Undefined discussion subject.

Interesting article by Sunny Hundal on Labour List: The Political Centre is Dead - but the Establishment won't admit it.

http://labourlist.org/2013/12/the-political-centre-is-dead-but-the-establishment-wont-admit-it/

He says,"If you listen carefully, there’s one name that Ed Miliband’s team has stopped mentioning: François Hollande. The French President was persona grata earlier this year when the two met several times and discussed plans to tilt Europe away from austerity. Hollande even brushed aside protocols to warmly greet Miliband in Paris in July.

The speedy fall of François Hollande’s fall from grace – within six months he was the most unpopular President in French history – offer two key lessons for the Labour party leader."

isam said:

Bobajob said:

Alanbrooke said:

Bobajob said:

Cyclefree said:

I think it unfortunate if people don't feel able to post here because they feel their identity may be exposed without their consent. There are plenty of good reasons why someone would not want to reveal their real name and we should - whatever our differences with a poster's political or other views - respect that.

Quite right.

@Alanbrooke

That is utter rubbish. The PB gatherings attract only a small proportion of posters. Many people are not in a position to reveal their identity and anyone who attempts to do so should be banned.

They might attract a small proportion of posters but networks exist within PB which any half intelligent regular can use. As for blanket banning if you're that embarassed by your opinions that you won't stand behind them why on earth are you on posting on an open and public site ?

I am not in a position to be able to reveal my identity and nor is Cyclefree. Are you saying I should quit the site unless I post publicly? If that is the consensus view, I will leave now and never return.

I don't think people should have to reveal who they are but you have almost convinced me to change my mind with that offer.... Are you a famous politician?

A couple of years ago, I took the list of IPs accessing politicalbetting and ran them against whois (which is a reverse loop-up service for IP addresses).

Unsurprisingly, the three most common locations (once Virgin and BT had been eliminated) were the Houses of Parliament, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

TGOHF said:

stodge said:

Talking about employment or unemployment is complex - some just run off to the statistics and often just the headlines. The reality of employment in 2013-14 is very different - often part time, often not well paid realtive to the cost of living.

I know many people who have two part-time jobs and even that doesn't seem to make them happy, contented or give them an overall sense of prosperity.

We "seem" to be working longer hours but are we doing any more with or in those hours? I'm not badly paid for what I do but I know I'm worse off than I was in 2010 - I work harder and longer hours but I'm no better off.

That's my experience - I suspect I'm not alone.

Interesting breakdown in wages

"http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/december-2013/sty-earnings.html"

"Average weekly earnings including bonus payments rose by 0.9% comparing August to October 2013 with the same period a year earlier. Average weekly earnings for the private sector increased by 1.3% but average weekly earnings for the public sector fell by 0.3%."

A rise of 0.9% isn't great considering inflation at 2.1%. As a Londoner, I feel obliged to point out my fares will be rising well above inflation in the New Year and while I cheerfully concede the costs of some things are static or falling, it's things like insurance and energy prices that for me are still eroding any small gain in wages I might be getting quite apart from the need to make up the ground lost from 2010.

For many, I would argue, the only alternative to an erosion of living standards is to work longer hours to make up the shortfall.

rcs1000 said:

isam said:

Bobajob said:

Alanbrooke said:

Bobajob said:

Cyclefree said:

I think it unfortunate if people don't feel able to post here because they feel their identity may be exposed without their consent. There are plenty of good reasons why someone would not want to reveal their real name and we should - whatever our differences with a poster's political or other views - respect that.

Quite right.

@Alanbrooke

That is utter rubbish. The PB gatherings attract only a small proportion of posters. Many people are not in a position to reveal their identity and anyone who attempts to do so should be banned.

They might attract a small proportion of posters but networks exist within PB which any half intelligent regular can use. As for blanket banning if you're that embarassed by your opinions that you won't stand behind them why on earth are you on posting on an open and public site ?

I am not in a position to be able to reveal my identity and nor is Cyclefree. Are you saying I should quit the site unless I post publicly? If that is the consensus view, I will leave now and never return.

I don't think people should have to reveal who they are but you have almost convinced me to change my mind with that offer.... Are you a famous politician?

A couple of years ago, I took the list of IPs accessing politicalbetting and ran them against whois (which is a reverse loop-up service for IP addresses).

Unsurprisingly, the three most common locations (once Virgin and BT had been eliminated) were the Houses of Parliament, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

Ed Miliband, if you are listening... Please please please please please keep Ed Balls in Situ.

This threads use of emotive words such as fantasist and ludicrous appears to have set the tone for a PB-black hole chatroom melt-down.

Time for something on AV or Scottish independence to settle things down methinks.

It's all got very meta this morning.

I post semi-anonymously. My job means that I couldn't fully express my opinions under my own name. But I don't make it difficult for anyone who so wishes to find out who I am (since no one will ever have heard of me, that would be a very dull endeavour). Anyone who really wanted to could find my home address. Do I invite people to do that? Of course I don't.

Can we not take posters at the level they wish to be taken at? Some posters have very good reasons indeed for posting anonymously.

Alanbrooke said:

compouter1 said:

TGOHF said:

compouter1 said:

TGOHF said:

compouter1 said:

FAO of Mr Smithson - Do you not realise there is going to be a polling crossover by Xmas (or was it May) which will give the Tory Party seventeen months to get their 7-8% lead. By May 2015 the economy will be booming, house price rises will be 10% annum for everyone, wages will outstrip inflation, the price of petrol will be down, the Universal Credit will have been proven to be a major success, there will be a huge fall in immigrants, Dave will have offered us an in/out referendum on Europe, interest rate will be sill be low, everyone who wants a job will get one and those that don't take one will be executed....get with the PB Hodges line. TORY MAJORITY NAILED ON!

Don't forget unemployment down too !!

"everyone who wants a job will get one and those that don't take one will be executed".....now now, get with it. There will be no unemployment. All shirkers to be shot.

Well the first part is nearly there - so there will be nobody left to shoot

Rejoice Pouty - the socialist dream of full employment is nearly upon us.

This time next year the penny will begin to drop with quite a few PB Hodges as the realisation of the Labour percentage of 37%-40% not reducing hits home. Some will blame Cameron, some will blame Gideon. Though obviously there will be those that will still proclaim:

Swingback, swingback ........my kingdom for any swingback.

My view at the beginning of 2013 was that this would be the year the economy recovered despite the efforts of GO and that he would claim the credit for it but doesn't deserve it.

My view for 2014 is this will be the year the Labour polling slips below 35% and leaves us looking at a HP in 2015. The 38% just won't hold.

Alan, Hopefully it will slip a lot more and point to a Tory victory.

We're back but very slow. There was a DOS attack on our server (or, possibly, something along the stack went crazy and just hit it with 1,000+ requests per second), and it fell over, with me locked out due to out of memory errors.

The backend database is being rebuilt, and when it's back up properly (20 minutes or so), we should be working fine...

felix said:

A question - do the figures in incomes take account of the tax changes?

I assume you mean today's average earnings figures? No they are pre-tax only and also are affected by changes in workplace composition, eg. a large numbers of well paid retirees in an organisation who are replaced by lower paid new workers will appear as a wage cut.

The better data is the Annual Survey of Household Earnings as it tracks the same group of people from one year to the next although this is only calculated every April and not released until November.

This is what happened the other night.

tim was giving it the big one to SeanT using personal details, albeit ones that are easy to find online...

SeanT responded in kind

tim continued posting regardless on many different subjects, then got banned for a remark about Plato

So no need to feel sorry for tim, or make him a martyr... it was fair enough from Sean, and tim still posted on other subjects until he got banned, undermining the argument that he isn't posting now because of his details being posted

You don't need it to be Christmas to know when you are sitting next to a turkey

*tears of laughter*

Does team tim have a cyber attack capability?

RCS / OGH you guys need to keep a constant vigil!

Re: Tim:

Vanilla would be a lot better if it allowed you to block individual users (what in Usenet days was called a "killfile"). That way, those who didn't like Tim's comments could simply ignore them.

I've wondered about knocking something up in Greasemonkey to provide an "ignore" function of this type. Personally ("long-term lurker, new poster" and all that) Tim has never wound me up too much, but there are a very few people whose blinkered partiality I could do without!

rcs1000 said:

We're back but very slow. There was a DOS attack on our server (or, possibly, something along the stack went crazy and just hit it with 1,000+ requests per second), and it fell over, with me locked out due to out of memory errors.

The backend database is being rebuilt, and when it's back up properly (20 minutes or so), we should be working fine...

I wonder if the IP traces back to the Wirral...

TGOHF said:

Ed far too scripted. No agility.

As illustrated by the fact that Miliband still used his scripted "turkey" joke after Cameron had already made a turkey related joke.

Just demonstrated how incapable he is of thinking on his feet

Ladies and Gentleman of PB.

In the spirit of goodwill I would like to propose a seasonal toast:

To absent friends!

In proposing this toast I am minded of Epicurus's advice:

Speak kindly of your absent Friends, to those that are present, that they may not think you are unmindful of themselves, when they are absent.

I wasn't listening - but the one thing that seems to have emerged (incl a nice picture thereof over at Guido's) is that Dave successfully planted the Ed Balls = turkey meme in people's minds.

Right, thinking caps back on for the quiz ....

No correct answers so far. I can't believe @rcs1000 hasn't nabbed personage c

Titters .....

Jack W - what was the question?

@Patrick

Ok repeated from earlier :

Lordy todays quiz is proving much trickier than I thought.

Ok for all the unbanned PBers here's an extra clue for each revered personage :

a. Funny dough but did Sam not fancy a beer in over 40 years as MP ?
New Clue - He certainly had the family to organise a p*ss up in a brewery.

b. He was succeeded by an EU regulated fruit this son-in-law of This Sceptered Isle.
New Clue - Sadly his son had wardrobe trouble.

c. A superhero - The $6M man ? .... More like $100M, this early Aunty man was shot from the Skeet trap in 1992.
New Clue - Very close to home rcs1000

AveryLP said:

Patrick said:

I wasn't listening - but the one thing that seems to have emerged (incl a nice picture thereof over at Guido's) is that Dave successfully planted the Ed Balls = turkey meme in people's minds.

Stuffed and basted, Patrick. There will be little appetite for the left-overs come the New Year.

Impressively quick photoshop job at Guido's!

For those PBers who refuse Guido's hospitality on principle here is the pic:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BbxFbGXCIAApr0G.jpg:large

Tying his hands in the same way as the legs are trussed in the picture would reduce his irritation factor somewhat.

Bobajob said:

Alanbrooke said:

Bobajob said:

Alanbrooke said:

Bobajob said:

MikeSmithson said:

JackW said:

Roger said:

Still no Tim? I suggest banning the moderator whose actions the other night make Lord Denning's judgement on the Christine Keeler affair seem a model of impartiality

He's probably doing his Xmas shopping. I'm sure finding a swarovski crystal udder pouch for each of those 100 cows is troublesome.

Can I make it absolutely clear that Tim is not banned. He is not posting following efforts by other posters to reveal his identity.

Which posters were these then? That is despicable behaviour and should, IMO, be one of the very few things that deserves an instant ban.

Everybody appears in banning mode today, and yet tim's not actually banned.

Listen - trying to reveal someone's identity is the lowest of the low. Many of us are simply not in a position to be able to do that. If there is any chance of it, many posters would have to leave. It's disgraceful behaviour. One of the VERY FEW things that deserves a ban IMO.

I've heard that time and again and yet most posters sort of know who the other person is and over time become relaxed about it. If you're not comfortable or your job depends on it them why are you on a public forum ? The longer you're on here the more you tell us about yourself.

FAIR ENOUGH. I QUIT. THE IDEA OF PEOPLE TRYING TO OUT ME (OR ANYONE ELSE) IS, FRANKLY, SICKENING. I MAY RETURN UNDER ANOTHER NAME AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE, BUT THIS WILL BE THE LAST POST FROM BOBAJOB.

Moderator – this in an FYI.

What a helmet

b. Christopher Soames (though in that case it was more the ladies his son fell upon that had the wardrobe trouble)?

I was just looking through the ONS detail. 1.3% pay growth for the private sector. Interestingly the ONS say that without the transfer of higher education jobs into the private sector it would have been 1.5%, which is not really far from the 2.1% inflation rate.

The underlying private sector pay growth figure is very positive and I think it will begin to show next year. Labour would do well to move on from their cost if living stuff around now to some other issue that will be important in 2014. I don't think that pay growth and earnings growth is going to be as big an issue next year as it is this year.

I also crunched some numbers, October's unemployment rate was 6.9%, below the Bank's target. If employment growth continues at its current rate for another couple of months we could hit 7% in January.

Looking at the Guido picture of Ed Turkey I realise it is upside down - in that the arse is up in the air and the brain in the gutter. On second thoughts, maybe that's as intended....

I also realise Hattie Hateperson was sitting next to the blob - so maybe Dave was making a sexist attack on her!

@AveryLP - Correct a is Samuel Whitbread (funny dough) scion of the famous brewing family served as an MP for most of the second half of the 19th century.

@Theuniondivvie - Correct b is Christopher Soames - Son-in-law to Winston Churchill (author of "This Sceptered Isles") and father of Nicholas Soames (he of wardrobe sexual repute).
Christopher Soames was last governor of Southern Rhodesia and was succeeded as "head of state" by President Banana

On lighter matters ;-)

Miliband and his shadow chancellor -

https://twitter.com/GeneralBoles

On topic, I wrote a few months ago, why a Tory majority was unlikely.

http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2013/08/22/history-suggests-the-tories-will-see-their-share-of-the-vote-decline-in-2015-2/

Rod .. TSE and TheWatcher

Correct. Bedford constituency and North Bedfordshire which included Bedford when Mike stood in 1992.

Well done all .... funny what links we have in life !!

Patrick said:

The FOAK tells me Whitbread was MP for Bedford so the link has something to do with that I guess. But I can't find anything to link fatty Soames with Bedford. Hmm.....

Are Christopher and Nicholas Soames, one and the same?

Remarkable lack of re-tweeting here about PMQs... the blues and reds know the story these days and neither team can be arsed to repeat it here...

Ed was fine until Redder Ed jumped in then Ed lost. Same old same old.

Scrapheap_as_was said:

Remarkable lack of re-tweeting here about PMQs... the blues and reds know the story these days and neither team can be arsed to repeat it here...

Ed was fine until Redder Ed jumped in then Ed lost. Same old same old.

Just caught up with it.

Ed M was doing ok, then Ed Balls jumped in, and Dave shot their fox, or was it shot their turkey.

JackW said:

SimonStClare said:

Patrick said:

The FOAK tells me Whitbread was MP for Bedford so the link has something to do with that I guess. But I can't find anything to link fatty Soames with Bedford. Hmm.....

Are Christopher and Nicholas Soames, one and the same?

Christopher is Nicholas's father.

Cheers JackW - my point was that only one goes by the name 'fatty' - and it ain't Christopher.

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scrapheap_as_was said:

Remarkable lack of re-tweeting here about PMQs... the blues and reds know the story these days and neither team can be arsed to repeat it here...

Ed was fine until Redder Ed jumped in then Ed lost. Same old same old.

Just caught up with it.

Ed M was doing ok, then Ed Balls jumped in, and Dave shot their fox, or was it shot their turkey.

I may have imagined it but watching the session, Ed's body language and facial expressions suggested to me he was v frustrated with Balls getting involved and weakening his line of attack - gave Cameron a chance to divert away and on to the prepped attack he'd comed armed with, especially after the 9m deadline reported for Ed B to conceive, gestate and give birth to Labour's new economic policy.

On topic, 23.8% is a bit mad for the reason Mike gives, but 20/1 is overstating things. One way I'd see Con Maj happening would be that if the polls start to consistently show substantial Tory leads - say you get an underlying position of Con +3%, and the occasional rogue 8%/9% - that boosts Cameron's stature and builds up the Ed Is Crap narrative again, and it becomes hard to turn out Labour voters or get tactical support from left-leaning LibDems. The voters generally don't understand FPTP, so if they see substantial Tory leads in the polls they won't realize it's actually pointing to a close election.

Sort of on topic, this piece by Mary Riddell is very good:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10522938/Ed-Milibands-challenge-is-to-prove-he-can-do-without-Santanomics.html

A couple of key quotes:

"One catchy energy initiative and a possible building bonanza will, however, not see him through 2014. Mindful that the Tories will be focusing on deficit reduction, he has drawn up plans to persuade voters that his measures to control the cost of living are also beneficial to Britain’s long-term future. But whatever he is planning on issues such as universal child care, Mr Miliband faces the very problem that afflicted Mr Cameron this year. Almost certainly, Labour will be shaken from its chosen agenda."

"Then there are the problems so far unaddressed by a leader who laces boldness with extreme caution. Mr Miliband has toyed with scaling back Trident (but may well do nothing) and dallied with a revolution in social care for the elderly which he should, as a New Year priority, decide to champion. Some issues, such as crime, seem barely to feature on his radar, while others (the unions) are omnipresent. Far less eager than Mr Cameron to “do foreign”, Mr Miliband has a default setting programmed to social improvement, seen through an economic prism.

His text for 2014 is Barack Obama’s recent speech on inequality, stipulating the goal of “making sure our economy works for every citizen”. Like the president, Mr Miliband sees the fair distribution of wealth as “the defining challenge of our time”. But unlike Mr Obama, the Labour leader is watching the public realm shrink before his eyes.

His great challenge, long past this Christmas, is to show that Labour could reconstruct a social democratic state without resorting to profligate Santanomics. His followers are split, with one grouping wedded to heritage, community roots and reaching beyond party divides, while the second believes in a tight grip on the public purse and the Tory windpipe. Even if he reconciles those factions, better use of human and financial capital will not see Mr Miliband home."

Schards said:

TGOHF said:

Ed far too scripted. No agility.

As illustrated by the fact that Miliband still used his scripted "turkey" joke after Cameron had already made a turkey related joke.

Just demonstrated how incapable he is of thinking on his feet

So we are left with Hattie and Hague as our two most senior MPs who can think on their feet. (Not sure about Osborne since the heir to Brown is rarely questioned, though one imagines that speaks for itself, as the lawyers say.)

Was it ever thus, or is this a side-effect of the decline in public speaking, where the hustings would weed out any sub-par performers before they reached parliament?

edmundintokyo said:

On topic, 23.8% is a bit mad for the reason Mike gives, but 20/1 is overstating things. One way I'd see Con Maj happening would be that if the polls start to consistently show substantial Tory leads - say you get an underlying position of Con +3%, and the occasional rogue 8%/9% - that boosts Cameron's stature and builds up the Ed Is Crap narrative again, and it becomes hard to turn out Labour voters or get tactical support from left-leaning LibDems. The voters generally don't understand FPTP, so if they see substantial Tory leads in the polls they won't realize it's actually pointing to a close election.

A very important point which hasn't been made enough times on PB.

The 2010 Lib Dems now giving a Labour VI are the very definition of switchers, protestors and tactical voters. They are generally to the left of Labour and are more anti-Tory than pro-Labour. If polls indicate (whether falsely or correctly) that Cameron will continue as PM and beat Labour then they may well switch back to the Lib Dems as the most effective means of preventing a Tory majority.

It will be a question of where is it is best to place a negative tactical vote.

Mr. Pulpstar, roughly, Lincolnshire!

The Welsh one I managed to get pretty far away (but still in Wales), but was still better than 65%, which really surprised me.

AveryLP said:

If polls indicate (whether falsely or correctly) that Cameron will continue as PM and beat Labour then they may well switch back to the Lib Dems as the most effective means of preventing a Tory majority.

Another wildcard would be a Green surge. The Greens generally do badly when the economy is bad, but well when the main parties are meh. For the last couple of years both of these things have been true, but if the economy picks up the the conditions will be there for them to make some progress. Like the Ed Is Crap narrative, this is the kind of thing that could feed on itself: An unexpectedly strong Euro performance or even a rogue poll feeds the media a story about them going places, and once that happens, the support of voters who dislike the Tories but aren't really sold on Labour becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

SimonStClare said:

JackW said:

SimonStClare said:

Patrick said:

The FOAK tells me Whitbread was MP for Bedford so the link has something to do with that I guess. But I can't find anything to link fatty Soames with Bedford. Hmm.....

Are Christopher and Nicholas Soames, one and the same?

Christopher is Nicholas's father.

Cheers JackW - my point was that only one goes by the name 'fatty' - and it ain't Christopher.

Mary Soames, wife of Christophe,r is the last surviving of Churchill's children. She is a redoubtable lady and is a very young 91 years old.

edmundintokyo said:

On topic, 23.8% is a bit mad for the reason Mike gives, but 20/1 is overstating things. One way I'd see Con Maj happening would be that if the polls start to consistently show substantial Tory leads - say you get an underlying position of Con +3%, and the occasional rogue 8%/9% - that boosts Cameron's stature and builds up the Ed Is Crap narrative again, and it becomes hard to turn out Labour voters or get tactical support from left-leaning LibDems. The voters generally don't understand FPTP, so if they see substantial Tory leads in the polls they won't realize it's actually pointing to a close election.

The other thing that a renewed Ed Is Crap theme, set against the backdrop of a sustained and strong economic recovery, would produce is a whole load of advice and infighting from within the Labour movement as they seek to address what's gone wrong; something that is far more likely to exacerbate the problem than resolve it.