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SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited June 2017 in General

imagepoliticalbetting.com » Blog Archive » June 8th 2017 is a day that the election predictor/modellers will want to forget

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  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Apart from YouGov, of course :D
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,435
    second, like JC, the trashing of yougov by many participants on PB means humble pie should be eaten
  • PongPong Posts: 4,693
    edited June 2017
    It's been said before, but... the random sample + UNS really is dead. Now we know what will replace it;

    The yougov *massive panel that they know everything about then measure how opinions are swinging around* type modelling which can figure out correlations between voters and project FPTP seat numbers with way more accuracy.

    'tis the future.

    Related;
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/13/election_poll_accuracy/
  • surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    And,my first has been hijacked by the Tories. Nothing new there.
  • PongPong Posts: 4,693
    edited June 2017
    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    edited June 2017
    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
  • nunuonenunuone Posts: 1,138
    surbiton said:

    And,my first has been hijacked by the Tories. Nothing new there.

    Second is the new first, apparently......

    Meanwhile in Italy, whilst the Five-star movement failed to win local elections, if immigration continues at the current pace something will replace it as the anti- establishment party. The liberal centre shouldn't celebrate a comeback just yet.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40268210
  • nunuonenunuone Posts: 1,138
    A Tory majority of 28 looks really good right now, even though if that was the result on Thursday May would have still been badly damaged.......
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Off Topic - there appears to be a serious fire in West London:

    https://twitter.com/hashtag/grenfelltower?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=tren

    Which also appears to have been the subject of resident concern:

    https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    I sure hope the residents didn't stay put this time... :o
  • PongPong Posts: 4,693
    edited June 2017
    RobD said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
    The labour policy is fine - if funded through proper property taxation. The social care stuff in the tory manifesto did impress me though. Until she u-turned.

    And now it's dead;

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4598772/Dementia-Tax-set-SCRAPPED-Tories.html

    Deborah Orr had it right;

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/19/pay-social-care-britain-land-of-minor-aristocrats-tory-manifesto-plan

    "People don’t want to spend money tied up in their bricks and mortar on funding their care. They want to leave that cash to their kids, so they can buy some overpriced property themselves."

    This is the vision the tories have sold to their wealthy client vote ever since Osborne's 2008(?) inheritance tax giveaway. Labour's LVT would end this regressive system of using the state to funnel wealth to older property owners so they can hand it on to their own kids, tax free.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    RobD said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
    Nothing for the young though
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    Pong said:

    RobD said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
    The labour policy is fine - if funded through proper property taxation. The social care stuff in the tory manifesto did impress me though. Until she u-turned.

    And now it's dead;

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4598772/Dementia-Tax-set-SCRAPPED-Tories.html

    Deborah Orr had it right;

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/19/pay-social-care-britain-land-of-minor-aristocrats-tory-manifesto-plan

    "People don’t want to spend money tied up in their bricks and mortar on funding their care. They want to leave that cash to their kids, so they can buy some overpriced property themselves."

    This is the vision the tories have sold to their wealthy client vote ever since Osborne's 2008(?) inheritance tax giveaway. Labour's LVT would end this regressive system of using the state to funnel wealth to older wealthy people so they can hand it on to their own kids.
    There was also WFA and the triple lock. Obviously the lack of majority means that these policies may not be implemented. To say that the Tory party was somehow proposing a magic money tree for their client vote is ridiculous, given what happened during the campaign.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941

    RobD said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
    Nothing for the young though
    Hard to offer giveaways when there is still a big deficit.
  • PongPong Posts: 4,693
    edited June 2017
    RobD said:

    RobD said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
    Nothing for the young though
    Hard to offer giveaways when there is still a big deficit.
    There wouldn't be a deficit if we taxed property properly.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,758

    Off Topic - there appears to be a serious fire in West London:

    https://twitter.com/hashtag/grenfelltower?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=tren

    Which also appears to have been the subject of resident concern:

    https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/

    That looks horrific.
  • swing_voterswing_voter Posts: 1,435


    Nothing for the young though

    Hard to offer giveaways when there is still a big deficit.

    There wouldn't be a deficit if we taxed property properly.



    Would be possible if we scrapped Trident £60-100 billion and still counting...
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,909
    My ELBOW is broken once again :lol:

    Off topic: Hope no one got trapped in that tower block.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Sean_F said:

    Off Topic - there appears to be a serious fire in West London:

    https://twitter.com/hashtag/grenfelltower?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=tren

    Which also appears to have been the subject of resident concern:

    https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/

    That looks horrific.
    https://twitter.com/Nick_Falco/status/874839296846508032
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    edited June 2017
    That fire looks hideous.

    Apparently in 2015/6 the tower was renovated, including new cladding and windows.

    Pure speculation: I wonder if the fire spreading is related to the cladding, as I believe occurred in the recent Gulf fires.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,909
    Pictures eeerily reminiscent of 9/11.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
  • daodaodaodao Posts: 821

    That fire looks hideous.

    Apparently in 2015/6 the tower was renovated, including new cladding and windows.

    Pure speculation: I wonder if the fire spreading is related to the cladding, as I believe occurred in the recent Gulf fires.

    The BBC website states that "a significant number of people" are unaccounted for. I am expecting the number of fatalities to be in 3 figures.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891

    http://www.politico.eu/article/kristian-jensen-brits-angry-at-danes-small-nation-jibe/

    At a conference called Road To Brexit in Copenhagen on Tuesday, Danish Finance Minister Kristian Jensen said Britain was not in a position to bully Denmark or other members of the European Union during the Brexit negotiation process, Politiken reported.

    Jensen added: “There are two kinds of European nations. There are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realized they are small nations.”

    Britain’s ambassador to Denmark, Dominic Schroeder, hit back, saying he saw no indications “of a diminished or diminishing power.”

    Ouch! That must have hurt!
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,909
    Roger said:

    http://www.politico.eu/article/kristian-jensen-brits-angry-at-danes-small-nation-jibe/

    At a conference called Road To Brexit in Copenhagen on Tuesday, Danish Finance Minister Kristian Jensen said Britain was not in a position to bully Denmark or other members of the European Union during the Brexit negotiation process, Politiken reported.

    Jensen added: “There are two kinds of European nations. There are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realized they are small nations.”

    Britain’s ambassador to Denmark, Dominic Schroeder, hit back, saying he saw no indications “of a diminished or diminishing power.”

    Ouch! That must have hurt!
    The trick, Roger, is not minding that it hurts!
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    edited June 2017
    Is there anything that isn't a disaster going on in the UK at the moment?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Off-topic:

    This story should be of interest to many:
    https://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2017/06/russia-probed-election-systems-and-data-of-39-us-states/

    Attacking the voter register is a very interesting way of manipulating an election in a massive way.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Roger said:

    Is there anything that isn't a disaster going on in the UK at the moment?

    Labour's election victory?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The sad thing about this election is that it has probably set back attempts to address inter-generational fairness, the Tories having made an almighty hash of floating some ideas that ultimately contain some good sense.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621T272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    Thanks for that. It's f'ing incredible. :(
  • philiphphiliph Posts: 4,704
    edited June 2017

    RobD said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    Except that they were the party proposing a scaling back of welfare for the elderly, unlike Labour.
    Nothing for the young though
    Only the social care, WFA reductions and end of triple lock.

    By reducing exorbitant expenditure on the old the future tax and debt burden would be reduced. It is called addressing intergenerational unfairness.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited June 2017
    Pong said:

    It's been said before, but... the random sample + UNS really is dead. Now we know what will replace it;

    The yougov *massive panel that they know everything about then measure how opinions are swinging around* type modelling which can figure out correlations between voters and project FPTP seat numbers with way more accuracy.

    'tis the future.

    Related;
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/13/election_poll_accuracy/

    It is interesting that the YouGov model worked in flagging isolated gains like Canterbury and Kensington, which at the time I was happy to dismiss as arising from quirks in its methodology.

    This election was unusual in that one demographic basis for voting behaviour died (class) and was replaced by another (age). There were some striking graphs posted in yesterday's thread showing that in 2015 age only marginally figured as a determinant of voting behaviour, but has exploded onto the scene since EUref with the strong correlation between greater age and Tory voting reflecting closely the age/Leave correlation of 2016. In such a demographically-driven election YouGov was uniquely well placed to identify outlier gains by both sides.

    As I predicted at the time, YouGov wasn't so hot in dealing with the minor parties, where their fortunes depended less on demography. The mystery of its Indy gain prediction for East Devon remains (she did well but was nowhere close). That can only have been an unbalanced base sample? For the LibDems YouGov scores 7/13, not getting the loss to Plaid, a gain from SNP, and having four of its eventual seats down as Tory. For PC seats YouGov gets 2/4 of its predictions correct and for SNP 34/48.

    I did suggest that the YouGov model *should* be able to predict the Con/Lab balance (not that I believed its prediction, sadly for my betting, being all too creative in coming up with credible and intelligent reasons as to why it must be wrong) - and so it has. The points for us to remember for future betting based on its predictions are a) be very wary of its gain/loss estimates for parties other than Labour/Tory, and b) as a demographic model YouGov is strongest when there is dramatic demographically-driven shifts in voting behaviour.

    It is quite likely that the next election will be demographically "boring" (the patterns of behaviour persisting from 2017), and we will get very excited about trusting YouGov's unusual predictions, only to find we have been misled by the inevitable outliers where its model doesn't quite work. Even this time there were 22 Tory/Lab seats it got wrong, five on each side cancelling out leaving a net error of 12.

    https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/the-day-after/
  • SquareRootSquareRoot Posts: 7,095

    Roger said:

    Is there anything that isn't a disaster going on in the UK at the moment?

    Labour's election victory?
    err Labour did not win the election. It might feel like they did! but the facts are they lost.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,669

    Roger said:

    Is there anything that isn't a disaster going on in the UK at the moment?

    Labour's election victory?
    err Labour did not win the election. It might feel like they did! but the facts are they lost.
    Everybody lost, some lost more than others.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    Those videos from Kensington are truly horrific and a major tragedy is surely unfolding there.

    This blog from residents concerned about the fire risk is also going to make this a political scandal:

    https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/

    The brand new local MP is going to be busy.
  • archer101auarcher101au Posts: 1,612
    This is fascinating, especially the part about the lack of the massive initial lead. If May had known she was only 8/9% ahead she probably would never have called the election.

    Can we just ban polls? Then, we might be able to discuss the issues during general election campaigns rather than just speculate about who is winning when clearly we have no idea!
    IanB2 said:

    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.

  • eristdooferistdoof Posts: 4,861
    IanB2 said:


    This election was unusual in that one demographic basis for voting behaviour died (class) and was replaced by another (age).

    I think the switch away from class based voting started in the 80's. Due to the electorate changing very slowly the class infuence tails off slowly and is now only really distinguishable in the over 60's. The age effect has long been there in the population and the pro-Labour age group "frontier" also slowly increases over the years. It is not at all unusual to find very well paid professionals in their 40's who are anti-tory and poor families who vote tory.
    The difference in this election was that this time many more of the under 30's voted bringing the age influence to the fore.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    IanB2 said:

    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.

    Surely Labour's GOTV operation helped to ensure that all the first time voters who said they were 10/10 certain to vote actually voted.
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    IanB2 said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The sad thing about this election is that it has probably set back attempts to address inter-generational fairness, the Tories having made an almighty hash of floating some ideas that ultimately contain some good sense.
    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the retired use the Daily
    Mail to fill their day devouring every seccion. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel
    Woe betide anyone who tríes to tell them its bollocks. They claim they buy it for the cross word but still read it cover to cover.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,007
    IanB2 said:

    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.

    Very interesting. If the polls had all been "right", would the election have ever been called at all?
  • daodaodaodao Posts: 821
    IanB2 said:

    Those videos from Kensington are truly horrific and a major tragedy is surely unfolding there.

    This blog from residents concerned about the fire risk is also going to make this a political scandal:

    https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/kctmo-feeling-the-heat/

    The brand new local MP is going to be busy.

    I expect the number of casualties to exceed those of the 3 recent terrorist incidents combined. Discussing the finer details of politics is probably not appropriate at present.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    IanB2 said:

    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.

    Really good post undermining many of the theories and rationalisations for what was indeed a polling disaster of epic proportions. I find the finding that the Tories never had the kind of leads that some of the polls were showing particularly significant. Had this been known would we have an election at all?

    It is also the second election in a row where a false polling narrative has completely distorted the campaign and the public debate. Last time out we were told it was neck and neck when it almost certainly wasn't throughout. This time we were told it was a walk in the park and it never was. Had people known that would the Labour offering been looked at a bit more critically? Who knows?
  • GeoffMGeoffM Posts: 6,071

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    nichomar said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The sad thing about this election is that it has probably set back attempts to address inter-generational fairness, the Tories having made an almighty hash of floating some ideas that ultimately contain some good sense.
    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the retired use the Daily
    Mail to fill their day devouring every seccion. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel
    Woe betide anyone who tríes to tell them its bollocks. They claim they buy it for the cross word but still read it cover to cover.
    Corrected this for you:

    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the young use Facebook to fill their day devouring every post. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel. Woe betide anyone who tries to tell them its bollocks. They claim they read it for the cat pictures but still read every post.

    ;)
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    edited June 2017

    nichomar said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The sad thing about this election is that it has probably set back attempts to address inter-generational fairness, the Tories having made an almighty hash of floating some ideas that ultimately contain some good sense.
    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the retired use the Daily
    Mail to fill their day devouring every seccion. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel
    Woe betide anyone who tríes to tell them its bollocks. They claim they buy it for the cross word but still read it cover to cover.
    Corrected this for you:

    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the young use Facebook to fill their day devouring every post. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel. Woe betide anyone who tries to tell them its bollocks. They claim they read it for the cat pictures but still read every post.

    ;)
    So true but really was only offering an explanation of why the retired still stay loyal to the tories
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    Ever heard of inflation?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited June 2017
    eristdoof said:

    IanB2 said:


    This election was unusual in that one demographic basis for voting behaviour died (class) and was replaced by another (age).

    I think the switch away from class based voting started in the 80's. Due to the electorate changing very slowly the class infuence tails off slowly and is now only really distinguishable in the over 60's. The age effect has long been there in the population and the pro-Labour age group "frontier" also slowly increases over the years. It is not at all unusual to find very well paid professionals in their 40's who are anti-tory and poor families who vote tory.
    The difference in this election was that this time many more of the under 30's voted bringing the age influence to the fore.
    On class you are right, I should have said "finally died", since what is remarkable about 2017 is the absence of any correlation with class at all. As you say, it's a long trend, with Thatcher having pitched to the Cs and Blair to the ABs, and Tory Brexit having strongest appeal in the CDs.

    There has been a weak correlation with age before, but compare the 2015 and 2017 voting behaviour by age cohort and you will see that the different is striking. In 2015 the only standout factor is the lean towards Tory amongst the retired. In 2017 there is a straight-line correlation between rising age and propensity to vote Tory, with the young leaning Labour like never before. This is unconnected with changes in turnout (indeed early data on turnout suggests younger voter turnout was up, but not dramatically so?)
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    Roger said:

    Is there anything that isn't a disaster going on in the UK at the moment?

    Labour's election victory?
    err Labour did not win the election. It might feel like they did! but the facts are they lost.
    Yes. That was the thing that wasn't a disaster!
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,876
    Brilliant article from Alastair Meeks yesterday. And pretty much bang on the money. The fantasist Brexit right has - through its delusion and mendacity - instituted a sustained period of precipitous national decline and opened the door to the populist left. That's some achievement.

    Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,007
    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The over 60s are only c.20% of the population.

    The Tories won almost 43% of the vote.

    They wouldn't be closed to winning if it was only the grey vote they were securing.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,007
    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    On every front line service. Where I live we are down to 3 police officers on shift at any given time to cover a wide area. All our local schools have lost many hundreds of pounds per pupil with the same again to come. All the GP practices are short of cash, our hospital is threatened with closure due to cash shortage. Council funding grant from government cut 70% and the rest to go in a few years leading to mass cuts to frontline services. And that's just here - nationally you add in the abusive cuts to disabled support, making terminal cancer patients go and work, the devastating cuts to the armed forces - it would be a shorter list to say what hasn't been cut.

    And that's the devastating legacy of George Osborne. A 70% increase in national debt at the same time as grinding austerity and imposed poverty.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    nichomar said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The sad thing about this election is that it has probably set back attempts to address inter-generational fairness, the Tories having made an almighty hash of floating some ideas that ultimately contain some good sense.
    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the retired use the Daily
    Mail to fill their day devouring every seccion. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel
    Woe betide anyone who tríes to tell them its bollocks. They claim they buy it for the cross word but still read it cover to cover.
    It's true that whenever I ask my mother whether she has got round to doing something she intended, she generally says she has been busy, and many days being busy seems to consist of reading the paper in detail, which she typically finishes around 5pm. It's the Telegraph rather than the Mail, and is a habit I expect few of us will have when we are in our 80s. I guess we will just stare at our iPads all day, just as now.
  • paulyork64paulyork64 Posts: 2,461
    IanB2 said:

    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.

    Ashcroft's post election poll did suggest that voters who only made up their mind in the final week did break disproportionately for labour.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    From later reports, it appears the fire started much lower down.

    Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    Had a weird dream this morning where England batted first and scored 384 with Buttler going wild in the last 10 overs. Just saying.
  • MonksfieldMonksfield Posts: 2,191
    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    I can assure you there have been massive cuts in the Government Department where I work.
  • SquareRootSquareRoot Posts: 7,095
    Was 384 the number of seats that you thought the Tories would win.. just saying...
    DavidL said:

    Had a weird dream this morning where England batted first and scored 384 with Buttler going wild in the last 10 overs. Just saying.

  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    Rebecca Long-Bailey really isn't very bright; who on here tipped her for leader? She just reads out pre-prepared lines that are I suspect written on her hand. She does however have the skill of dodging any pertinent question about Labour's policy on Brexit, and talking for as long as possible to defer the question following.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    Brilliant article from Alastair Meeks yesterday. And pretty much bang on the money. The fantasist Brexit right has - through its delusion and mendacity - instituted a sustained period of precipitous national decline and opened the door to the populist left. That's some achievement.

    Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.

    Reportedly, May is not contemplating changing her approach to the Brexit negotiations. We'll have to see what that means, but if she is in denial of the new reality, this administration will not last long.

    I quite agree about the electoral collapse of the centre. But I also blame the Conservative campaign in 2015 for deliberately targeting their coalition partners. Given Cameron is himself something of a centrist, this was a moral and strategic blunder.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557
    IanB2 said:

    Rebecca Long-Bailey really isn't very bright; who on here tipped her for leader? She just reads out pre-prepared lines that are I suspect written on her hand. She does however have the skill of dodging any pertinent question about Labour's policy on Brexit, and talking for as long as possible to defer the question following.

    The sad truth is that there are senior politicians on both sides who are not very bright. It's not disqualificatory for high office, whether you're Labour or Conservative.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    Was 384 the number of seats that you thought the Tories would win.. just saying...

    DavidL said:

    Had a weird dream this morning where England batted first and scored 384 with Buttler going wild in the last 10 overs. Just saying.

    Pretty close actually....
  • nichomarnichomar Posts: 7,483
    IanB2 said:

    nichomar said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    The sad thing about this election is that it has probably set back attempts to address inter-generational fairness, the Tories having made an almighty hash of floating some ideas that ultimately contain some good sense.
    Its interesting that if you look around you and listen its obvious that large parts of the retired use the Daily
    Mail to fill their day devouring every seccion. Even when out they talk about what they have read is gospel
    Woe betide anyone who tríes to tell them its bollocks. They claim they buy it for the cross word but still read it cover to cover.
    It's true that whenever I ask my mother whether she has got round to doing something she intended, she generally says she has been busy, and many days being busy seems to consist of reading the paper in detail, which she typically finishes around 5pm. It's the Telegraph rather than the Mail, and is a habit I expect few of us will have when we are in our 80s. I guess we will just stare at our iPads all day, just as now.
    With the tv news on in the background deciding what to have for evening meal today
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,557

    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    Ever heard of inflation?
    People have forgotten about its malignity over the last decade. That is likely to change, but only after we've suffered its consequences.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited June 2017

    IanB2 said:

    The other interesting aspect of YouGov is that its model appears to clarify the timing. As YouGov says, its model is larger and hence more stable than individual polls with their +/-3% MOEs, which makes it very difficult to identify when swings occurred.

    There is a very interesting graph of all the polls, compared to its model, during the campaign, which I wish I was able to post here. YouGov's model suggests:

    - the Tories never had the massive lead suggested by the other polls, which was manufactured by their adjustments and was never real. YG has the Tories at 8/9% ahead at campaign start

    - the Tory lead was down to its final margin at the beginning of the last week in May, after the manifesto launch (I am assuming there must be some lag in YG due to their only re-interviewing a proportion of the panellists each day)

    - nothing that happened thereafter, including the terrorist incidents, made any difference whatsoever (the same appeared true after Jo Cox, indicating that voters are more mature than commentators in recognising an isolated incident unconnected with party politics when they see one)

    - Labour didn't do significantly better on polling day than its position in the model. This is important: articles are already being written about the impact of Labour's massive membership base and the huge amount of canvassing and on-the-day GOTV work it did. As someone who has spent a lifetime organising local election campaigns, I find it hard to believe this didn't make any difference (although I have generally believed GOTV to be less important for a GE where most voters will vote and those who don't really won't). Yet the evidence is that it didn't: nothing done since late May, nor on polling day, changed the overall outcome in Labour's favour at all.

    Very interesting. If the polls had all been "right", would the election have ever been called at all?
    One could go further and speculate that - since the "ordinary" polls showed an uptick of a few % in Tory support immediately the election was called (which was when YouGov started its model, as surprised by the sudden GE as the rest of us) - had YouGov had a model up and running during the spring, it most likely would have showed a Tory lead of say 5-6%. In such circumstances I can't see that May would have been bold enough, without the false reassurance from polls that were essentially doctored by assumptions that proved to be false.
  • Bobajob_PBBobajob_PB Posts: 928
    Seriously this fire is horrific. Can't we get some fucking fire planes up there or something? We can't get water above 100ft or so.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758

    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    On every front line service. Where I live we are down to 3 police officers on shift at any given time to cover a wide area. All our local schools have lost many hundreds of pounds per pupil with the same again to come. All the GP practices are short of cash, our hospital is threatened with closure due to cash shortage. Council funding grant from government cut 70% and the rest to go in a few years leading to mass cuts to frontline services. And that's just here - nationally you add in the abusive cuts to disabled support, making terminal cancer patients go and work, the devastating cuts to the armed forces - it would be a shorter list to say what hasn't been cut.

    And that's the devastating legacy of George Osborne. A 70% increase in national debt at the same time as grinding austerity and imposed poverty.
    No, that is the legacy of a structural deficit where public spending was allowed to run far ahead of tax revenues in anticipation of growth that never came. We got a massive recession instead.

    Despite Osborne's efforts we are still overspending and any government elected for the next several years would have to face the consequences.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    Rebecca Long-Bailey really isn't very bright; who on here tipped her for leader? She just reads out pre-prepared lines that are I suspect written on her hand. She does however have the skill of dodging any pertinent question about Labour's policy on Brexit, and talking for as long as possible to defer the question following.

    The sad truth is that there are senior politicians on both sides who are not very bright. It's not disqualificatory for high office, whether you're Labour or Conservative.
    What a dismal prospect lays before us.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730
    Sorry for the long silence, have been ill.

    Did I miss anything?
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,876
    edited June 2017

    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    On every front line service. Where I live we are down to 3 police officers on shift at any given time to cover a wide area. All our local schools have lost many hundreds of pounds per pupil with the same again to come. All the GP practices are short of cash, our hospital is threatened with closure due to cash shortage. Council funding grant from government cut 70% and the rest to go in a few years leading to mass cuts to frontline services. And that's just here - nationally you add in the abusive cuts to disabled support, making terminal cancer patients go and work, the devastating cuts to the armed forces - it would be a shorter list to say what hasn't been cut.

    And that's the devastating legacy of George Osborne. A 70% increase in national debt at the same time as grinding austerity and imposed poverty.

    Yep - my 90 year old mother-in-law has seen the bus she used to get from her village to Leamington cut to one day a week. Schools here are not replacing teachers; other services are being cut to the bone. It's the same story everywhere. We may not have had balance sheet austerity, but on the ground we certainly have. And it's people's experiences that count.

  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Good morning, everyone.

    Hope the fire can be extinguished soon.
  • The_ApocalypseThe_Apocalypse Posts: 7,830
    Clare Foges in The Times yesterday not exactly representing the Cameroons very well. If it were only 'naive' 18-24-year-olds backing Jeremy Corbyn, then Labour would not have made gains on June 8th. The reality is, as YouGov showed yesterday in their post-election data, is that the working age population generally is becoming more and more disenchanted with the Conservative Party. It is far harder to dismiss those in their thirties and forties as simply 'naive.' For all the talk that 18-24-year-olds just want unaffordable freebies, the exact same assertion could be directed at the over 65s with the WFA, The Triple Lock and so on.

    I think Mortimer makes some good points when it comes to George Osborne. While much of the Conservative campaign issues stem from May and her advisors, a lot of the 'bread and butter' issues which made things difficult for the Tories go back to Osborne's time as Chancellor. He, like Brown, made the mistake of viewing everything through a short-term political lens which meant that the calculation was made to place the burden of austerity far harshly on the working age population than those who are retired. The result is many of the working age population are now turning their backs on the Conservative Party. That is the real divide in terms of demographics: not simply 'naive' 18-24-year-olds versus 'sensible' over 65s. To act as though only my generation entertain fantasy economics is just a nonsense. Voters across the board have been shown to possess some level of cognitive dissonance and to believe in fantasy economics. It was Over 65s after all, who overwhelmingly voted Leave a year ago - a campaign which told us that there would be £350m per week for the NHS if we left the EU.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited June 2017
    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    Pressures on education, pensions and health are inexorable, and have had increased funding, if not as much as they need. Everything else has pretty much been squeezed to the bone (particularly local councils, hence the crisis in care), except that government failed to make a dent in the benefits bill.

    Take out pensions, health, schools and benefits, and you will see that even the severe cuts everywhere else were never going to outweigh rising spending on the big budgets. Plus of course we have a rising interest bill as government debt goes up.
  • not_on_firenot_on_fire Posts: 4,340
    edited June 2017
    DavidL said:

    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    On every front line service. Where I live we are down to 3 police officers on shift at any given time to cover a wide area. All our local schools have lost many hundreds of pounds per pupil with the same again to come. All the GP practices are short of cash, our hospital is threatened with closure due to cash shortage. Council funding grant from government cut 70% and the rest to go in a few years leading to mass cuts to frontline services. And that's just here - nationally you add in the abusive cuts to disabled support, making terminal cancer patients go and work, the devastating cuts to the armed forces - it would be a shorter list to say what hasn't been cut.

    And that's the devastating legacy of George Osborne. A 70% increase in national debt at the same time as grinding austerity and imposed poverty.
    No, that is the legacy of a structural deficit where public spending was allowed to run far ahead of tax revenues in anticipation of growth that never came. We got a massive recession instead.

    Despite Osborne's efforts we are still overspending and any government elected for the next several years would have to face the consequences.
    If Osborne had, say, frozen the State Pension (in common with all other benefits) and introduced CGT on primary residence sales the deficit would have been eliminated now, albeit at a big electoral cost. It's a political choice that it's still there.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant article from Alastair Meeks yesterday. And pretty much bang on the money. The fantasist Brexit right has - through its delusion and mendacity - instituted a sustained period of precipitous national decline and opened the door to the populist left. That's some achievement.

    Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.

    Reportedly, May is not contemplating changing her approach to the Brexit negotiations. We'll have to see what that means, but if she is in denial of the new reality, this administration will not last long.

    I quite agree about the electoral collapse of the centre. But I also blame the Conservative campaign in 2015 for deliberately targeting their coalition partners. Given Cameron is himself something of a centrist, this was a moral and strategic blunder.
    It would be interesting to know who Cameron voted for at the last election. Unlikely to be May and as a constituent of Jeremy unlikely to be Labour.
  • SimonStClareSimonStClare Posts: 7,976
    Morning all.

    GE2015 and GE2017 have been disasters for the polling industry, to lose one GE may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. Will there be another inquiry?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730
    Nigelb said:

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    From later reports, it appears the fire started much lower down.

    Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
    What I find still more incredible about this fire - and it does indeed seem that the external panels were catching fire from eyewitness accounts so extraordinary or not it is obviously true - was that despite spending £10 million there was no building-wide fire alarm, and no sprinkler system in the stairwells. I mean, OK, it wouldn't have stopped it if it really was a gas fire, but it might have slowed it down long enough for people to escape.

    It sounds as though 300 people may have been killed. I am hoping that figure is as wildly wrong in the same direction as my guesses about the Tory lead.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,876
    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant article from Alastair Meeks yesterday. And pretty much bang on the money. The fantasist Brexit right has - through its delusion and mendacity - instituted a sustained period of precipitous national decline and opened the door to the populist left. That's some achievement.

    Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.

    Reportedly, May is not contemplating changing her approach to the Brexit negotiations. We'll have to see what that means, but if she is in denial of the new reality, this administration will not last long.

    I quite agree about the electoral collapse of the centre. But I also blame the Conservative campaign in 2015 for deliberately targeting their coalition partners. Given Cameron is himself something of a centrist, this was a moral and strategic blunder.

    On every level May is the wrong person to be fronting Brexit. She is inflexible, not particularly bright, unimaginative, distant and a prisoner of her backbenches. We desperately need a cross-party consensus that takes us to the softest Brexit possible - the one that Hammond seems to be pushing for. We won't get it. The Tory right and the labour left will see to it. I agree with Alastair Meeks that we are more than likely totally and utterly screwed. David Cameron's weakness in 2012/13 and his fear of Ed Miliband (!!!!) will cost this country a much higher sum than anything inflicted on us by the great crash.

  • 619619 Posts: 1,784
    Fascinating to see Tory lines of attack on Corbyn coming back to bite them - coalition of chaos, terrorist-affiliation, weak Brexit leader. Also interesting that Corbyn did not get personal against May once.

  • DecrepitJohnLDecrepitJohnL Posts: 13,300
    Pong said:

    It's been said before, but... the random sample + UNS really is dead. Now we know what will replace it;

    The yougov *massive panel that they know everything about then measure how opinions are swinging around* type modelling which can figure out correlations between voters and project FPTP seat numbers with way more accuracy.

    'tis the future.

    Related;
    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/13/election_poll_accuracy/

    We don't know that at all. What we know is the Yougov model gave the right-ish answer this time. That might be coincidence. If there is a range of different predictions from pollsters, then one of them will be more correct than the others but we cannot be sure if that is due to superior methodology or simple blind chance.

    Polling is always fighting the last war. Just two short years ago in GE2015 the star performer was the Crosby-Textor private polling for the Conservative Party. We can imagine this year Crosby-Textor gave massive Tory leads else why risk calling the election in the first place? Even as we speak, the "wrong" pollsters will be tweaking their weightings so the right answer pops out but the right answer for 2017 may not be the right answer for 2022 -- or even for this October.

    Oh, and Survation just texted me to say their poll was the most accurate by dint of believing self-reported likelihood to vote -- vindicated before the election by the Prosser and BES research that was posted on pb before polling day.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    This will be another minute's silence we have to sit through.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    Seriously this fire is horrific. Can't we get some fucking fire planes up there or something? We can't get water above 100ft or so.

    I don't think we have any, not being subject to forest fires like the US or the Mediterranean?
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    IanB2 said:

    Rebecca Long-Bailey really isn't very bright; who on here tipped her for leader? She just reads out pre-prepared lines that are I suspect written on her hand. She does however have the skill of dodging any pertinent question about Labour's policy on Brexit, and talking for as long as possible to defer the question following.

    I've been plugging long Bailey's talents on here for quite a while.

    I discovered only recently that they stopped using humans as ship's ballast in the 17th century.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,758
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    From later reports, it appears the fire started much lower down.

    Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
    What I find still more incredible about this fire - and it does indeed seem that the external panels were catching fire from eyewitness accounts so extraordinary or not it is obviously true - was that despite spending £10 million there was no building-wide fire alarm, and no sprinkler system in the stairwells. I mean, OK, it wouldn't have stopped it if it really was a gas fire, but it might have slowed it down long enough for people to escape.

    It sounds as though 300 people may have been killed. I am hoping that figure is as wildly wrong in the same direction as my guesses about the Tory lead.
    God, surely not. There is a number of people saying the fire alarms did not work but it is not clear if that is ones in the flats or the building as a whole.

    I find it almost possible to believe that anyone would have been allowed to use flammable panelling in the last 50 years but I saw down thread a reference saying it was not illegal. Given the limitations on getting water above 100 feet or so that is really astonishing.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730

    GeoffM said:

    Pong said:

    Labour are more popular than the tories with everyone except the retired;

    https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inlineimage/2017-06-13/Employment-01.png

    They've become the wealthy pensioners party.

    Magic money tree for their client vote, austerity for everyone else.

    It's a shame. There are decent tory MP's who recognise and have sought to address intergenerational unfairness. eg;

    https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2017-02-28a.230.1

    Hardly surprising when the Tories have spent the last 7 years throwing bribes at pensioners and cuts for everyone else
    Spending keeps going up - where are these "cuts"?
    On every front line service. Where I live we are down to 3 police officers on shift at any given time to cover a wide area. All our local schools have lost many hundreds of pounds per pupil with the same again to come. All the GP practices are short of cash, our hospital is threatened with closure due to cash shortage. Council funding grant from government cut 70% and the rest to go in a few years leading to mass cuts to frontline services. And that's just here - nationally you add in the abusive cuts to disabled support, making terminal cancer patients go and work, the devastating cuts to the armed forces - it would be a shorter list to say what hasn't been cut.

    And that's the devastating legacy of George Osborne. A 70% increase in national debt at the same time as grinding austerity and imposed poverty.

    Yep - my 90 year old mother-in-law has seen the bus she used to get from her village to Leamington cut to one day a week. Schools here are not replacing teachers; other services are being cut to the bone. It's the same story everywhere. We may not have had balance sheet austerity, but on the ground we certainly have. And it's people's experiences that count.

    Yet there seem to be strangely few cuts in areas where nobody would actually notice the difference.

    For example would anyone notice if we got rid of the Department for Transport, which runs a branch line in East Anglia and practically nothing else? Or the Department for Education? Or OFQUAL? Actually they might notice a distinct improvement if we axed that last one given the abysmal quality of this year's exams. Yet they all survive while 8,000 nurses go.

    It's almost as though our brave and selfless civil service are unwilling to bear cuts themselves...
  • freetochoosefreetochoose Posts: 1,107

    Nigelb said:

    Brilliant article from Alastair Meeks yesterday. And pretty much bang on the money. The fantasist Brexit right has - through its delusion and mendacity - instituted a sustained period of precipitous national decline and opened the door to the populist left. That's some achievement.

    Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.

    Reportedly, May is not contemplating changing her approach to the Brexit negotiations. We'll have to see what that means, but if she is in denial of the new reality, this administration will not last long.

    I quite agree about the electoral collapse of the centre. But I also blame the Conservative campaign in 2015 for deliberately targeting their coalition partners. Given Cameron is himself something of a centrist, this was a moral and strategic blunder.

    On every level May is the wrong person to be fronting Brexit. She is inflexible, not particularly bright, unimaginative, distant and a prisoner of her backbenches. We desperately need a cross-party consensus that takes us to the softest Brexit possible - the one that Hammond seems to be pushing for. We won't get it. The Tory right and the labour left will see to it. I agree with Alastair Meeks that we are more than likely totally and utterly screwed. David Cameron's weakness in 2012/13 and his fear of Ed Miliband (!!!!) will cost this country a much higher sum than anything inflicted on us by the great crash.

    You are confusing "what we desperately need" - in other words what you would like, with what the electorate voted for a year ago. Apart from a few sulkng fools on here most people just want it over and done with, only the lib dems disagree and they're an irrelevance.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,670
    Roger said:

    http://www.politico.eu/article/kristian-jensen-brits-angry-at-danes-small-nation-jibe/

    At a conference called Road To Brexit in Copenhagen on Tuesday, Danish Finance Minister Kristian Jensen said Britain was not in a position to bully Denmark or other members of the European Union during the Brexit negotiation process, Politiken reported.

    Jensen added: “There are two kinds of European nations. There are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realized they are small nations.”

    Britain’s ambassador to Denmark, Dominic Schroeder, hit back, saying he saw no indications “of a diminished or diminishing power.”

    Ouch! That must have hurt!
    LOL, down now to even the Danish laughing at UK and looking down its nose.
  • The_ApocalypseThe_Apocalypse Posts: 7,830
    If May is not contemplating changing her approach to Brexit negotiations, then she will find herself out of a job sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, according to The Telegraph, there have indeed been cross-party talks regarding a Soft Brexit. While Corbyn and McDonnell are likely to not want to engage, that doesn't mean much of the PLP - who favour a more softer Brexit - will not. So I wouldn't conclude so early that we won't get a Soft Brexit - I'd actually even go as far as to say, that the signs are pretty positive in that direction. What Mrs May seems to not quite understand is that she no longer dictate terms: she lost the basis to do that on June 8th. She is now at the mercy of Cabinet who will want some kind of deal to be achieved.
  • SouthamObserverSouthamObserver Posts: 38,876
    Jesus Christ, people will be going to prison over this fire, surely ...
    https://grenfellactiongroup.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/kctmo-playing-with-fire/
  • MonksfieldMonksfield Posts: 2,191
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    From later reports, it appears the fire started much lower down.

    Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
    What I find still more incredible about this fire - and it does indeed seem that the external panels were catching fire from eyewitness accounts so extraordinary or not it is obviously true - was that despite spending £10 million there was no building-wide fire alarm, and no sprinkler system in the stairwells. I mean, OK, it wouldn't have stopped it if it really was a gas fire, but it might have slowed it down long enough for people to escape.

    It sounds as though 300 people may have been killed. I am hoping that figure is as wildly wrong in the same direction as my guesses about the Tory lead.
    It certainly sounds like casualties of 200 plus. Utterly horrific.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    From later reports, it appears the fire started much lower down.

    Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
    What I find still more incredible about this fire - and it does indeed seem that the external panels were catching fire from eyewitness accounts so extraordinary or not it is obviously true - was that despite spending £10 million there was no building-wide fire alarm, and no sprinkler system in the stairwells. I mean, OK, it wouldn't have stopped it if it really was a gas fire, but it might have slowed it down long enough for people to escape.

    It sounds as though 300 people may have been killed. I am hoping that figure is as wildly wrong in the same direction as my guesses about the Tory lead.
    From pure guesswork and what I've been reading, there may be several causal factors. All of these may be wrong and plucked out of my backside:

    The main 'root' cause: a fridge explosion?
    Flammable panels, allowing fire to spread along the exterior
    Means for the fire to get from the outside to interior - or did fire spread internally?
    Alleged signs stating residents should remain in their flats in case of fire.
    Inadequate fire suppression and escape mechanisms.
    The timing of the fire, when the flats will be full and residents asleep.

    And I daresay there will be many more.

    It seems unfair to comment on the emergency services' response: it's early days and there are others on her better equipped to do so. I just hope that as many people as possible are safe, including firefighters.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,730
    edited June 2017
    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    Nigelb said:

    RobD said:

    apparently the fire started near the top of the tower, so hopefully very few were trapped.

    I hope you're right - but its an odd sort of fire that spreads downwards.....What the fiddle they are doing having flammable material on the exteriors of buildings beats me....
    http://www.arabianbusiness.com/cladding-supplier-seeks-call-time-on-flammable-panels-used-on-address-621272.html

    All guesswork, of course.
    In the UK:

    External cladding systems are not required to be non-combustible.

    http://www.probyn-miers.com/perspective/2016/02/fire-risks-from-external-cladding-panels-perspective-from-the-uk/
    From later reports, it appears the fire started much lower down.

    Given the building had only just been refurbished, it seems extraordinary that combustible external cladding might have been used. Possibly more likely that the flammable material the uPVC window frames and surrounds - which are in common usage ?
    What I find still more incredible about this fire - and it does indeed seem that the external panels were catching fire from eyewitness accounts so extraordinary or not it is obviously true - was that despite spending £10 million there was no building-wide fire alarm, and no sprinkler system in the stairwells. I mean, OK, it wouldn't have stopped it if it really was a gas fire, but it might have slowed it down long enough for people to escape.

    It sounds as though 300 people may have been killed. I am hoping that figure is as wildly wrong in the same direction as my guesses about the Tory lead.
    God, surely not. There is a number of people saying the fire alarms did not work but it is not clear if that is ones in the flats or the building as a whole.

    I find it almost possible to believe that anyone would have been allowed to use flammable panelling in the last 50 years but I saw down thread a reference saying it was not illegal. Given the limitations on getting water above 100 feet or so that is really astonishing.
    One survivor has stated that the fire alarm in his flat went off when he opened the door. Another has said his didn't work at all. A third has stated they have been asking for a building wide fire alarm.

    If those are borne out, although it will be too little too late, somebody needs prosecuting.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Very interesting:

    "Any future “mass Labour surge” needs to be make a bigger difference to maximise the seats gained rather than making already big majorities bigger"

    https://moreknownthanproven.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/some-analysis-of-the-labour-surge/
This discussion has been closed.