politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » A 20/1 tip to start off 2017

Pulpstar said:

29 off topic points here.

2,900 would be more accurate

29 posts about political betting?

Also, I have apparently visited PB 6,257 times.

I know this to be a significant underestimate

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

Twitter is on ARSTechnica's 'most endangered tech company' list for 2017.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/staff/2016/12/deathwatch-2017-the-most-endangered-tech-companies/

A good assessment of some of the platform's problems.

Bankruptcy looms. I look forward to it. Twitter is awful for society.

Mr. Max, I quite like Twitter's minimalism.

Can anyone find the 20-1 still ?

Or any price ?

The good news is I seem to have £67 left in my account - which I can get back to paying the mortgage shortly, hopefully...

*Looks for the ever hidden withdraw button*

Farage is now seen as too close to Trump. If UKIP oppose the Brexit deal it will be mainly because it was not tough enough on migration and Nuttall is best placed to exploit that

CAN ANYONE FIND THE BET ON BETWAY ?

MaxPB said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

Twitter is on ARSTechnica's 'most endangered tech company' list for 2017.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/staff/2016/12/deathwatch-2017-the-most-endangered-tech-companies/

A good assessment of some of the platform's problems.

Bankruptcy looms. I look forward to it. Twitter is awful for society.

My only concern is that it is replaces with something even worse!

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

Twitter is on ARSTechnica's 'most endangered tech company' list for 2017.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/staff/2016/12/deathwatch-2017-the-most-endangered-tech-companies/

A good assessment of some of the platform's problems.

That's a good article about a few very marginal companies, one to bookmark and come back to next year.

Twitter's most basic problem is that they really don't have a business plan to actually make any money, and their forays into politics and censorship are haemorrhaging users.

Their best bet would have to have been acquired for megabucks for the userbase à la WhatsApp, but they chose to go down the IPO route instead, so now every potential investor can see the stock tanking.

Malcolm

"TFS, I rather think it is due to him being a complete T**** "

You veer between being a curmudgeonly old soak and being creepily ingratiating.

I don't know which I prefer

Oh.... and Happy Hogmanay.

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Being the manufacturer of the Pixel must be their best hope of reinvention as a Foxconn rival.

http://metro.co.uk/2016/12/31/whatsapp-will-stop-working-on-millions-of-phones-in-2017-6353983/

My phone is 3 years old and the OS is 4 versions further on than the one which goes out of support, so this isn't a real issue unless you're on a truly ancient phone.

Apparently TFL / Khan won't be buying anymore Boris buses. No idea if that is a good or bad move, never used one and no idea if they are any good or not.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Apparently TFL / Khan won't be buying anymore Boris buses. No idea if that is a good or bad move, never used one and no idea if they are any good or not.

Are they the ones w no windows that open or air con? In the summer they are unbearable

@another_richard

There might be some truth in that.

I don't place bets with bookies (though like every free-roaming adult on Earth, my everyday life decisions in the face of uncertainty are but a string of bets - and with quite alarming stakes, if I stop to think about it) but even I saw the glory of those spreadsheets.

I'm glad I'm not the only one in the AndyJS fan club, though disappointed we don't seem to have made our votes count!

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Vive isn't HTC as such though, they spun it off into a separate company and a partnership with Valve. From the article, it seems to state that HTC core business of phones is the real issue.

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Have they? I thought they were slightly the better of the VR systems on the market, at least from reviews and specs.

It'll be interesting to see what patents they have, and how valuable they are.

On that note: I decided against buying this generation of VR systems when I got my new PC. I'm banking on the second generation being far superior as the providers compete. But with Vive out of the market there might not be the case.

JosiasJessop said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Have they? I thought they were slightly the better of the VR systems on the market, at least from reviews and specs.

It'll be interesting to see what patents they have, and how valuable they are.

On that note: I decided against buying this generation of VR systems when I got my new PC. I'm banking on the second generation being far superior as the providers compete. But with Vive out of the market there might not be the case.

It might be the best but VR is just undesirable. A few of my friends got it and I got a PSVR. Instant regret.

Roger said:

Malcolm

"TFS, I rather think it is due to him being a complete T**** "

You veer between being a curmudgeonly old soak and being creepily ingratiating.

I don't know which I prefer

Oh.... and Happy Hogmanay.

Roger I may at times be a curmudgeon but you are confused if you think I am ever ingratiating, you need to get your head out of your erchie and see real life now and again.
A Happy New Yea rto you also and no creeping involved.

Given how frequently celebrities and wealthy people and the POTUS elect use Twitter I would have thought it was a prime market for advertisers

FrancisUrquhart said:

JosiasJessop said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Have they? I thought they were slightly the better of the VR systems on the market, at least from reviews and specs.

It'll be interesting to see what patents they have, and how valuable they are.

On that note: I decided against buying this generation of VR systems when I got my new PC. I'm banking on the second generation being far superior as the providers compete. But with Vive out of the market there might not be the case.

Vive is the best of all the VR so far, but it still isn't really that great, and it is way more expensive than Playstation VR (both the unit cost and needing a really high spec pc) and the games are generally crap. Playstation VR is doing better, because well Sony "get games".

Ah, but I play Elite Dangerous. That game is apparently mahoossively good under VR.

I attended the Virtuality conference in 1994. Back then everyone was saying that VR was the next big thing. It'd be a shame if VR fails again, over twenty years later.

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Vive isn't HTC as such though, they spun it off into a separate company and a partnership with Valve. From the article, it seems to state that HTC core business of phones is the real issue.

Their core phone business has been circling the drain for three years at least. The Pixel phones are good business for them, but they are branded as "Google" and probably a step back to when they used to manufacture phones for other brands as an ODM. The issue with that is that they aren't an ODM, they have no manufacturing and get their phones made by Hon Hai, just like everyone else. As Google becomes more confident with hardware design, HTC turn into an unnecessary middle man. Back in 2008 HTC made ODM devices for Samsung and Sony Ericsson, look at what happened to those relationships, the Google one won't be far behind.

Scott_P said:

Happy New year everyone!

It appears I have a disappointingly small number of posts marked off topic, but I do have 4 marked as spam. Which is nice

I see Nicola has used her New Year message to announce that all children born in Scotland this year will get an SNP baby box.

It contains a flag...

Labour and Tories behind as ever, they are so bitter and twisted they cannot even commend a quality policy that will help poor children. Then they wonder why they are losers and so shunned by teh electorate.

Since @JosiasJessop and @malcolmg are both here right now, they might be interested in this

https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/808961397602349056

Scott_P said:

Since @JosiasJessop and @malcolmg are both here right now, they might be interested in this

https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/808961397602349056

There is a hole in my bucket

malcolmg said:

There is a hole in my bucket

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Vive isn't HTC as such though, they spun it off into a separate company and a partnership with Valve. From the article, it seems to state that HTC core business of phones is the real issue.

Their core phone business has been circling the drain for three years at least. The Pixel phones are good business for them, but they are branded as "Google" and probably a step back to when they used to manufacture phones for other brands as an ODM. The issue with that is that they aren't an ODM, they have no manufacturing and get their phones made by Hon Hai, just like everyone else. As Google becomes more confident with hardware design, HTC turn into an unnecessary middle man. Back in 2008 HTC made ODM devices for Samsung and Sony Ericsson, look at what happened to those relationships, the Google one won't be far behind.

Learn something new everyday....I for some reason presumed HTC were an actual manufacturer, not just a designer who got Foxconn to do the making bit. As you say that sounds like a bad spot, neither the mega brand like Apple or Google nor the people key to the manufacture.

My previous phone was an HTC and it was not bad at all, if a bit big. Worked better and easier to use than my current iphone, which I went for based on size, small SE .

PlatoSaid said:

Sandpit said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

Twitter is on ARSTechnica's 'most endangered tech company' list for 2017.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/staff/2016/12/deathwatch-2017-the-most-endangered-tech-companies/

A good assessment of some of the platform's problems.

That's a good article about a few very marginal companies, one to bookmark and come back to next year.

Twitter's most basic problem is that they really don't have a business plan to actually make any money, and their forays into politics and censorship are haemorrhaging users.

Their best bet would have to have been acquired for megabucks for the userbase à la WhatsApp, but they chose to go down the IPO route instead, so now every potential investor can see the stock tanking.

I don't use WhatsApp - but saw a report earlier that it won't work on millions of phones later this year - do you know why? Another headline said ATT were using an upgrade to disable phone batteries charging the last G7s.

The problem with WhatsApp is that they're just a brand for a common protocol, their product is easily replicable and their value is in the userbase - hence the sale to Facebook. The new owners basically bought a massive number of phone numbers and the connections between them, to add to their ever-growing database.

Their explaination for why they're ending support for older phones, is because they want to introduce lovely new features that old phones are not powerful enough to implement. The cynical view is that the enhanced Facebook data mining they want to introduce won't work on older versions, and probably stop old and new versions working with each other.

A new free app called Signal Private Messenger does exactly the same as WhatsApp but without the user being the product. Tell everyone to use it, because these social apps only work if all your friends are on them.

Bendy buses in London were very popular with fare dodgers who used to get on at the back.

Plenty of techie posts on this thread that are fairly incomprehensible to me. Should I mark them all as off-topic?

FU Resolving that problem would help but the difference between them is you can use Twitter to debate whereas Facebook is largely a glorified photo album

Sandpit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Sandpit said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

Twitter is on ARSTechnica's 'most endangered tech company' list for 2017.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/staff/2016/12/deathwatch-2017-the-most-endangered-tech-companies/

A good assessment of some of the platform's problems.

That's a good article about a few very marginal companies, one to bookmark and come back to next year.

Twitter's most basic problem is that they really don't have a business plan to actually make any money, and their forays into politics and censorship are haemorrhaging users.

Their best bet would have to have been acquired for megabucks for the userbase à la WhatsApp, but they chose to go down the IPO route instead, so now every potential investor can see the stock tanking.

I don't use WhatsApp - but saw a report earlier that it won't work on millions of phones later this year - do you know why? Another headline said ATT were using an upgrade to disable phone batteries charging the last G7s.

The problem with WhatsApp is that they're just a brand for a common protocol, their product is easily replicable and their value is in the userbase - hence the sale to Facebook. The new owners basically bought a massive number of phone numbers and the connections between them, to add to their ever-growing database.

Their explaination for why they're ending support for older phones, is because they want to introduce lovely new features that old phones are not powerful enough to implement. The cynical view is that the enhanced Facebook data mining they want to introduce won't work on older versions, and probably stop old and new versions working with each other.

A new free app called Signal Private Messenger does exactly the same as WhatsApp but without the user being the product. Tell everyone to use it, because these social apps only work if all your friends are on them.

It's not easy to get people off WhatsApp. It is the default messenger for all of my friends, even when it was a paid service for a buck a year. I've got 100+ contacts of mine in WhatsApp, in my Telegram list there are less than 10 and most of them are family members.

FrancisUrquhart said:

JosiasJessop said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

I didn't realise HTC were in such big doo doo.

Vive sales have taken a massive nosedive after an initial flurry of action. Would be surprised if they lasted the year.

Have they? I thought they were slightly the better of the VR systems on the market, at least from reviews and specs.

It'll be interesting to see what patents they have, and how valuable they are.

On that note: I decided against buying this generation of VR systems when I got my new PC. I'm banking on the second generation being far superior as the providers compete. But with Vive out of the market there might not be the case.

Vive is the best of all the VR so far, but it still isn't really that great, and it is way more expensive than Playstation VR (both the unit cost and needing a really high spec pc) and the games are generally crap. Playstation VR is doing better, because well Sony "get games".

I have access to all of them, plus Hololens, and Hololens "mixed reality" is the way forward but miles off being good enough. There are another x generation cycles before it is really get any chance of widespread take up.

Talking of companies that may crash and burn, surprised Magic Leap didn't get a passing mention. Their core product appears to be not working as they promised all the investors and they haven't a clue how to make it work.

There's a very funny video around of snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan trying to play pool in a VR world - with a headset on and a 'cue' in hand. The problem was that he leaned on the virtual table and end up on his arse! It also needs much more space than most of us have available, to avoid banging into real-world things!

Good point about HoloLens, they do rather sound like Theranos, thinking that exciting talk about their fascinating product is a substitute for actual invention and engineering.

Edit: found it, try not to laugh like a drain.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OMceVbo3Tm4

Looking forward, in 2017, to the first poll showing the Tories ahead of the SNP.....

Essexit said:

@ydoethur - if the Queen dies and Charles lives as long as her, he'll be King for 22 years or so. A prospect which doesn't bother me at all, but apparently does bother a lot of people.

Assuming (a) he lives that long and (b) he doesn't abdicate.

I was just checking and only three British monarchs have lived to be 80 or older - Victoria, George III and of course Elizabeth II. So it's quite unusual for a monarch to be long-lived (even Edward VIII, the last monarch to die, only made it to 77).

That also raises questions of what to do with an elderly/enfeebled monarch, which didn't generally arise before the 1900s. Perhaps Charles could be like Benedict VI and set the principle of retiring when he's too old to carry out his duties effectively.

(Given his character it seems unlikely, but we all thought that of Benedict too - and Charles may also think about the best time for William to become King, which the Pope didn't.)

Sandpit said:

MaxPB said:

Sandpit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Sandpit said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

Twitter is on ARSTechnica's 'most endangered tech company' list for 2017.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/staff/2016/12/deathwatch-2017-the-most-endangered-tech-companies/

A good assessment of some of the platform's problems.

That's a good article about a few very marginal companies, one to bookmark and come back to next year.

Twitter's most basic problem is that they really don't have a business plan to actually make any money, and their forays into politics and censorship are haemorrhaging users.

Their best bet would have to have been acquired for megabucks for the userbase à la WhatsApp, but they chose to go down the IPO route instead, so now every potential investor can see the stock tanking.

I don't use WhatsApp - but saw a report earlier that it won't work on millions of phones later this year - do you know why? Another headline said ATT were using an upgrade to disable phone batteries charging the last G7s.

The problem with WhatsApp is that they're just a brand for a common protocol, their product is easily replicable and their value is in the userbase - hence the sale to Facebook. The new owners basically bought a massive number of phone numbers and the connections between them, to add to their ever-growing database.

Their explaination for why they're ending support for older phones, is because they want to introduce lovely new features that old phones are not powerful enough to implement. The cynical view is that the enhanced Facebook data mining they want to introduce won't work on older versions, and probably stop old and new versions working with each other.

A new free app called Signal Private Messenger does exactly the same as WhatsApp but without the user being the product. Tell everyone to use it, because these social apps only work if all your friends are on them.

It's not easy to get people off WhatsApp. It is the default messenger for all of my friends, even when it was a paid service for a buck a year. I've got 100+ contacts of mine in WhatsApp, in my Telegram list there are less than 10 and most of them are family members.

Absolutely. It's cross-platform operation and universality mean it's going to be very difficult to delete, especially when living somewhere where SMS rates are high and data rates low.

WhatsApp can't be deleted until nearly everyone you know is on Telegram or Signal.

"WhatsApp me" is why it's going to be impossible to replace it.

Plato Facebook is mainly useful for keeping in touch with people you don't see that often

@RobD - (apologies for lack of quotes) It is specifically Catholics that are excluded. The Act of Settlement 1701 excludes from the succession anyone who "is, are or shall be reconciled to, or shall hold communion with, the See or Church of Rome, or shall profess the popish religion". That Act elsewhere states that the monarch must be a Protestant and that, on inheriting the crown, they must "join in communion with the Church of England".

So anyone who has ever been a Catholic is excluded. Anyone else must be or become a Protestant in order to inherit the throne and, on doing so, must become an Anglican.

PlatoSaid said:

I turned on the advertising option on Twitter several months back - its targetting is useless. Repeated ads for sensible shoes/Citrix servers et al/merchant banking advice... I reckon their adverts are no closer than totally random - and probably worse based on crap data.

Twitter's advertising team must be made up exclusively of people who couldn't get hired by Google, or Microsoft, or Facebook, or Amazon, etc. The advertising is very poorly targeted, which implies either their social graph is garbage (and so they are spraying adverts all over the shop), or they are having trouble booking adverts and left serving up crap for cheap. Even flagging adverts as "not interested" doesn't seem to improve matters.

SeanT said:

All true. And yet Twitter is, politically, the most influential global social medium of them all. Trump ran his presidential campaign via Twitter - he didn't use Facebook. And he won.

It's truly bizarre that Twitter can't find a way to monetise this salience.

Yeah in an era where important policy is announced by a late night tweet from The Donald, you would assume that being the gatekeeper to that would be an easy money spinner.

Luckyguy1983 said:

MaxPB said:

Sandpit said:

MaxPB said:

Sandpit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Sandpit said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

I don't use WhatsApp - but saw a report earlier that it won't work on millions of phones later this year - do you know why? Another headline said ATT were using an upgrade to disable phone batteries charging the last G7s.

The problem with WhatsApp is that they're just a brand for a common protocol, their product is easily replicable and their value is in the userbase - hence the sale to Facebook. The new owners basically bought a massive number of phone numbers and the connections between them, to add to their ever-growing database.

Their explaination for why they're ending support for older phones, is because they want to introduce lovely new features that old phones are not powerful enough to implement. The cynical view is that the enhanced Facebook data mining they want to introduce won't work on older versions, and probably stop old and new versions working with each other.

A new free app called Signal Private Messenger does exactly the same as WhatsApp but without the user being the product. Tell everyone to use it, because these social apps only work if all your friends are on them.

It's not easy to get people off WhatsApp. It is the default messenger for all of my friends, even when it was a paid service for a buck a year. I've got 100+ contacts of mine in WhatsApp, in my Telegram list there are less than 10 and most of them are family members.

Absolutely. It's cross-platform operation and universality mean it's going to be very difficult to delete, especially when living somewhere where SMS rates are high and data rates low.

WhatsApp can't be deleted until nearly everyone you know is on Telegram or Signal.

"WhatsApp me" is why it's going to be impossible to replace it.

Any challenger has to find a weakness in their offering and exploit it.

To me, that weakness was the purchase of the company by the World's largest data miners and privacy invaders - although I appreciate that for others the barrier is somewhat higher. I deliver a lecture called "Why I'm Not On Facebook" to schools and parents about the perils of social media.

Signal is squarely aimed at people who value their privacy, but being a small open community - rather than a startup company with a marketing budget - they rely on word of mouth for market share.

SeanT said:

Talking of Twitter, check this

https://twitter.com/thomasknox/status/815528097609121792


To be charitable to the journalist, William Keegan, he is quite old and maybe a bit doddery, and - maybe - he didn't realise how this would sound. i.e. oozing contempt, reinforcing every stereoptype of Remoaners.

What amazes me is that the Guardian editors let it pass. A good or sensible sub-editor would have jumped on it and taken it out in a trice. It's in the first sentence!

I sense possible terminal decline here. The Guardian is the Queen with a cold.

It is worth remembering that much of the progressive Left around the world were not pro-democracy until 1989.

I grew up when it was standard (and not at all surprising) for a Labour MP of the left or CND spokesperson etc to declare that the East Block "Peoples Democracies" were more democratic than western countries where you got to vote for the government.... Claims that there was no unemployment and the joys of East German child care figured largely in this.

In addition "democracy" was apparently racist when "imposed" on "non-western" countries.

When the wall came down, the tune changed over night. We had always been at war with Eastasia.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Apparently TFL / Khan won't be buying anymore Boris buses. No idea if that is a good or bad move, never used one and no idea if they are any good or not.

That will cause problems with the pollution targets - the old buses are a big problem

williamglenn said:

Sandpit said:

I deliver a lecture called "Why I'm Not On Facebook" to schools and parents about the perils of social media

In a world where Mr Pussy-Grabber can become President, perhaps we need to accept that some of the perceived risks of oversharing are overblown.

But yet people still think death threats and the documentation of their own illegal activities are somehow okay.

This year's graduates will have been on social media since they were 13 or 14. How much of what they have posted in the intervening period, would they wish to have disappeared from the internet as they enter the real world of life and work?

The first thing to understand it that there's no delete button, even if you think there is.
The second thing to understand is that if you're not paying for something (and sometimes even if you are) then you're not the customer, you are the product sold to the customer advertisers.
The third thing to understand is that anything you post on *someone else's website* is basically theirs to do with as they wish, that US freedom of speech laws ban very little in this regard, and that if you have a problem with it you'll need expensive lawyers.

I could (and often do, professionally) go on all day about this, so I think I'll quit now rather than derail the New Year thread completely!

Sandpit said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

MaxPB said:

Sandpit said:

MaxPB said:

Sandpit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Sandpit said:

JosiasJessop said:

Off-topic:

I don't use WhatsApp - but saw a report earlier that it won't work on millions of phones later this year - do you know why? Another headline said ATT were using an upgrade to disable phone batteries charging the last G7s.

The problem with WhatsApp is that they're just a brand for a common protocol, their product is easily replicable and their value is in the userbase - hence the sale to Facebook. The new owners basically bought a massive number of phone numbers and the connections between them, to add to their ever-growing database.

Their explaination for why they're ending support for older phones, is because they want to introduce lovely new features that old phones are not powerful enough to implement. The cynical view is that the enhanced Facebook data mining they want to introduce won't work on older versions, and probably stop old and new versions working with each other.

A new free app called Signal Private Messenger does exactly the same as WhatsApp but without the user being the product. Tell everyone to use it, because these social apps only work if all your friends are on them.

It's not easy to get people off WhatsApp. It is the default messenger for all of my friends, even when it was a paid service for a buck a year. I've got 100+ contacts of mine in WhatsApp, in my Telegram list there are less than 10 and most of them are family members.

Absolutely. It's cross-platform operation and universality mean it's going to be very difficult to delete, especially when living somewhere where SMS rates are high and data rates low.

WhatsApp can't be deleted until nearly everyone you know is on Telegram or Signal.

"WhatsApp me" is why it's going to be impossible to replace it.

Any challenger has to find a weakness in their offering and exploit it.

To me, that weakness was the purchase of the company by the World's largest data miners and privacy invaders - although I appreciate that for others the barrier is somewhat higher. I deliver a lecture called "Why I'm Not On Facebook" to schools and parents about the perils of social media.

Signal is squarely aimed at people who value their privacy, but being a small open community - rather than a startup company with a marketing budget - they rely on word of mouth for market share.

They should maybe go 'invitation only' to emphasise that point like Gmail did back in the day.

Gab.ai is is an interesting idea, a true free speech platform. The rules are simple in a sense, don't break the law. Trolling is allowed and the advice to people being trolled is "turn off your computer" or "don't say stupid things".

rural_voter said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

SeanT said:

Talking of Twitter, check this

https://twitter.com/thomasknox/status/815528097609121792


To be charitable to the journalist, William Keegan, he is quite old and maybe a bit doddery, and - maybe - he didn't realise how this would sound. i.e. oozing contempt, reinforcing every stereoptype of Remoaners.

What amazes me is that the Guardian editors let it pass. A good or sensible sub-editor would have jumped on it and taken it out in a trice. It's in the first sentence!

I sense possible terminal decline here. The Guardian is the Queen with a cold.

I pray fervently that the Queen survives The Guardian.

The chance of a 'mere mortal' living to 100 is one in 10,000. I doubt the royal family have better genes or a much better diet, but they might have better medical care.

Wrong statistic. We need the odds of a 90-year-old surviving to 100, not any mere mortal.

@SeanT and others:

Incidentally, have you noticed that Keegan has quite brilliantly mucked up his figures in that sentence about the 'so-called people'? 52% on a 72% turnout is 37.4% which by various rounding methods would go up to 38% in practice - not the 28% he claims.

This merely confirms me in my belief that he's basically thick, as well as patronising. You have to wonder what strings had to be pulled to get him a job at the Guardian, even for a job involving economic forecasting where I suppose blatant fiddling is to be expected.