One of the hard things about running a website about political betting is that for large parts of each year there is nothing to bet on which will be resolved within a week or so. I am sure that Shadsy, ex-political man at Ladbrokes who is now with Smarkets, feels the same and it is no surprise that we have seen an uptick in activity with his new firm since his arrival.
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Maybe it widens the gap between the in work and out of work, including pensioners? Globalisation pops it’s head around the corner, excited by British workers pricing themselves out of a job? Can nice pay rises have an impact on inflation? Are they sure to be uniform across the country, that is it helps levelling up rather than throw light on it’s not level?
https://2sjjwunnql41ia7ki31qqub1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Tearfund_Prayer-Survey_all-respondents.pdf
Here’s the BBC’s writeup;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58681075
Table 173 on p205 gives average self-declared income by faith, which is quite intriguing. Sikh’s earn (slightly) more than Jews in the sample, which busts a stereotype.
P207, those who pray every day have significantly higher income than those who pray less regularly. We can have fun arguing about causation with that!
Other than that, Muslims are pretty strong believers, more strongly believing that their prayers are answered vs most other religions/Christian denominations. Muslims who pray are also much more likely to have children compared with other religions/denominations.
1. Can anything from their conference cut through. Not the deputy leader calling Tories scum, but a positive solution to an identified problem.
2. Whether or not the panic buying of fuel dies down quickly. This was what got Blair to crash in the polls in 2000, but the difference this time is that the actual shortages don’t seem to be in proportion to the media coverage.
It's being replaced by EU Task Force Takuba with which, for reasons of performative nationalism, the UK will have no involvement. The Danish Air Force will be providing the air mobility.
One more name scratched off the SPoTY nominations list. Can’t see any golfers on it either, unless there’s quite the turnaround at Whistling Straights this evening.
Not an awful lot of sport to go now - it’s going to be the Olympians, Emma Raducanu, and Lewis Hamilton if he wins the title.
F1: browsing the markets for value. Still a suggestion that Mercedes might force a new engine on Bottas to mess with Verstappen. Think that's a dumb idea, myself, but there we are.
Weather looks like showers all day, so the race could end up being quite turbulent. Note that the scheduled start is 13:00 UK time, not the usual 14:00.
Safety car seems a god bet, at almost any price.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/25/dump-new-labour-playbook-keir-starmer-and-set-out-programme-for-radical-change
Same feeling I always have when Gordon Brown pipes up about the economy, or John Major about Europe, or Tony Blair about anything except winning elections.
Those who got on her before she won the tournament have the right to feel unbearably smug.
You can see how somebody from Mars might be confused. Or maybe the Martian God is a Tuesday person.
Betting Post
F1: backed Ricciardo for a podium at 8.2, hedged at 3.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2021/09/russia-pre-race-2021_26.html
If it is true, something startling is going on in our culture.
The big problem with inflation is that it could force interest-rate rises. Then we’d all be f*cked.
I’ve got tickets to the race, so won’t be watching the awards live, will probably wake up in the morning and need to find the easiest way to send @Philip_Thompson £100.
European Road Hauliers Association says temporary visa scheme won't tempt many EU drivers to the UK because pay and conditions are better in the EU, in part thanks to new EU rules, while Brexit red tape at customs is a big disencentive to driving to the UK.
Rather bursts the bubble of those claiming we had to leave the EU to create a workers' paradise. Brexit = more red tape at the border + deregulation internally = fewer right for workers. It's a massive con perpetrated against the British working class by the Jacob Rees-Moggs of this world.
The ERHA are also confusing cross-border freight traffic into the UK, with UK-based hauliers looking to recruit drivers from abroad.
Betfair has opened SPotY "top 3" and "without ER" markets. Pretty thin atm.
(No, he is not an Albanian taxi driver. He’s a fitness instructor at Chase Leisure Centre where I have been going for gym sessions to work on a muscle problem.)
a) if companies take the hit, corporate profits, causing reduced investment and employment
b) if exporters take the hit, exports, causing balance of payments problems
c) if consumers take the hit, retail prices, causing a redistribution of wealth from non-workers to workers.
You can't pay-rise yourself to prosperity, as we and the Italians demonstrated conclusively in the 50s, 60s and 70s. In the medium and long runs it's productivity that counts.
AIUI the UK driver shortage affects both cross border and purely internal routes (and there is a lot of overlap between the two, one of the great benefits of the Single Market being that it gets rid of these artificial distinctions created by borders).
^ that’s what is happening, imo. Rebalancing from capital to labour is exactly what is needed after a long period in which govt policy was (in many ways, still is) designed to achieve the opposite.
The little guy without assets and/or inheritance, and only his labour to sell is being a little bit less screwed. That’s great. If it keeps going, he might even be able to afford a house, one day.
Ultimately, the little guy wants to pay himself more than he earns. Which is understandable, and works in the short term, but in the long run will be counter-productive. That's why Mrs Thatcher rightly destroyed union power in the 1980s.
All the petrol stations with 10 miles are cleaned out.
With respect, that’s bollox
The stagnation of wages at the bottom end has been a complete disaster when coupled with ever increasing house price/earnings ratios. The losers in this game are the ones who have benefitted the most over the past few decades from rising asset prices.
The little guy, reliant on only his labour, has been paid less than he earns for too long.
For lower paid workers we allowed unlimited eu competition, heck there were factories in places where you needed to speak polish to get a job because the rest of the workforce was now polish.
That doesn’t exist in other parts of Europe, want job in France, you need to speak French. And a lot of Eastern Europeans speak English because that was what their tv consisted of (with subtitle in the local language)
I wryly suggested she get down there and ask if they have a 3 pin you can plug your car into so you don't miss out.
Or do their customers pay less? Or are British haulier firms more profitable?
Which means that didn’t help here, companies wanted cheap labour willing to work for as little as possible and an Eastern European was a way better prospect than a uk school leaver.
More housebuilding would also benefit those at the lower end through more demand for their labour.
Therefore we may see a series of spikes, slowly lowering over the next week or two.
But the situation will be different in different areas. For instance, I wonder if areas nearer refineries will have fewer issues than those further away.
He managed to screw over both much of rural Eastern Europe, which is trapped in a depopulating death spiral, and our own working class communities, which were deluged with cheap labour.
I suppose they will be backing the Nurses in their mooted industrial action, after all the number of vacancies are huge.
We do seem to be back to the Seventies (albeit with worse music) in terms of inflation, petrol queues and forthcoming power cuts.
Could I recommend getting ahead of the curve and buying candles before stocks run out?
Someone on here on Friday said a garage sold £45k of fuel on Friday compared to £60k on an average week.
If that is what is stored in tanks local graves see, to 4 to 5 days supply usually so it may take a 3-4 days before garages have fuel again.
Speaking to a friend yesterday, her son wishes to be a lorry driver but it takes time to find the £3k + to pay for the course as most haulage firms won’t pay for the training of new drivers.
That needs to be highlighted way more prominently to ensure the industry changes it shortsightedness.
You asked for xyz, we gave you xyz so why are you still complaining.
This new Conservative party seems to marry all the old selfish bits with a fantasist, narcissist streak, where reality rarely gets a look in. Just get the headlines, defend the dogma and all is well.
Would you quit a lorry driving job for 3 months in the Uk and a risk of no job to return to when the UK kicks you out 3 months later.
Most stations by me had ran out of fuel by yesterday afternoon.
I suspect quite a few people who filled their cars up who only do short journeys probably won’t need to fill again for a while.