs alone was that Scotland got a Parliament whereas Wales, essentially, got a turbo-charged county council. That situation no longer applies. So, bye bye extra Welsh MPs. This does not seem unreasonable.
Those Salmond supporters who defend Murray also need to ask themselves would they be fine with this if another prominent blogger during the trial posted things which painted Salmond badly/guilty?
I don't know how Germany allocates the seats to the provinces for the Senate, the boundaries do not change, but I assume the number of seats as based on population.
Britain is out of the EU's regulatory orbit now, which wasn't possible under the backstop.
Now instead of Britain being trapped, all we have left to sort out is the Protocol, which its now in our interests to make as unworkable and irritating and frustrating as possible for the EU until it gets scrapped. Britain isn't going back into the EU's orbit so the reason for dealing with the Protocol is gone now.
Oxford University's Magdalen college has voted to remove a portrait of the Queen from a common room because she 'represents recent colonial history'"
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1402303448524148737
Especially relevant when exercising control of elsewhere permits you to help yourself to its citizens' money, at zero cost to you.
Could be quite the showdown, if the UK Supreme Court are forced to rule that his prosecution in Scotland was politically motivated.
Conservatives run election on promise to level up left behind towns.
Those towns flip and vote for the Conservatives in massive numbers.
Conservatives follow up by giving development money to said left behind towns.
Is there something I'm missing?
Iceland 2
58 mins
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/en/football/friendlies-international/poland-v-iceland-betting-30583261
I think they should just dissolve themselves and be done with it.
The opposition keep moaning, and in so doing actually help the Tories - who are shown as levelling up Towns.....