In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Big John who become a Boris fan the other day and is now a Starmerite again now Labour is polling better. One of the few to go from Corbyn to Boris, he's a populist, not a Labourite.
Red Brex I assume is a Labour voter who voted Brexit.
Noticeable how the Norwegian conservatives still holding Oslo, even in a poor year. Contrast with London.
The map of Norway is entirely red, apart from some blue and green bits in the far south west + Oslo.
Oslo is the 5th most expensive city in the world, it has a lot of rich residents and more in common with Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster which are still Conservative than Labour Newham or Lewisham or Hackney or Croydon
I'm struggling to think of places less like Kensington & Chelsea than Oslo. Mogadishu?
What an absurd comment, Oslo is one of the most expensive cities in Europe let alone the world
Have you been to Oslo? Have you worked there?
Because suggesting that cities are alike solely based on their 'expensive to live in' ranking is ridiculous.
Oslo is nothing like Kensington & Chelsea. Indeed, I can't think there's any part of the UK that Oslo is like. It's a bit like some parts of Germany, and not a million miles different to Copenhagen, but it's not like Kensington & Chelsea.
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Me and LEXIT
The one making up that Lab were20 points behind 3 months ago is CHB
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
Noticeable how the Norwegian conservatives still holding Oslo, even in a poor year. Contrast with London.
The map of Norway is entirely red, apart from some blue and green bits in the far south west + Oslo.
Oslo is the 5th most expensive city in the world, it has a lot of rich residents and more in common with Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster which are still Conservative than Labour Newham or Lewisham or Hackney or Croydon
I'm struggling to think of places less like Kensington & Chelsea than Oslo. Mogadishu?
What an absurd comment, Oslo is one of the most expensive cities in Europe let alone the world
Have you been to Oslo? Have you worked there?
Because suggesting that cities are alike solely based on their 'expensive to live in' ranking is ridiculous.
Oslo is nothing like Kensington & Chelsea. Indeed, I can't think there's any part of the UK that Oslo is like. It's a bit like some parts of Germany, and not a million miles different to Copenhagen, but it's not like Kensington & Chelsea.
The whole point of the argument was originally about why Oslo had voted Conservative still.
I said because it was a very wealthy and expensive area of Norway like Kensington and Chelsea is a wealthy and expensive area of the UK here which also still votes Conservative. Indeed in most big cities the wealthiest parts still often vote for conservative parties eg in Madrid for PP, rich parts of Paris vote for Les Republicains, the wealthiest part of Sydney voted for the Liberals and Malcolm Turnbull. Only really in the US does that not apply, with the GOP never winning Manhattan or Beverley Hills
I was not suggesting it should be twinned with Kensington and Chelsea!!
A UC claimant doing 2 hours more work gets about £4.50 net after tax and NI and UC taper.
The bad thing is that nobody in the media has a clue how it works either so she can say that and not be challenged there and then for talking through her arse.
She just has been on ITV main news
You really despair about the inept way she came across
It is reputed 100 conservative mps are against the abolition of the uplift and I really hope they vote with labour later this week and shame HMG
The thing is they clearly don't understand the system they've created themselves.
The problem for years now is that the income tax rates have been fudged, so now nobody has a clue that doesn't pay attention that the income tax rate for someone on UC is 75% - and its going to be even higher once this recent tax rise goes up too. 🤦♂️
Why do we tax those less fortunate than ourselves 75%. Its disgusting and nobody campaigns against it.
Not sure how the Income tax rate could be 75%. Could you explain?
"According to Labour, the current system means that a single parent working 30 hours a week on the national living wage loses £573 a month of their universal credit entitlement – equivalent to a marginal tax rate of 75%. It contrasts this with the 47% marginal tax rate faced by people earning over £150,000 a year, such as the prime minister." In that Graun piece I posted just a moment ago.
OIC, you are referring to marginal tax rate.
Not sure how you deal with that. Not have a UC taper? Abolish UC? Increase the Tax allowance to cover it?
You can't - which is why everyone tries to avoid talking about the issue
Universal Basic Income (UBI) gets round the problem. There is no disincentive to work as don't lose any UBI.
The problem with UBI is that it is so expensive, and the taxes you have to raise to pay for it create a disincentive to work even if the UBI itself doesn't. The second problem is that some people will choose not to work, figuring they can get by on UBI, and waste their life smoking dope and playing video games instead of doing something useful. Yes, work can be drudgery and exploitative, but it can also teach discipline and self-reliance. The third issue I have with it is more philosophical I suppose: why shouldn't people who are capable of working for a living go out and earn their own money instead of sponging off everyone else? Sorry for sounding like a Tory. But I think the government should be doing a lot more for children, the disabled, refugees, the environment etc not simply paying able bodied grown adults to sit on their arses all day!
The first problem: Yes taxes create a disincentive but unless you're talking about 75% we're looking at a lower disincentive than what exists today.
The second and third problem: People can already do that on our existing welfare system and once doing that the barriers/disincentives for getting into work are much steeper than what would exist under the proposed system.
Under our existing welfare system you have to be actively seeking work and provide evidence of that to continue to claim.
A UBI by definition would have no such requirement as everyone would get it automatically
That's not actually quite true.
The benefits system is incredibly complex in the UK, and while some benefits (JSA) are dependent on seeing work, that is supplemented by Housing Benefit and various means tested things.
Something else that Switzerland does a lot better than anywhere else in the world is unemployment benefits. A fully contributory system that pays a percentage of your previous wage with a maximum cap for up to 18 months if you've done 3 years of work within the last 4 and 12 months if you've done 2 years in the last 3 or something along those lines. It's generous but difficult to qualify and there's no real concept of long term unemployment or benefits cheats etc... as it's just not possible.
Except if you have not contributed enough and are unemployed then you are stuffed, Switzerland has no non contributory benefits. The benefits are also time limited.
I support a more contributory unemployment benefits system but would still provide a basic minimum
The contribution is time based and only needs 12 months of work in the last 24 to qualify at 80% of your previous wage for 6 months. It's a very low bar and because they don't have idiotic things like housing benefits or in work subsidies no one lives beyond their means and employers pay decent wages so 80% is not an issue.
If we'd had that benefits system the UK would have voted to remain in the EU.
In any case it was downward pressure on wages from migration especially from Eastern Europe without transition controls which was the main reason for working class voters voting Leave, not the fact we did not have a more contributory benefits system
The major driver of it was our non-contributory benefits system. Your inability to deduce never ceases to amaze me, sometimes it is exactly like interacting with an AI.
Was it though? Would immigrants coming for benefits put downward pressure on wages? Surely they are mostly coming here to work at higher wages than they'd been getting in the old country? Both could be true, of course.
But as a cause of Brexit? To a point but a lot of red wall and seaside towns were economically harmed before notable immigration.
There were a mixture of things on immigrants coming over which made the U.K. attractive
- the English language - the free at the point of use health care system if you got sick - the non-contributory welfare system crucially when it came to tax credits, which were vital for those on low paid wages (and whose employers would encourage them to take them so the latter could pay shit wages) - the education system for those who had kids
Re Brexit, the vox pop anecdotal stuff - and from what I got back from my circle of WWC people - was that it was more the pressure on services such as health, education, housing etc that caused more angst rather than the ‘pushing down the cost of Labour’ argument. In some ways that makes sense, especially as many WWC jobs were historically always prone to undercutting from cheap Irish labour.
- Laurel and Hardy: still very funny indeed. - Some Like it Hot and Dr Strangelove - sublime - Surprised no-one mentioned Frasier which is one of the best TV comedies ever: a wonderful mix of character, farce, wit and physical comedy. David Hyde-Pierce is a brilliant comic actor. - Stand ups: Victoria Wood - taken far too early. She had so much to give still. Dylan Moran. Eddie Izzard - when he was a comedian (and not the pompous bore he's now become). But the master of them all is still Dave Allen. - Yes Minister is still very funny. Blackadder too. - David Sedaris has written and delivered some very funny pieces.
But the best comedy to my mind combines observation, unexpected connections and some underlying truth. Too much of it nowadays is so predictable and therefore unfunny.
Frasier is probably my favourite tv comedy I reckon
Curb your Enthusiasm or any Alan Partridge for me.
Curb can be sublime.
Of course, the fact that our house is one episode (albeit only for about two seconds) is another bonus.
My uncle’s house was used for Miss Marple, while my private office was in Bridget Jones and various others
I was doing a commercial in a Villa in Cap Ferrat and this elegant French lady who was our location finder produced a book of magnificent locations in the area. She said ''You'll know the owner of this one. It's Charles Saatchi " It was a huge belle epoque chateau. I asked what on earth would persuade multi millionaire Charles Saatchi to have a film crew tramping through his house? She laughed and said "Rich people never have enough. They always want more. That's how they stay rich!"
Mailchimp has been acquired by Intuit for $12 billion — the biggest-ever deal for a privately-held bootstrapped company, as Mailchimp took no outside funding since its 2001 founding.
They obviously didn't get the memo about who modern start-up tech companies are supposed to be run i.e. staying pre-revenue / pre-profit, take loads of funding rounds, long runway.....
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Me and LEXIT
Why not say Lexit then? And I didn’t think you'd really gone Tory. As for sticking with the Tories, well, demographic groups change their votes. Often for good. It doesn’t mean every other group remains static. We've seen that on here. Some of the most ardent Tories from when I began lurking are now opposed to Boris and all his works. Rather more than I am TBH.
- Laurel and Hardy: still very funny indeed. - Some Like it Hot and Dr Strangelove - sublime - Surprised no-one mentioned Frasier which is one of the best TV comedies ever: a wonderful mix of character, farce, wit and physical comedy. David Hyde-Pierce is a brilliant comic actor. - Stand ups: Victoria Wood - taken far too early. She had so much to give still. Dylan Moran. Eddie Izzard - when he was a comedian (and not the pompous bore he's now become). But the master of them all is still Dave Allen. - Yes Minister is still very funny. Blackadder too. - David Sedaris has written and delivered some very funny pieces.
But the best comedy to my mind combines observation, unexpected connections and some underlying truth. Too much of it nowadays is so predictable and therefore unfunny.
Frasier is probably my favourite tv comedy I reckon
Curb your Enthusiasm or any Alan Partridge for me.
Curb can be sublime.
Of course, the fact that our house is one episode (albeit only for about two seconds) is another bonus.
My uncle’s house was used for Miss Marple, while my private office was in Bridget Jones and various others
I was doing a commercial in a Villa in Cap Ferrat and this elegant French lady who was our location finder produced a book of magnificent locations in the area. She said ''You'll know the owner of this one. It's Charles Saatchi " It was a huge belle epoque chateau. I asked what on earth would persuade multi millionaire Charles Saatchi to have a film crew tramping through his house? She laughed and said "Rich people never have enough. They always want more. That's how they stay rich!"
The normies work for their money. The rich, make their money work for them.....
If anyone is uncomfortable with the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM, so can’t vote Labour because of it, you may soon lose your excuse. The role of deputy leader can be looked at conference. Starmer almost certainly has the 2/3 majority at NEC to scrap the pointless and vote losing elected deputy post, and be able to appoint his own veep to stand in for him, which is far saner than having a deputy leader dumped on a leader, or a PM like Rainer dumper on the British People, so eminently sellable as a tweak to help Labour be more electable.
Are there any Labour members on tonight. How do you feel about Starmer being rid of the liability of Rayner using this mechanism, and say, nominating Reeves to fill in for him instead?
You can’t possibly argue against Starmer doing this surely?
If anyone is uncomfortable with the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM, so can’t vote Labour because of it, you may soon lose your excuse. The role of deputy leader can be looked at conference. Starmer almost certainly has the 2/3 majority at NEC to scrap the pointless and vote losing elected deputy post, and be able to appoint his own veep to stand in for him, which is far saner than having a deputy leader dumped on a leader, or a PM like Rainer dumper on the British People, so eminently sellable as a tweak to help Labour be more electable.
Are there any Labour members on tonight. How do you feel about Starmer being rid of the liability of Rayner using this mechanism, and say, nominating Reeves to fill in for him instead?
You can’t possibly argue against Starmer doing this surely?
I don't really care who the deputy leader is, and messing about as you suggest would be a distraction, as, with the modest amount of respect due, I suspect you intend.
Yeah it's something that I'm really glad we managed to pull off. Every fibre of my being wants to stay in the UK but ultimately I know this is the right move for both of us and our eventual family. My parents are about to finalise buying a villa in Crete so they're not going to be in the UK for 5-7 months of the year and we can go and visit them quite easily in Crete. I think my biggest regret is leaving behind my sister and her family, we're really very close and we see each other almost every other weekend because she lives in North London not particularly far away from us. I hope that in a world of WhatsApp and zoom it won't be as bad.
Belated congratulations and best wishes. I was extremely happy in Switzerland - it was only love of politics that brought me back, as Swiss politics are... not very exciting. One tip for what it's worth - don't only cluster with other UK exiles but dip into the local culture too. It might be better or worse but it's interestingly different, and the Brits who hang about in the English-speaking club playing bingo and making jokes about the Swiss are just missing out for no good reason. Will be interested to hear what you make of it.
Thanks, my German is a bit rubbish but on the other hand my Italian is pretty good now. Not sure how useful it will be in Zurich though. Might try and find the Italian speaking Swiss people in Zurich and make friends with them. Last time I lived out there I hung around mostly with people from work which was a mistake in retrospect as you never really get away from them. My wife has a fairly well established network in Zurich but I'll be starting from scratch so appreciate the advice!
Learn German. Well. Very, very well. Make a genuine effort to integrate. Avoid English-language media and environments, especially in the early years. Do not send your children to English/“international” cult schools. Swiss schools only.
I just really loathe the language but it's on the list of things to do. I was actually being fairly serious about finding the Italian speaking people in Zurich, my Italian is pretty good, I'm not fluent but could probably live in Italy (or Lugano) without too many people realising I'm not a native.
On education, it's one of the primary motivators to move to Switzerland. The education system for primary and secondary is, IMO, world class. My wife got such a broader education than I did and the attitude to achievement and expectations in Switzerland is much better than what I experienced vs what she experienced.
Your experience is going to be profoundly unhappy if your first sentence is remotely true. How anyone can “really loathe” a language is way, way beyond my comprehension. It’s like saying you really loathe the colour green, but are quite keen on botany and arboriculture. Bonkers.
Good luck anyway, but if you want to live in Ticino, move to Ticino, not Zürich.
Standard German is just horrible to my ears. I actually understand it pretty well the last time we lived there I took lessons and got pretty good at understanding and speaking it well enough for social situations. I've since started learning Italian and it's made me realise that it's German that I really don't like learning, not languages in general because my Italian lesson is one of the highlights of my week.
Ticino would be the dream, alas, no jobs there for either of us and Europe doesn't really understand the whole WFH idea vert well.
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Big John who become a Boris fan the other day and is now a Starmerite again now Labour is polling better. One of the few to go from Corbyn to Boris, he's a populist, not a Labourite.
Red Brex I assume is a Labour voter who voted Brexit.
For avoidance of doubt i have never been a Starmerite will never be a Starmerite and will never vote Labour at a GE while he is leader.
You are obviously so far up his asshole that you lie yours off about Tories been 20% ahead 3 months ago.
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
'early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed', Edwina probably felt the same!
Noticeable how the Norwegian conservatives still holding Oslo, even in a poor year. Contrast with London.
The map of Norway is entirely red, apart from some blue and green bits in the far south west + Oslo.
Oslo is the 5th most expensive city in the world, it has a lot of rich residents and more in common with Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster which are still Conservative than Labour Newham or Lewisham or Hackney or Croydon
- Laurel and Hardy: still very funny indeed. - Some Like it Hot and Dr Strangelove - sublime - Surprised no-one mentioned Frasier which is one of the best TV comedies ever: a wonderful mix of character, farce, wit and physical comedy. David Hyde-Pierce is a brilliant comic actor. - Stand ups: Victoria Wood - taken far too early. She had so much to give still. Dylan Moran. Eddie Izzard - when he was a comedian (and not the pompous bore he's now become). But the master of them all is still Dave Allen. - Yes Minister is still very funny. Blackadder too. - David Sedaris has written and delivered some very funny pieces.
But the best comedy to my mind combines observation, unexpected connections and some underlying truth. Too much of it nowadays is so predictable and therefore unfunny.
We share the same tastes. Ticks on every one you list.
Victoria Wood on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue was a work of wonder.
I only discovered Sedaris last year. Totally in awe.
It's well worth going to a Sedaris event. Once you've heard him read his books, then his voice is forever in your head.
It’s through his voice I learned to love him. I subsequently borrowed one of his books from the library, but really struggled with it. But that voice! Mesmerising. Would love to see him live.
You can get CDs of his performances. When I first discovered him a few years ago I'd listen to them in the car with the children and we'd be laughing so hard I'd have to park the car to avoid crashing.
Anyway I have a ticket for his next tour, postponed last year because of Covid. In June next year I think.
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Big John who become a Boris fan the other day and is now a Starmerite again now Labour is polling better. One of the few to go from Corbyn to Boris, he's a populist, not a Labourite.
Red Brex I assume is a Labour voter who voted Brexit.
Which is a vast collection of individuals. With a concomitant range of views.
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
If the Tories win the next GE, are you going to cease with these knowing ‘it’s all about to go wrong for them’ insights, or will it just mean you’re one election closer to being proved right…
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
Yes, I remember articles in the New Statesman saying that now genial John had taken over from the divisive Maggie - and won the GE despite of everything - that was pretty much a wrap for the British Left.
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Me and LEXIT
Why not say Lexit then? And I didn’t think you'd really gone Tory. As for sticking with the Tories, well, demographic groups change their votes. Often for good. It doesn’t mean every other group remains static. We've seen that on here. Some of the most ardent Tories from when I began lurking are now opposed to Boris and all his works. Rather more than I am TBH.
I haven't "really gone Tory" yet.
I have really gone wont vote Labour under Starmer though
Yeah it's something that I'm really glad we managed to pull off. Every fibre of my being wants to stay in the UK but ultimately I know this is the right move for both of us and our eventual family. My parents are about to finalise buying a villa in Crete so they're not going to be in the UK for 5-7 months of the year and we can go and visit them quite easily in Crete. I think my biggest regret is leaving behind my sister and her family, we're really very close and we see each other almost every other weekend because she lives in North London not particularly far away from us. I hope that in a world of WhatsApp and zoom it won't be as bad.
Belated congratulations and best wishes. I was extremely happy in Switzerland - it was only love of politics that brought me back, as Swiss politics are... not very exciting. One tip for what it's worth - don't only cluster with other UK exiles but dip into the local culture too. It might be better or worse but it's interestingly different, and the Brits who hang about in the English-speaking club playing bingo and making jokes about the Swiss are just missing out for no good reason. Will be interested to hear what you make of it.
Thanks, my German is a bit rubbish but on the other hand my Italian is pretty good now. Not sure how useful it will be in Zurich though. Might try and find the Italian speaking Swiss people in Zurich and make friends with them. Last time I lived out there I hung around mostly with people from work which was a mistake in retrospect as you never really get away from them. My wife has a fairly well established network in Zurich but I'll be starting from scratch so appreciate the advice!
Learn German. Well. Very, very well. Make a genuine effort to integrate. Avoid English-language media and environments, especially in the early years. Do not send your children to English/“international” cult schools. Swiss schools only.
I just really loathe the language but it's on the list of things to do. I was actually being fairly serious about finding the Italian speaking people in Zurich, my Italian is pretty good, I'm not fluent but could probably live in Italy (or Lugano) without too many people realising I'm not a native.
On education, it's one of the primary motivators to move to Switzerland. The education system for primary and secondary is, IMO, world class. My wife got such a broader education than I did and the attitude to achievement and expectations in Switzerland is much better than what I experienced vs what she experienced.
Your experience is going to be profoundly unhappy if your first sentence is remotely true. How anyone can “really loathe” a language is way, way beyond my comprehension. It’s like saying you really loathe the colour green, but are quite keen on botany and arboriculture. Bonkers.
Good luck anyway, but if you want to live in Ticino, move to Ticino, not Zürich.
Standard German is just horrible to my ears. I actually understand it pretty well the last time we lived there I took lessons and got pretty good at understanding and speaking it well enough for social situations. I've since started learning Italian and it's made me realise that it's German that I really don't like learning, not languages in general because my Italian lesson is one of the highlights of my week.
Ticino would be the dream, alas, no jobs there for either of us and Europe doesn't really understand the whole WFH idea vert well.
Lugano - and indeed most Ticino-based financial institutions - are a big red flag for investigators like me. Money-laundering is just the start of it. I have done a number of very interesting criminal investigations involving Swiss entities and ones based in Ticino in particular. There are enough stories there for series 2 and 3 of the Cyclefree Drama Series.
But enjoy it - a great place for outdoor activities as well.
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Big John who become a Boris fan the other day and is now a Starmerite again now Labour is polling better. One of the few to go from Corbyn to Boris, he's a populist, not a Labourite.
Red Brex I assume is a Labour voter who voted Brexit.
For avoidance of doubt i have never been a Starmerite will never be a Starmerite and will never vote Labour at a GE while he is leader.
You are obviously so far up his asshole that you lie yours off about Tories been 20% ahead 3 months ago.
We're having a conversation and just start being abusive once again. That'll do for me.
Yeah it's something that I'm really glad we managed to pull off. Every fibre of my being wants to stay in the UK but ultimately I know this is the right move for both of us and our eventual family. My parents are about to finalise buying a villa in Crete so they're not going to be in the UK for 5-7 months of the year and we can go and visit them quite easily in Crete. I think my biggest regret is leaving behind my sister and her family, we're really very close and we see each other almost every other weekend because she lives in North London not particularly far away from us. I hope that in a world of WhatsApp and zoom it won't be as bad.
Belated congratulations and best wishes. I was extremely happy in Switzerland - it was only love of politics that brought me back, as Swiss politics are... not very exciting. One tip for what it's worth - don't only cluster with other UK exiles but dip into the local culture too. It might be better or worse but it's interestingly different, and the Brits who hang about in the English-speaking club playing bingo and making jokes about the Swiss are just missing out for no good reason. Will be interested to hear what you make of it.
Thanks, my German is a bit rubbish but on the other hand my Italian is pretty good now. Not sure how useful it will be in Zurich though. Might try and find the Italian speaking Swiss people in Zurich and make friends with them. Last time I lived out there I hung around mostly with people from work which was a mistake in retrospect as you never really get away from them. My wife has a fairly well established network in Zurich but I'll be starting from scratch so appreciate the advice!
Having lived in various foreign countries, my experience is that local people are generally friendly but they expect you to make the first move (except in small towns in America, where the neighbors will be round with welcoming cakes and cookies in a heartbeat). The best way to do that (unless your wife's connections do it for you) is to find a common interest - doesn't matter if it's sailing (fantastic area for that), chess, knitting or boxing. Join a club and they'll be delighred and show you the ropes. (For me it was politics, of course - an active member of the Basel social Democrats.) And you then pick up the language without trying.
Many people are sneery about the German Swiss, as they mostly don't have the panache of the other bits. But I've never known a culture more dedicated to steady reliability and quiet loyalty to friends. Its virtues grow on you if you let them!
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Big John who become a Boris fan the other day and is now a Starmerite again now Labour is polling better. One of the few to go from Corbyn to Boris, he's a populist, not a Labourite.
Red Brex I assume is a Labour voter who voted Brexit.
For avoidance of doubt i have never been a Starmerite will never be a Starmerite and will never vote Labour at a GE while he is leader.
You are obviously so far up his asshole that you lie yours off about Tories been 20% ahead 3 months ago.
We're having a conversation and just start being abusive once again. That'll do for me.
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
Yes, I remember articles in the New Statesman saying that now genial John had taken over from the divisive Maggie - and won the GE despite of everything - that was pretty much a wrap for the British Left.
Effectively it was, Blair won as a New Labour Liberal in 1997 not as a socialist.
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
With a favourable boundary review to come to boot.
If anyone is uncomfortable with the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM, so can’t vote Labour because of it, you may soon lose your excuse. The role of deputy leader can be looked at conference. Starmer almost certainly has the 2/3 majority at NEC to scrap the pointless and vote losing elected deputy post, and be able to appoint his own veep to stand in for him, which is far saner than having a deputy leader dumped on a leader, or a PM like Rainer dumper on the British People, so eminently sellable as a tweak to help Labour be more electable.
Are there any Labour members on tonight. How do you feel about Starmer being rid of the liability of Rayner using this mechanism, and say, nominating Reeves to fill in for him instead?
You can’t possibly argue against Starmer doing this surely?
If anyone is uncomfortable with the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM, so can’t vote Labour because of it, you may soon lose your excuse. The role of deputy leader can be looked at conference. Starmer almost certainly has the 2/3 majority at NEC to scrap the pointless and vote losing elected deputy post, and be able to appoint his own veep to stand in for him, which is far saner than having a deputy leader dumped on a leader, or a PM like Rainer dumper on the British People, so eminently sellable as a tweak to help Labour be more electable.
Are there any Labour members on tonight. How do you feel about Starmer being rid of the liability of Rayner using this mechanism, and say, nominating Reeves to fill in for him instead?
You can’t possibly argue against Starmer doing this surely?
I don't really care who the deputy leader is, and messing about as you suggest would be a distraction, as, with the modest amount of respect due, I suspect you intend.
"the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM"
Hmmm.
How does that work? There is no constitutional role for a deputy PM.
Starmer has to be PM for a start. So Labour win in 2023/4. Big hmmmm.
Then he has to drop dead suddenly. Under Labour rules she becomes leader of Labour party.
Then the Queen need to accept her as the next PM. The Queen probably wont argue but it is not clear cut especially if the Cabinet is kicking off or the party MPs aren't too happy.
I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show. Unfortunately I totally forgot the election was today. For some reason I thought it was around 20th September. Maybe it'll appear on YouTube to watch retrospectively.
If anyone is uncomfortable with the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM, so can’t vote Labour because of it, you may soon lose your excuse. The role of deputy leader can be looked at conference. Starmer almost certainly has the 2/3 majority at NEC to scrap the pointless and vote losing elected deputy post, and be able to appoint his own veep to stand in for him, which is far saner than having a deputy leader dumped on a leader, or a PM like Rainer dumper on the British People, so eminently sellable as a tweak to help Labour be more electable.
Are there any Labour members on tonight. How do you feel about Starmer being rid of the liability of Rayner using this mechanism, and say, nominating Reeves to fill in for him instead?
You can’t possibly argue against Starmer doing this surely?
If anyone is uncomfortable with the thought of Rayner a heartbeat away from PM, so can’t vote Labour because of it, you may soon lose your excuse. The role of deputy leader can be looked at conference. Starmer almost certainly has the 2/3 majority at NEC to scrap the pointless and vote losing elected deputy post, and be able to appoint his own veep to stand in for him, which is far saner than having a deputy leader dumped on a leader, or a PM like Rainer dumper on the British People, so eminently sellable as a tweak to help Labour be more electable.
Are there any Labour members on tonight. How do you feel about Starmer being rid of the liability of Rayner using this mechanism, and say, nominating Reeves to fill in for him instead?
You can’t possibly argue against Starmer doing this surely?
I don't really care who the deputy leader is, and messing about as you suggest would be a distraction, as, with the modest amount of respect due, I suspect you intend.
Nonsense. I didn’t invent this. It was something the Labour Party already discussed a couple of years ago.
And, with all due respect, the ‘I don’t really care who deputy is’ isn’t the key group here, the question is how to make Labour electable again - the answer IMO is look at everything making it unelectable, rather than the liassez faire approach you are taking to their crisis of mid term polling
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
Sorry.
Who's Big John? And what exactly is Red Brex?
Me and LEXIT
Why not say Lexit then? And I didn’t think you'd really gone Tory. As for sticking with the Tories, well, demographic groups change their votes. Often for good. It doesn’t mean every other group remains static. We've seen that on here. Some of the most ardent Tories from when I began lurking are now opposed to Boris and all his works. Rather more than I am TBH.
I haven't "really gone Tory" yet.
I have really gone wont vote Labour under Starmer though
To be clear." I didn't think you'd really gone Tory" meant I could not see you voting for them. Your views on SKS are however crystal clear.
I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show. Unfortunately I totally forgot the election was today. For some reason I thought it was around 20th September. Maybe it'll appear on YouTube to watch retrospectively.
"I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show."
I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show. Unfortunately I totally forgot the election was today. For some reason I thought it was around 20th September. Maybe it'll appear on YouTube to watch retrospectively.
'I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show.'
Only on PB, never mind you have election night shows from Canada and Germany in the next 2 weeks
Yeah it's something that I'm really glad we managed to pull off. Every fibre of my being wants to stay in the UK but ultimately I know this is the right move for both of us and our eventual family. My parents are about to finalise buying a villa in Crete so they're not going to be in the UK for 5-7 months of the year and we can go and visit them quite easily in Crete. I think my biggest regret is leaving behind my sister and her family, we're really very close and we see each other almost every other weekend because she lives in North London not particularly far away from us. I hope that in a world of WhatsApp and zoom it won't be as bad.
Belated congratulations and best wishes. I was extremely happy in Switzerland - it was only love of politics that brought me back, as Swiss politics are... not very exciting. One tip for what it's worth - don't only cluster with other UK exiles but dip into the local culture too. It might be better or worse but it's interestingly different, and the Brits who hang about in the English-speaking club playing bingo and making jokes about the Swiss are just missing out for no good reason. Will be interested to hear what you make of it.
Thanks, my German is a bit rubbish but on the other hand my Italian is pretty good now. Not sure how useful it will be in Zurich though. Might try and find the Italian speaking Swiss people in Zurich and make friends with them. Last time I lived out there I hung around mostly with people from work which was a mistake in retrospect as you never really get away from them. My wife has a fairly well established network in Zurich but I'll be starting from scratch so appreciate the advice!
Having lived in various foreign countries, my experience is that local people are generally friendly but they expect you to make the first move (except in small towns in America, where the neighbors will be round with welcoming cakes and cookies in a heartbeat). The best way to do that (unless your wife's connections do it for you) is to find a common interest - doesn't matter if it's sailing (fantastic area for that), chess, knitting or boxing. Join a club and they'll be delighred and show you the ropes. (For me it was politics, of course - an active member of the Basel social Democrats.) And you then pick up the language without trying.
Many people are sneery about the German Swiss, as they mostly don't have the panache of the other bits. But I've never known a culture more dedicated to steady reliability and quiet loyalty to friends. Its virtues grow on you if you let them!
Yeah I was thinking about joining a few clubs. There's apparently a quite a few "underground" food clubs where people search out new and interesting food in Zurich which is something that definitely appeals to me and will probably be very social. I think I'll need to get on Facebook again too.
Don't think I could afford to be sneery about Swiss Germans given that my wife is from Basel. You describe her virtues very well though, quiet and determined loyalty.
In May 1992, the average of the polls was about C44L36, a Conservative lead of 8 points or so. By early September 1992, that had closed to roughly C40L40. The funny thing is that the polls started to close before John Smith became leader, and well before Black Wednesday. In fact, the funniest thing is that Black Wednesday didn't really show up in the trends- there was no Conservative collapse, no Labour surge, just a continuation of the same smooth decay that had already started. Sure, crossover happened in September, but that was already written in the stars, so to speak. What did for Major was a combination of how low that gradual fall took him and how hard it was to pick up afterwards.
PB wasn't around in 1992, but it's easy to imagine people looking at the late September polling and being intensely relaxed about how Black Wednesday hadn't really cut though etc...
Fast-forward to now. In May 2019, the average of the polls was about C43L32 and by the start of this month that had closed to about C39L34. So Johnson's Conservatives are doing about as well as Major's Conservatives and Starmer's Labour is doing noticeably worse than Smith's Labour. How much that is just because Scottish voters have decided to play their own games instead, I don't know.
Trends don't last forever. But the current trend is not in the Conservatives' favour and a prolonged gradual decline adds up to a lot.
We are now 21 months since the 2019 general election ie closer to January 1994 than autumn 1992 relative to the period after election 1992.
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
What stands out there is that the decision was made early. It wasn't Blair. It wasn't even the ERM. It was the lack of Kinnock. And a subsequent dawning collective realisation that the nation had chosen wrongly.
And that process was a steady gradual one, rather than a shock that turned the polls in a week, or even a month.
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
Yes, I remember articles in the New Statesman saying that now genial John had taken over from the divisive Maggie - and won the GE despite of everything - that was pretty much a wrap for the British Left.
Effectively it was, Blair won as a New Labour Liberal in 1997 not as a socialist.
Indeed. It would be 2019 before another tax and spend social democrat was elected.
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show. Unfortunately I totally forgot the election was today. For some reason I thought it was around 20th September. Maybe it'll appear on YouTube to watch retrospectively.
"I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show."
Must be one of the most PB comments ever.
The essence - captured in a nutshell.
For me the essence of the site in the thread header - surprise that obsessive mid-term poll following is found to be useless in predicting the next election.
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show. Unfortunately I totally forgot the election was today. For some reason I thought it was around 20th September. Maybe it'll appear on YouTube to watch retrospectively.
'I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show.'
Only on PB, never mind you have election night shows from Canada and Germany in the next 2 weeks
20th for Canada. Not the best time slot mind. 26th for Germany. Set your calendar. Be there and be square.
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
He's not really leaving though, he's still going to appear on the channel. He actually was on Farage's show today
A UC claimant doing 2 hours more work gets about £4.50 net after tax and NI and UC taper.
The bad thing is that nobody in the media has a clue how it works either so she can say that and not be challenged there and then for talking through her arse.
She just has been on ITV main news
You really despair about the inept way she came across
It is reputed 100 conservative mps are against the abolition of the uplift and I really hope they vote with labour later this week and shame HMG
The thing is they clearly don't understand the system they've created themselves.
The problem for years now is that the income tax rates have been fudged, so now nobody has a clue that doesn't pay attention that the income tax rate for someone on UC is 75% - and its going to be even higher once this recent tax rise goes up too. 🤦♂️
Why do we tax those less fortunate than ourselves 75%. Its disgusting and nobody campaigns against it.
Not sure how the Income tax rate could be 75%. Could you explain?
"According to Labour, the current system means that a single parent working 30 hours a week on the national living wage loses £573 a month of their universal credit entitlement – equivalent to a marginal tax rate of 75%. It contrasts this with the 47% marginal tax rate faced by people earning over £150,000 a year, such as the prime minister." In that Graun piece I posted just a moment ago.
OIC, you are referring to marginal tax rate.
Not sure how you deal with that. Not have a UC taper? Abolish UC? Increase the Tax allowance to cover it?
You can't - which is why everyone tries to avoid talking about the issue
Universal Basic Income (UBI) gets round the problem. There is no disincentive to work as don't lose any UBI.
The problem with UBI is that it is so expensive, and the taxes you have to raise to pay for it create a disincentive to work even if the UBI itself doesn't. The second problem is that some people will choose not to work, figuring they can get by on UBI, and waste their life smoking dope and playing video games instead of doing something useful. Yes, work can be drudgery and exploitative, but it can also teach discipline and self-reliance. The third issue I have with it is more philosophical I suppose: why shouldn't people who are capable of working for a living go out and earn their own money instead of sponging off everyone else? Sorry for sounding like a Tory. But I think the government should be doing a lot more for children, the disabled, refugees, the environment etc not simply paying able bodied grown adults to sit on their arses all day!
The first problem: Yes taxes create a disincentive but unless you're talking about 75% we're looking at a lower disincentive than what exists today.
The second and third problem: People can already do that on our existing welfare system and once doing that the barriers/disincentives for getting into work are much steeper than what would exist under the proposed system.
Under our existing welfare system you have to be actively seeking work and provide evidence of that to continue to claim.
A UBI by definition would have no such requirement as everyone would get it automatically
That's not actually quite true.
The benefits system is incredibly complex in the UK, and while some benefits (JSA) are dependent on seeing work, that is supplemented by Housing Benefit and various means tested things.
Something else that Switzerland does a lot better than anywhere else in the world is unemployment benefits. A fully contributory system that pays a percentage of your previous wage with a maximum cap for up to 18 months if you've done 3 years of work within the last 4 and 12 months if you've done 2 years in the last 3 or something along those lines. It's generous but difficult to qualify and there's no real concept of long term unemployment or benefits cheats etc... as it's just not possible.
Except if you have not contributed enough and are unemployed then you are stuffed, Switzerland has no non contributory benefits. The benefits are also time limited.
I support a more contributory unemployment benefits system but would still provide a basic minimum
The contribution is time based and only needs 12 months of work in the last 24 to qualify at 80% of your previous wage for 6 months. It's a very low bar and because they don't have idiotic things like housing benefits or in work subsidies no one lives beyond their means and employers pay decent wages so 80% is not an issue.
If we'd had that benefits system the UK would have voted to remain in the EU.
In any case it was downward pressure on wages from migration especially from Eastern Europe without transition controls which was the main reason for working class voters voting Leave, not the fact we did not have a more contributory benefits system
The major driver of it was our non-contributory benefits system. Your inability to deduce never ceases to amaze me, sometimes it is exactly like interacting with an AI.
Was it though? Would immigrants coming for benefits put downward pressure on wages? Surely they are mostly coming here to work at higher wages than they'd been getting in the old country? Both could be true, of course.
But as a cause of Brexit? To a point but a lot of red wall and seaside towns were economically harmed before notable immigration.
There were a mixture of things on immigrants coming over which made the U.K. attractive
- the English language - the free at the point of use health care system if you got sick - the non-contributory welfare system crucially when it came to tax credits, which were vital for those on low paid wages (and whose employers would encourage them to take them so the latter could pay shit wages) - the education system for those who had kids
Re Brexit, the vox pop anecdotal stuff - and from what I got back from my circle of WWC people - was that it was more the pressure on services such as health, education, housing etc that caused more angst rather than the ‘pushing down the cost of Labour’ argument. In some ways that makes sense, especially as many WWC jobs were historically always prone to undercutting from cheap Irish labour.
I think I'd agree with all of that, but also I'd add:
- a reasonably tight labour market, particularly relative to many other EU destinations - lots of diasporas, so there was a good chance of finding someone who knew someone you knew
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
Arrrhhh so you are the one viewer they have.....
And the Norwegian election was on the other side too. That'll teach him.
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
He's not really leaving though, he's still going to appear on the channel. He actually was on Farage's show today
He's leaving in the sense he is not going to be responsible as Chair when the channel descends into the ranty mc rant rant gutter of Fox news alt-right style nonsense.
- Laurel and Hardy: still very funny indeed. - Some Like it Hot and Dr Strangelove - sublime - Surprised no-one mentioned Frasier which is one of the best TV comedies ever: a wonderful mix of character, farce, wit and physical comedy. David Hyde-Pierce is a brilliant comic actor. - Stand ups: Victoria Wood - taken far too early. She had so much to give still. Dylan Moran. Eddie Izzard - when he was a comedian (and not the pompous bore he's now become). But the master of them all is still Dave Allen. - Yes Minister is still very funny. Blackadder too. - David Sedaris has written and delivered some very funny pieces.
But the best comedy to my mind combines observation, unexpected connections and some underlying truth. Too much of it nowadays is so predictable and therefore unfunny.
We share the same tastes. Ticks on every one you list.
Victoria Wood on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue was a work of wonder.
I only discovered Sedaris last year. Totally in awe.
It's well worth going to a Sedaris event. Once you've heard him read his books, then his voice is forever in your head.
It’s through his voice I learned to love him. I subsequently borrowed one of his books from the library, but really struggled with it. But that voice! Mesmerising. Would love to see him live.
You can get CDs of his performances. When I first discovered him a few years ago I'd listen to them in the car with the children and we'd be laughing so hard I'd have to park the car to avoid crashing.
Anyway I have a ticket for his next tour, postponed last year because of Covid. In June next year I think.
Covid came a few weeks before I was due to see Sedaris. I can't wait to see (and hear) him again.
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
Arrrhhh so you are the one viewer they have.....
I've heard a rumour that Emma Radacanu will be on the channel.
I was looking forward to watching the Norwegian election night show. Unfortunately I totally forgot the election was today. For some reason I thought it was around 20th September. Maybe it'll appear on YouTube to watch retrospectively.
How could anyone possibly forget the date of the Norwegian election?
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
Not sure anyone's that bothered about what if does to GB News, just sniggering at yet another ill judged Brillo ego trip not going to plan.
Well I've just had some pretty big news, both my wife and I have had our request to work from Zurich permanently approved by our respective companies. She's going to stay employed by the UK parent company for a while and I'll switch over to the local Switzerland subsidiary. We have to wait until October 2022 to go as her company wants to staff up it's Swiss AML division before they send her there but it looks like this is a done deal as we both have agreements in principle in writing.
It's been coming for a while, the worst bit will be telling my sister and parents that we're going there. The second worst bit is telling my mother in law that we're within an hour's train journey from her house.
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Noticeable how the Norwegian conservatives still holding Oslo, even in a poor year. Contrast with London.
The map of Norway is entirely red, apart from some blue and green bits in the far south west + Oslo.
Oslo is the 5th most expensive city in the world, it has a lot of rich residents and more in common with Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster which are still Conservative than Labour Newham or Lewisham or Hackney or Croydon
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Surprised anyone cares one way or another about GB News. Regardless of its content, it was so bloody amateurishly produced it put me off watching it again.
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Move over WHO, EMA, etc, etc.
Heard an amazing story from my mates girlfriend on Sat - she had the AZ jab in March and says it has brought on the menopause. Felt rough for weeks, went for tests, then got an urgent phone call from the NHS telling her her potassium levels were so high they thought she was in danger of a heart attack and were sending an ambulance to her house. This is at 11pm. Next day she’s in hospital with all sorts of tubes sticking out of her and they tell her they’d phoned the wrong person! Imagine being the one they should have called!
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Move over WHO, EMA, etc, etc.
Heard an amazing story from my mates girlfriend on Sat - she had the AZ jab in March and says it has brought on the menopause. Felt rough for weeks, went for tests, then got an urgent phone call from the NHS telling her her potassium levels were so high they thought she was in danger of a heart attack and were sending an ambulance to her house. This is at 11pm. Next day she’s in hospital with all sorts of tubes sticking out of her and they tell her they’d phoned the wrong person! Imagine being the one they should have called!
Not sure why Andrew Neil's departure from GB News is being spun as bad for the channel. He was actually one of the least interesting presenters on the channel in my opinion. Many of the best happen to be women and/or EMs, such as Michelle Dewberry and Mercy Muroki. Andrew Doyle is good as well.
Huge congratulations @MaxPB. Hope you will continue to post on PB despite your new location, the UK is losing a great talent in you.
And best wishes to your wife too, sending good luck
Thanks CHB! I think it's an odd sensation because in the back of my mind I know this is probably a forever move and eventually coming back to the UK will be visiting and going to Switzerland will be going home.
Have I missed some news?
Yeah, just some personal news, my wife and I are moving to Zurich next year, my company finally approved the move after 6 months of dithering.
Best of luck!! Exciting times.
Hopefully you will be allowed access to PB to update us on the politics of the cantons.
Thanks! Don't think Switzerland has got a Chinese style firewall just yet or that the UK will put one up so I'll still be kicking around these parts. Swiss politics are fairly dull and I won't be able to vote until I'm a citizen which won't be a fast process
It will be interesting - seriously - to see your comments on the Swiss rental system, which you will be in for a few years I think unless your spouse is a citizen.
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Move over WHO, EMA, etc, etc.
Heard an amazing story from my mates girlfriend on Sat - she had the AZ jab in March and says it has brought on the menopause. Felt rough for weeks, went for tests, then got an urgent phone call from the NHS telling her her potassium levels were so high they thought she was in danger of a heart attack and were sending an ambulance to her house. This is at 11pm. Next day she’s in hospital with all sorts of tubes sticking out of her and they tell her they’d phoned the wrong person! Imagine being the one they should have called!
This has been one of the poorest discussion threads on PB for a while. Rather than current mid term polls in tricky period for government being meaningless, they are an excellent long term guide of what is likely to happen at next GE. If polling is as bad for Labour now as it is this week, you’d have to be McCawber to think there is anything that can get the electorate to accept Starmer as PM. If he fails to gain 45+ seats he is toast, his party won’t give him a second chance, and on mid term polling he isn’t getting anywhere near gaining 40 seats. Labour elected a remainer dud.
It’s Red Brex. Lifelong Labour voters sticking with the Tory party in key urban and metropolitan constituencies, don’t over preoccupy on the north, it’s solidly Tory midlands Labour are not making roads into as the next GE results get read out.
Betting wise, any money placed on Starmer as next PM is straight down the drain, Red Brex are telling you this today, how they are answering every poll question. On who would make best PM Starmer is going backwards in mid term protest polls.
even three months ago the Tories were 20 points ahead. .
Total lie CHB where do you get that from.
Absolutely bad response from CBH. I’m pointing to Red Brex sticking with the Tories as being the key voting group in the coming years as it’s clearly not unwinding at all, and sort of baffled by the response I’m getting to that. But unlike many of the others who can’t get their heads round the screaming obvious, you understand Big John because you are Red Brex, and conflicted about the Starmer Project?
Or maybe I am bad, because so many posters like polling night to play with the seat calcs and chance to discuss fantasy politics, this coalition v that black swan = this particular policy compromise, but I came in with the obvious and boring facts about current polling and spoilt the fun?
JFC. This article must win a prize for misleading headline. And subheadings that don't correspond to the data from a supposedly serious magazine. Is it just me, or is journalism just continuing to decline? This is like a GCSE data question. Can you spot 3 or more obvious errors?
Nicki Minaj @NICKIMINAJ My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Move over WHO, EMA, etc, etc.
Heard an amazing story from my mates girlfriend on Sat - she had the AZ jab in March and says it has brought on the menopause. Felt rough for weeks, went for tests, then got an urgent phone call from the NHS telling her her potassium levels were so high they thought she was in danger of a heart attack and were sending an ambulance to her house. This is at 11pm. Next day she’s in hospital with all sorts of tubes sticking out of her and they tell her they’d phoned the wrong person! Imagine being the one they should have called!
JFC. This article must win a prize for misleading headline. And subheadings that don't correspond to the data from a supposedly serious magazine. Is it just me, or is journalism just continuing to decline? This is like a GCSE data question. Can you spot 3 or more obvious errors?
Look at the subheadings and data beneath. There are errors of fact in the text too. The BQ have explicitly said they won't prop up either Party. The NDP might. But there is absolutely no evidence they would break with tradition and do so. If O'Tooole wins most seats, he's PM. Till he's brought down. Has any research been done?
The middle class in the US is a very, very broad definition. Could you imagine how well no tax rises for those earning under £350,000 would go down in the UK?
JFC. This article must win a prize for misleading headline. And subheadings that don't correspond to the data from a supposedly serious magazine. Is it just me, or is journalism just continuing to decline? This is like a GCSE data question. Can you spot 3 or more obvious errors?
Look at the subheadings and data beneath. There are errors of fact in the text too. The BQ have explicitly said they won't prop up either Party. The NDP might. But there is absolutely no evidence they would break with tradition and do so. If O'Tooole wins most seats, he's PM. Till he's brought down. Has any research been done?
Well I made it I think 3 in the comments on the first 3 or 4 diagrams.
Plus the silly sod confused "less" with "fewer", which counts as a data error in my book!
At that point I gave up.
Well - NS has had a lot of guff in it recently; they have even published pieces by Comical Dave.
Comments
In January 1994 Mori had Labour leading the Tories 48% to 20% and Gallup had Labour ahead by 45.5% to 26%, Starmer is nowhere near that or even ahead in most polls
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_1997_United_Kingdom_general_election
Red Brex I assume is a Labour voter who voted Brexit.
Because suggesting that cities are alike solely based on their 'expensive to live in' ranking is ridiculous.
Oslo is nothing like Kensington & Chelsea. Indeed, I can't think there's any part of the UK that Oslo is like. It's a bit like some parts of Germany, and not a million miles different to Copenhagen, but it's not like Kensington & Chelsea.
The one making up that Lab were20 points behind 3 months ago is CHB
Guys - play it safe and make sure that everyone knows you have voted Conservative at least once.
I said because it was a very wealthy and expensive area of Norway like Kensington and Chelsea is a wealthy and expensive area of the UK here which also still votes Conservative. Indeed in most big cities the wealthiest parts still often vote for conservative parties eg in Madrid for PP, rich parts of Paris vote for Les Republicains, the wealthiest part of Sydney voted for the Liberals and Malcolm Turnbull. Only really in the US does that not apply, with the GOP never winning Manhattan or Beverley Hills
I was not suggesting it should be twinned with Kensington and Chelsea!!
- the English language
- the free at the point of use health care system if you got sick
- the non-contributory welfare system crucially when it came to tax credits, which were vital for those on low paid wages (and whose employers would encourage them to take them so the latter could pay shit wages)
- the education system for those who had kids
Re Brexit, the vox pop anecdotal stuff - and from what I got back from my circle of WWC people - was that it was more the pressure on services such as health, education, housing etc that caused more angst rather than the ‘pushing down the cost of Labour’ argument. In some ways that makes sense, especially as many WWC jobs were historically always prone to undercutting from cheap Irish labour.
Mailchimp has been acquired by Intuit for $12 billion — the biggest-ever deal for a privately-held bootstrapped company, as Mailchimp took no outside funding since its 2001 founding.
https://twitter.com/axios/status/1437515671223537669?s=20
They obviously didn't get the memo about who modern start-up tech companies are supposed to be run i.e. staying pre-revenue / pre-profit, take loads of funding rounds, long runway.....
It seems crazy now, but in early Summer 1992, JMthePM really was master of all he surveyed, and people were talking about how the Conservatives would be the party of power basically forever...
We've seen that on here. Some of the most ardent Tories from when I began lurking are now opposed to Boris and all his works. Rather more than I am TBH.
Ticino would be the dream, alas, no jobs there for either of us and Europe doesn't really understand the whole WFH idea vert well.
You are obviously so far up his asshole that you lie yours off about Tories been 20% ahead 3 months ago.
Anyway I have a ticket for his next tour, postponed last year because of Covid. In June next year I think.
I have really gone wont vote Labour under Starmer though
But enjoy it - a great place for outdoor activities as well.
Many people are sneery about the German Swiss, as they mostly don't have the panache of the other bits. But I've never known a culture more dedicated to steady reliability and quiet loyalty to friends. Its virtues grow on you if you let them!
Hmmm.
How does that work? There is no constitutional role for a deputy PM.
Starmer has to be PM for a start. So Labour win in 2023/4. Big hmmmm.
Then he has to drop dead suddenly. Under Labour rules she becomes leader of Labour party.
Then the Queen need to accept her as the next PM. The Queen probably wont argue but it is not clear cut especially if the Cabinet is kicking off or the party MPs aren't too happy.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/13/keir-starmer-to-pledge-labour-will-deliver-10-minimum-wage
Won't we be at £10 / hr come the GE anyway?
And, with all due respect, the ‘I don’t really care who deputy is’ isn’t the key group here, the question is how to make Labour electable again - the answer IMO is look at everything making it unelectable, rather than the liassez faire approach you are taking to their crisis of mid term polling
Must be one of the most PB comments ever.
The essence - captured in a nutshell.
Only on PB, never mind you have election night shows from Canada and Germany in the next 2 weeks
Don't think I could afford to be sneery about Swiss Germans given that my wife is from Basel. You describe her virtues very well though, quiet and determined loyalty.
File in he is f***in useless
26th for Germany.
Set your calendar. Be there and be square.
- a reasonably tight labour market, particularly relative to many other EU destinations
- lots of diasporas, so there was a good chance of finding someone who knew someone you knew
... but only on the perfume adverts.
Lightweight.
Nicki Minaj
@NICKIMINAJ
My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Oslo is also between Sheffield and Leeds in population, which surprised me.
She’s swerved her second jab
Makes sense in whichever language you choose.
And subheadings that don't correspond to the data from a supposedly serious magazine.
Is it just me, or is journalism just continuing to decline?
This is like a GCSE data question. Can you spot 3 or more obvious errors?
https://www.newstatesman.com/canada/2021/09/canadian-federal-election-2021-justin-trudeaus-rival-closes-in
https://twitter.com/rivatez/status/1437542377422532609?s=19
There are errors of fact in the text too. The BQ have explicitly said they won't prop up either Party. The NDP might. But there is absolutely no evidence they would break with tradition and do so. If O'Tooole wins most seats, he's PM. Till he's brought down.
Has any research been done?
Plus the silly sod confused "less" with "fewer", which counts as a data error in my book!
At that point I gave up.
Well - NS has had a lot of guff in it recently; they have even published pieces by Comical Dave.