politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » LAB YouGov lead back up to 8pc but Dave retains his 11pc “B

AndyJS said:

"1 in 10 people in Iceland take antidepressants daily":

http://www.theguardian.com/news/2013/nov/20/mental-health-antidepressants-global-trends

I bet they don't buy them off rent boys though.

It can only be a matter of time before all pollsters do the same as YouGov and conduct daily online polling. It must be a lot cheaper for starters.

CarlottaVance said:

JosiasJessop said:

SeanT said:

Bobajob said:

CarlottaVance said:

Both the Mail and the Telegraph have picked up the Mr Harriet Harman story:

Labour frontbencher 'favourited' explicit gay porn tweets
Jack Dromey, who is married to Harriet Harman, blames his links to gay porn sites on a “technological mix up"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10464348/Labour-frontbencher-favourited-explicit-gay-porn-tweets.html

Harriet Harman's MP husband left red-faced after adding gay porn Tweet to his 'favourites'
Labour MP Jack Dromey linked to a tweet about well-endowed black men
Harriet Harman's husband made a 'technological mix up', spokesman said

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511016/Harriet-Harmans-MP-husband-Jack-Dromey-adds-gay-porn-Tweet-favourites.html#ixzz2lGtZgfmL

Two possible explanations.

1. It was a mistake.
2. He likes gay porn.

My response to 1&2 is "so what"?

Give it a break. It's purile.

Oh please, yet more special pleading from lefties. Given that Dromey has now made this "mistake" TWICE, six months apart, we can assume that 2 is closer to the truth than 1.

In which case, would Labour stop their chortling and sneering if the same "mistake" was made by the spouse of a very senior Tory? No. tim wouldn't stop mentioning it until the Heat Death of the universe.

To be fair, it might not even have been him. It would not surprise me if one of his team also accessed and managed his tweets.

I'm quite glad that I've never had anything to do with Twitter ...

The Mail says only he has access to his Twitter account, so it can't be anyone else.

Ah, fair enough. That actually surprises me; I assumed that others in his office would have had access. Thanks to you and Sean for putting me straight. ;-)

The story made me chuckle, but it's really a tiny story as it stands.

The Turkey story: bu**er. At least my father-in-law's retired now...

In case you thought it was miserable where you are - Ireland's game in the T20 qualifiers in Abu Dhabi was called off due to ... rain!

tim said:

The Tories have now borrowed more in 3 years than Labour did in 13 years.

And they had to borrow more in their first month than Labour did in their first seven years - that's the difference between a Tory & a Labour legacy.....

Slackbladder said:

Guido Fawkes ‏@GuidoFawkes 12m
We have a development in the @JackDromeyMP story. Big development. OMG big.

Bigger than the big, black, gay cock he got so excited about yesterday? What on earth could be bigger than that? An elephant cock?

Clarification on the 24h tube - its 5 lines:

This is going to revolutionise London nightlife - the five Tube lines to run 24 hours a day from 2015 pic.twitter.com/ke3FJMwjCX

RichardNabavi said:

Yes, it's such a hilarious line.

One of tim's best. I particularly appreciate the shamelessness of it.

If Dromey (as an example - I am not in any way saying this is the case) proved to be bisexual or gay, why does it matter politically? First and foremost, it is a personal problem that will upset his family. It's one of the few things that might make me feel sympathy for Harman.

If his voting record, or speeches, were anti-gay, then there might be a charge of hypocrisy. But on the whole, it's surely a matter for his family and friends rather than for any of us.

JosiasJessop said:

If Dromey (as an example - I am not in any way saying this is the case) proved to be bisexual or gay, why does it matter politically? First and foremost, it is a personal problem that will upset his family. It's one of the few things that might make me feel sympathy for Harman.

If his voting record, or speeches, were anti-gay, then there might be a charge of hypocrisy. But on the whole, it's surely a matter for his family and friends rather than for any of us.

Here's the thing with Twitter - it makes the private, public.

tim said:

The Tories have now borrowed more in 3 years than Labour did in 13 years.

And before they start blaming someone else remember how they used to claim Obama wouldn't get the deficit down as fast they they would.

They did inherit a public sector deficit of 11% of GDP. Unless you're arguing for very stringent cuts in public spending (not usually a Labour argument) then they were bound to keep borrowing, even as the deficit fell.

The deficit should be around 5.5% of GDP in the current fiscal year, which is undoubtedly too high for comfort, but still a significant move in the right direction.

SeanT said:

JosiasJessop said:

If Dromey (as an example - I am not in any way saying this is the case) proved to be bisexual or gay, why does it matter politically? First and foremost, it is a personal problem that will upset his family. It's one of the few things that might make me feel sympathy for Harman.

If his voting record, or speeches, were anti-gay, then there might be a charge of hypocrisy. But on the whole, it's surely a matter for his family and friends rather than for any of us.

His gayness is indeed neither here nor there (except if you like laughing at politicians making terrible "mistakes"). However If he's a politician using porn (which he apparently is) it matters quite a lot because his politician wife is a fierce opponent of porn.

Imagine if the wife of a Tory minister was caught doing something fiercely, and political abhorred, by her Tory minister husband.

Exactly. Very awkward.

I doubt Harman has a problem with gay porn, as long as the blokes are involved in snuff-type clinches and getting seriously tortured.

RichardNabavi said:

Oh dear, Peter Oborne needs to brush up on his statistics:

Mathematicians tell us that the statistical probability against a coin coming up heads six times in a row is 64-1. In other words there is only one chance in 64 that Labour’s score of 6/6 was a coincidence.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10462871/Its-no-coincidence-the-MPs-found-guilty-of-fiddling-are-all-Labour.html

If we take the 2005 starting position of Labour holding 355 out of 646 seats, the correct figure is a 2.7% chance that all six would Labour, if the null hypothesis is that there was no systematic bias towards Labour MPs being more corrupt than other MPs, i.e. a one in 37 chance. (355/646 for the first, 354/645 for the second etc, multiplied together). This assumes we include Sinn Fein MPs, which I think is right because they claimed expenses even though they didn't take part in parliamentary debates and votes.

Still statisically significant by the most commonly-used assessment, of course.

To be fair, I think some Conservative MPs only avoided prosectuion because they weren't quite so blatantly stupid as the Labour MPs who got convicted.

Bobajob said:

JosiasJessop said:

If Dromey (as an example - I am not in any way saying this is the case) proved to be bisexual or gay, why does it matter politically? First and foremost, it is a personal problem that will upset his family. It's one of the few things that might make me feel sympathy for Harman.

If his voting record, or speeches, were anti-gay, then there might be a charge of hypocrisy. But on the whole, it's surely a matter for his family and friends rather than for any of us.

Another sensible and humane post from the thinking man's Tory.

I would expect similar from your good self if it had been a baby eater, and I mean that in a complimentary manner.

Head over to Guido for an update on the Dromey story.

Warning : Finish your coffee first, or it will be all over your keyboard

This seems a reasonable analysis

http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2013/10/10/learning-budget-lessons-from-japan-and-britain/

'So instead of a near-balanced budget, Britain will next year still have the biggest budget deficit among the advanced Western economies: 5.8 percent of GDP, against 4.6 percent in the U.S., 3.5 percent in France and 2.1 percent in Italy. Thus Britain’s better growth performance, far from demonstrating the wisdom of relentless budget cuts, has actually reflected an easing of fiscal austerity and a belated acceptance of much wider deficits than European and U.S. politicians seem willing to tolerate.

Secondly and more importantly, this year’s revival of growth in Britain has resulted directly from an audacious government policy to promote huge increases in highly-leveraged mortgage debt. This mortgage-support plan is equivalent, from a macroeconomic standpoint, to a huge expansion of government borrowing. When George Osborne, Britain’s finance minister, announced last March that the Treasury would provide unprecedented guarantees to support the reintroduction of 95 percent mortgages — which had been eliminated by prudential bank regulation — he immediately transformed Britain’s economic prospects, as explained here at the time.

This announcement meant that Osborne was finally accepting the fundamental principle of Keynesian economics: a country emerging from recession must increase, not reduce, its borrowings, until the point is reached where the economy’s excess savings are fully employed.'

Gerry_Mander said:

Head over to Guido for an update on the Dromey story.

Cut to the chase - how big is the cock?

It is important to warn those surfing at work that Guido's site this morning is emphatically Not Safe For Work.

tim said:

CarlottaVance said:

tim said:

Lynton Crosby's partner appears to be cut from the same cloth as the Tories UKIP plant

Yes, a tweet from someone no one has heard of about a politician no one knows in a country most people would struggle to put on the map is going to drive 'Front Bench anti-pornography campaigner Labour MP's Labour MP husband tweeting about big black gay cocks' right out of the news cycle.....

As the PB Tories discuss polls one day per month and cock tweets or Falkirk for the rest you have to wonder which is the outlier

Discussing individual polls is fairly ridiculous. It's like sheep seeing the sun come up and bleating: "Look, we're up three points!" followed by another the next day bleating: "Look, we're up three points!"

There's just too much variation. I take note, look at the trends and any other subsidiary data aside from the headline VI, and just laugh at the comments.

However individual polls are sometimes the grit in the site's oyster, especially when OGH notices some interesting subsidiary data.

FrankBooth said:

I have a theory as to why the Tories aren't improving in the polls when the current news cycle might suggest they should be. Trouble for them is that whenever Labour get a problem - Falkirk, Co-op - the Tories seize on it as a chance to move to the right and blow any potential benefit they may get from it. Seems like they get rather excited by Labour's difficulties and reveal their true colours, which aren't of course very appealing ones to the voters.

Falkirk and the Co-Op are below the radar for most voters. Politicians of all parties are seen as shady and unscrupulous and anyway these scandals affecting Labour are more than balanced by other events affecting the Tories which we are not to allowed to discuss.

However you are right that the Tories seem to be trying as hard as possible to remind people that Cameron's "modernisation" was only skin deep - if today's reports are to be believed the "greenest government ever" actually thinks the green agenda is "crap".

FrankBooth said:

This seems a reasonable analysis

No, but it does confirm that Kaletsky is as poor at his job as ever.

FrankBooth said:

This seems a reasonable analysis

http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2013/10/10/learning-budget-lessons-from-japan-and-britain/

'So instead of a near-balanced budget, Britain will next year still have the biggest budget deficit among the advanced Western economies: 5.8 percent of GDP, against 4.6 percent in the U.S., 3.5 percent in France and 2.1 percent in Italy. Thus Britain’s better growth performance, far from demonstrating the wisdom of relentless budget cuts, has actually reflected an easing of fiscal austerity and a belated acceptance of much wider deficits than European and U.S. politicians seem willing to tolerate.

Secondly and more importantly, this year’s revival of growth in Britain has resulted directly from an audacious government policy to promote huge increases in highly-leveraged mortgage debt. This mortgage-support plan is equivalent, from a macroeconomic standpoint, to a huge expansion of government borrowing. When George Osborne, Britain’s finance minister, announced last March that the Treasury would provide unprecedented guarantees to support the reintroduction of 95 percent mortgages — which had been eliminated by prudential bank regulation — he immediately transformed Britain’s economic prospects, as explained here at the time.

This announcement meant that Osborne was finally accepting the fundamental principle of Keynesian economics: a country emerging from recession must increase, not reduce, its borrowings, until the point is reached where the economy’s excess savings are fully employed.'

When growth is (firmly) re-established, will the Gov't (Of whatever colour) put into practice the other part of Keynes' economics to run a surplus in the good times ?

CarlottaVance said:

Neil said:

Gerry_Mander said:

Head over to Guido for an update on the Dromey story.

Cut to the chase - how big is the cock?

You'll get an Eiffel.....

You'll forgive me if I dont pop over to Guido's site. I like to leave that kind of thing to you and tim.

@anothernick If you think the Co-op is below the radar of the public, you haven't been glancing at the front pages of the tabloids for the last week.

Neil said:

CarlottaVance said:

Neil said:

Gerry_Mander said:

Head over to Guido for an update on the Dromey story.

Cut to the chase - how big is the cock?

You'll get an Eiffel.....

You'll forgive me if I dont pop over to Guido's site. I like to leave that kind of thing to you and tim.

Oooh get her!

It isn't actually anything new - just a shot of the other tweet that was also a 'coincidence'.....

tim said:

JosiasJessop said:

tim said:

CarlottaVance said:

tim said:

Lynton Crosby's partner appears to be cut from the same cloth as the Tories UKIP plant

Yes, a tweet from someone no one has heard of about a politician no one knows in a country most people would struggle to put on the map is going to drive 'Front Bench anti-pornography campaigner Labour MP's Labour MP husband tweeting about big black gay cocks' right out of the news cycle.....

As the PB Tories discuss polls one day per month and cock tweets or Falkirk for the rest you have to wonder which is the outlier

Discussing individual polls is fairly ridiculous. It's like sheep seeing the sun come up and bleating: "Look, we're up three points!" followed by another the next day bleating: "Look, we're up three points!"

There's just too much variation. I take note, look at the trends and any other subsidiary data aside from the headline VI, and just laugh at the comments.

However individual polls are sometimes the grit in the site's oyster, especially when OGH notices some interesting subsidiary data.

The reason the PB tories have only discussed polling once in the last month is because there's only been one they are happy with and they shut down when the polling is bad for them.
Further to that as Lord Ashcroft points out they are totally in denial about it all.

I must admit, I haven't particularly noticed a reduction in the amount of posts on individual polls.

There are no elections coming up in the next few months, and Labour have a fairly stable lead. There's really not much to say. I expect it'll change in the run-up to the May Euro / LE and, of course, the Referendum.

2014 should be a much more interesting year on PB. And hopefully it will be profitable for those of you who bet.

Bobajob said:

Gerry_Mander said:

Head over to Guido for an update on the Dromey story.

Warning : Finish your coffee first, or it will be all over your keyboard

Back to the 1980s with the illiberal PB Tories. Get out more.

Eh? Holier than thou Labour apparatchik and husband of Hatty Hateperson (who strangely is the only man thus far to win a seat from an all-women shortlist) gets caught surfing the web for large dark roosters (or some such) and if you think that's a hoot then you're illiberal and need to get out more? I don't get it.

No doubt if Osborne got caught drunk, naked, in bed with thee underage rent boys and an orange up his butt you'd be very silent. Not.

Bitter pill for leftists from Draghi:

"You cannot make the weak stronger by making the strong weaker"

OldKingCole said:

SeanT said:

Neil said:

Slackbladder said:

Guido Fawkes ‏@GuidoFawkes 12m
We have a development in the @JackDromeyMP story. Big development. OMG big.

Bigger than the big, black, gay cock he got so excited about yesterday? What on earth could be bigger than that? An elephant cock?

Ed Miliband Filmed Fellating Giant Owl, Blames Mistake by Aide

Can one fellate an owl? Purely an academic question, of course!

In this area - I would always bow to Sean's unparalleled experience.

Mick_Pork said:

Barrington Smith ‏@dundee_dee 2h

David Cameron in a Twitter Hooker Shocker http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/20/david_cameron_in_twitter_hooker_shocker/ …

I look forward to the Back to Basics PB tories intense speculation about this twitter twatter.


LOL



Not really... its already been debunked.. do keep up.

Andrew Sparrow's verdict on the 'green crap' story:

Verdict: Sometimes stories don't have to be true to be true. James Callaghan never uttered the words "Crisis? What crisis?", but the Sun headline reflected the complacency that Callaghan seemed to be displaying when he returned to the UK from a trip abroad during the winter of discontent in 1979 and so it was certainly true in spirit. And this story is in the same category. Perhaps David Cameron has not been explicitly telling colleagues to "get rid of all this green crap" (although, for reasons explained in 3 and 4, I think it more likely than not that the phrase "green crap" has passed his lips). But this is certainly a fair description of the Conservatives' current stance on the environment.

So, good scoop.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/21/call-clegg-live-politics-blog#block-528de669e4b0a0e897913cc3

@tim - I was extremely happy, indeed delighted, to talk about MORI's Leader Ratings (you know, the GOLD STANDARD one). You were a little less so.

Now, what's your forecast for December? No, as Christmas is approaching, I won't be taking your money.

I see you had another poor day yesterday over a chronic inability to understand the tax system. I did my best to warn you about pontificating without knowledge, but regrettably these embarrassments did tend to happen when you heed not the sage counsel of Uncle John.

Just did a Populus opinion poll - wasn't one of the one's where they ask what you'd say to Cameron if he came and knocked on the door. A couple of interesting things.

1. The who would you vote for question prompted for Conservative, Green, UKIP, Liberal Democrats, Labour and BNP [and other], in that order [presumably random].

2. The who did you vote for in 2010 question was the same six parties in order of their vote share in 2010 [presumably not a coincidence, but 1-in-720 chance that it was].

I think random order is good for the vote intention question - more closely resembles the experience of the ballot paper. I don't think I've seen it from a pollster before.

Ishmael_X said:

Lennon said:

OldKingCole said:

SeanT said:

Neil said:

Slackbladder said:

Guido Fawkes ‏@GuidoFawkes 12m
We have a development in the @JackDromeyMP story. Big development. OMG big.

Bigger than the big, black, gay cock he got so excited about yesterday? What on earth could be bigger than that? An elephant cock?

Ed Miliband Filmed Fellating Giant Owl, Blames Mistake by Aide

Can one fellate an owl? Purely an academic question, of course!

In this area - I would always bow to Sean's unparalleled experience.

I believe swans are the only birds to have a penis.

You've obviously not travelled to Bangkok...

Bobajob said:

CarlottaVance said:

Bobajob said:

@Carlotta The nasty, socially conservative, curtain twitching on here in recent days is truly depressing. I honestly thought those days were over. Honestly.

The lady doth protest too much methinks.

[snip]

That couldn't be because they are both Labour, could it?

I couldn't give a flying dooby whether David Cameron watches porn, shags escorts or snorts coke. Unless you can point to a single post of mine where I attack a politician of any shade for 'deviance' STFU before you make even more of a fool of yourself.

Temper temper!

You are the one who needs to point to posts from PB Tories attacking Flowers for 'sexual deviance' - which is essentially your claim, is it not?

Patrick said:

Bobajob said:

Gerry_Mander said:

Head over to Guido for an update on the Dromey story.

Warning : Finish your coffee first, or it will be all over your keyboard

Back to the 1980s with the illiberal PB Tories. Get out more.

No doubt if Osborne got caught drunk, naked, in bed with thee underage rent boys and an orange up his butt you'd be very silent. Not.

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at Osborne in that situation.

TGOHF said:

R0berts said:

Pulpstar said:

FrankBooth said:

This seems a reasonable analysis

http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2013/10/10/learning-budget-lessons-from-japan-and-britain/

'So instead of a near-balanced budget, Britain will next year still have the biggest budget deficit among the advanced Western economies: 5.8 percent of GDP, against 4.6 percent in the U.S., 3.5 percent in France and 2.1 percent in Italy. Thus Britain’s better growth performance, far from demonstrating the wisdom of relentless budget cuts, has actually reflected an easing of fiscal austerity and a belated acceptance of much wider deficits than European and U.S. politicians seem willing to tolerate.

Secondly and more importantly, this year’s revival of growth in Britain has resulted directly from an audacious government policy to promote huge increases in highly-leveraged mortgage debt. This mortgage-support plan is equivalent, from a macroeconomic standpoint, to a huge expansion of government borrowing. When George Osborne, Britain’s finance minister, announced last March that the Treasury would provide unprecedented guarantees to support the reintroduction of 95 percent mortgages — which had been eliminated by prudential bank regulation — he immediately transformed Britain’s economic prospects, as explained here at the time.

This announcement meant that Osborne was finally accepting the fundamental principle of Keynesian economics: a country emerging from recession must increase, not reduce, its borrowings, until the point is reached where the economy’s excess savings are fully employed.'

When growth is (firmly) re-established, will the Gov't (Of whatever colour) put into practice the other part of Keynes' economics to run a surplus in the good times ?

Governments generally have done that, including the last one.

Can you tell us which years between 1997-2010 the last govt ran a surplus ?

1998 -> 2000 the Gov't ran increasing surpluses sticking to Conservative spending plans. Then Look at 2001 -> 2007. It heads back to a deficit. The thing is Britain was NOT in a reccession at this point, we were growing. The surpluses should have kept on coming. 2001 -> 2007 is where Labour got it completely wrong.

Andrew Neil on DP pointing out to Labour's Shadow Housing Minister that if they get into power in 2015 and designated the new town sites on their first day they probably still wouldn't have started by 2020......Neil studied New Towns at University......

tim said:

The Tories have now borrowed more in 3 years than Labour did in 13 years.

And before they start blaming someone else remember how they used to claim Obama wouldn't get the deficit down as fast they they would.

TBF the US voters were more helpful to Obama's deficit reduction goals than the British were to Cameron's. If they'd had a mid-term election which had handed control of parliament over to people with no sympathy for soft liberal notions that poor people should be able to buy food Cameron would probably have made more progress.