geoffw said:

currystar said:

JonCisBack said:

Poor for Labour - the current government is the worst Tory government in my lifetime. Divided and ineffective, unpleasant in patches, ineffective across the board and weak and directionless. May is hapless, the economy is not great (although not dire) - bumping along the bottom at best and there is no strategy or vision, no clear idea of "why" they are in power.

Yet Labour still look less preferable to many swing voters and Corbyn is unassailable. Can only see a Tory win next GE.

The economy is not great???????

We have record employment, record low unemployment, low interest rates, increasing wages. If you want a job you can have one.. The delusion on this site regarding the economy is off the scale.

Right. My only reservation is the lack of balance as evidenced in the deficits (current a/c and budget) and in the housing market.

According to the numbers, the trade deficit was about 25% smaller in 2017 than 2016. IIRC EU Trade deficit down by 10% and Non-EU Trade surplus up by about 10%.

"Annually, the UK’s current account deficit was £82.9 billion (4.1% of GDP) in 2017, a narrowing of £30.7 billion from a deficit of £113.6 billion in 2016; this is the narrowest deficit as a percentage of GDP since 2011 when it was 2.4%."
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/bulletins/balanceofpayments/quarter4octtodec2017

edmundintokyo said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

It feels like there's a practical problem here though: If the British won't even honour the deal they've already made, what's the point in talking to them about a new one?

It was a stupid concession to make. Britain can only honour commitments to things within its power. It can't force the EU and the Republic not to put up border controls should they wish to; it's entirely their decision. We should simply have made a formal commitment that in no circumstances will we put up border controls, and left it at that.

.

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

That's worrying because it means someone had voted in your name or has set up a dodgy postal vote.

glw said:

I see that Ken and the Nazi-Zionists has had another outing. Has Labour learnt anything?

And yet they still wont expel him....

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

Did they explain how you had voted? In person? Postal ballot?

A tendered ballot is a ballot provided to a voter who is recorded as having already been issued with a vote, but who disputes that this is true. This ballot paper, once completed, is not put into the ballot box, but is given to the Presiding Officer and placed in a separate packet.

MaxPB said:

.

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

That's worrying because it means someone had voted in your name or has set up a dodgy postal vote.

Or someone marked up the register incorrectly. Far more likely to be human error (crossing through the wrong name) than anything more sinister, I would have thought.

kle4 said:

Scott_P said:

Stephen Pollard - @stephenpollard: Livingstone about to go on @SkyNews to talk about Labour antisemitism,
That's going to go well, isn't it?

He seems to be pretty confident a) that he can say whatever he wants with no consequence, and b) that he is a tremendous asset to the party in what he is saying.

On (a) he's not wrong. After all, here he is - still a member some 2 years after first being suspended.

On (b) is he so far away from some in the Labour leadership? A week or so ago Diane Abbott was being interviewed about the anti-semitism allegations and she said that the reason Labour did not want to adopt in full the definition of anti-semitism used by most governments around the world, the police here and lots of other public bodies was because Labour did not want to be stopped from criticising Israel.

Only two problems with her argument:-

1. This definition does not stop anyone criticising Israel. Indeed it explicitly makes the point that criticism of Israel is not, ipso facto, anti-semitism.
2. What it does say is that, for instance:-

- Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

- Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.using Nazi terminology as part of such criticism

are examples of anti-semitism. (See - https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism?usergroup=7).

So if Ms Abbott is to be believed and/or speaks for Labour, then Labour do want to be free to criticise Israel in an anti-semitic manner and/or say anti-semitic things. Otherwise, why not adopt it? Given that, it's not surprising Livingstone feels free to bang on about Hitler and about how he understands Zionism and Jewish issues better than Jews themselves.

rottenborough said:

Honestly, Labour. You couldn't make this stuff as comedy and get a script commissioned. It's too bonkers.

Too bonkers to be believable. A lot of Americans are making a similar point about events over there.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

They have indeed and they know who will be missing their feet and it will not be EU.

https://twitter.com/GOsborneGenius/status/992347248171409408

edmundintokyo said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

It feels like there's a practical problem here though: If the British won't even honour the deal they've already made, what's the point in talking to them about a new one?

The current deal is explicitly contingent on an acceptable outcome from trade talks. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

maaarsh said:

edmundintokyo said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

It feels like there's a practical problem here though: If the British won't even honour the deal they've already made, what's the point in talking to them about a new one?

The current deal is explicitly contingent on an acceptable outcome from trade talks. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.

Trade talks will not happen until after the withdrawal agreement is ratified.

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

Did they explain how you had voted? In person? Postal ballot?

A tendered ballot is a ballot provided to a voter who is recorded as having already been issued with a vote, but who disputes that this is true. This ballot paper, once completed, is not put into the ballot box, but is given to the Presiding Officer and placed in a separate packet.

Thanks for the explanation.

It was someone who had come in earlier in the day - they (the polling booth staff) had put a tick against my name like all the others. As mentioned, I tend to favour the cock-up explanation but those ticks are very precise and double-checked.

The presiding officer made a call and one of the questions asked was whether anyone had noticed anyone suspicious throughout the day (they had been there all day) and no one had.

First time, the presiding officer said, it had happened to her in 15 years.

williamglenn said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

edmundintokyo said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

It feels like there's a practical problem here though: If the British won't even honour the deal they've already made, what's the point in talking to them about a new one?

It was a stupid concession to make. Britain can only honour commitments to things within its power. It can't force the EU and the Republic not to put up border controls should they wish to; it's entirely their decision. We should simply have made a formal commitment that in no circumstances will we put up border controls, and left it at that.

We've made a formal commitment that we will not take measures that will require border controls (by ensuring no divergence). That is entirely within our power.

No it's not. Who judges whether the deal will require border controls on the Republic side? (Hint: It's not us).

DecrepitJohnL said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

It does very much look as though some Labour supporters think their party benefits from fraud. Why else are they opposing the extremely simple and non-obtrusive measures being piloted?

You're better than this. The fear is that rather than preventing almost non-existent personation, this measure will deter or stop properly enfranchised voters.

Cynics might suggest this is part of a package designed by Cameron and Osborne to reduce Labour's vote.

No-one knows the scale of personation. But the fact that it is possible means that it is reasonable to take steps to make it impossible.

You don't wait for your house to be burgled before putting a lock on the front door.

It should not be harder to collect a parcel from your local Post Office than it is to vote.

oxfordsimon said:

If you were designing a system from scratch, you would put integrity and security at the heart of it. Ensuring individual, verified voter registration, ensuring absentee ballots were carried out by the person requesting them, ensuring that the person presenting themselves to vote in the polling station is who they say they. All of these are basic things that are necessary for a secure voting system.

Who's this "you"? If a person who knew how to do actual security analysis were designing the system from scratch, they'd balance the various conflicting requirements depending on the risk of the various ways they could be exploited. You wouldn't risk a lot of false positives with a heavy identification process for every single voter if there was a low incentive to actually commit fraud, and you could get more impact by prosecuting the few people who try to get away with it and get caught.

This is how actual security is done: There is no such a thing as perfect security, and getting closer to it often costs you money and harms other parts of the system, and if a given measure does too much of that then you shouldn't do it. This will depend on the actual situation, so for instance British airports have concrete bollards to prevent terrorists from driving cars into them, but don't have cattle grids to prevent cattle from wandering over and holding up planes on the runway. In Katmandu, I'm not sure if they have the bollards, but they do have (and need) the cattle grids.

dr_spyn said:

From May 2017, a reminder that local elections aren't always good predictors for General Election results.


https://news.sky.com/story/sky-news-projection-pm-would-win-commons-majority-of-48-based-on-local-election-analysis-10864261

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that turned out to have been an accurate snapshot of the state of play at that point in time. The Conservative Calamity Campaign hadn't yet bitten the Tories on the arse, and Corbyn's Campaigning Crescendo was only just starting to unfold.

Richard_Nabavi said:

DecrepitJohnL said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

It does very much look as though some Labour supporters think their party benefits from fraud. Why else are they opposing the extremely simple and non-obtrusive measures being piloted?

You're better than this. The fear is that rather than preventing almost non-existent personation, this measure will deter or stop properly enfranchised voters.

Cynics might suggest this is part of a package designed by Cameron and Osborne to reduce Labour's vote.

Since nearly all of those criticising this wilfully ignore how simple it is and claim that you have to have a passport or driving licence or other form of photo ID, I think we can rule out any possibility that they are being honest.

In Swindon, you only had to turn up with your polling card - no Photo ID at all

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

Did they explain how you had voted? In person? Postal ballot?

A tendered ballot is a ballot provided to a voter who is recorded as having already been issued with a vote, but who disputes that this is true. This ballot paper, once completed, is not put into the ballot box, but is given to the Presiding Officer and placed in a separate packet.

Thanks for the explanation.

It was someone who had come in earlier in the day - they (the polling booth staff) had put a tick against my name like all the others. As mentioned, I tend to favour the cock-up explanation but those ticks are very precise and double-checked.

The presiding officer made a call and one of the questions asked was whether anyone had noticed anyone suspicious throughout the day (they had been there all day) and no one had.

First time, the presiding officer said, it had happened to her in 15 years.

I do hope it was a cock up, but as you said, they are usually extremely precise about ticking off the right person.

Y - likely to be cock-up but vague unnerving feeling it might not have been...

oxfordsimon said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

DecrepitJohnL said:

Richard_Nabavi said:

It does very much look as though some Labour supporters think their party benefits from fraud. Why else are they opposing the extremely simple and non-obtrusive measures being piloted?

You're better than this. The fear is that rather than preventing almost non-existent personation, this measure will deter or stop properly enfranchised voters.

Cynics might suggest this is part of a package designed by Cameron and Osborne to reduce Labour's vote.

Since nearly all of those criticising this wilfully ignore how simple it is and claim that you have to have a passport or driving licence or other form of photo ID, I think we can rule out any possibility that they are being honest.

In Swindon, you only had to turn up with your polling card - no Photo ID at all

Yes, it may be that that is a good compromise, with the option of producing any other form of ID (such as a credit card) if you turn up without the polling card. It would be more secure than the current system but still very flexible.

The whole idea of running pilots is to assess the best approach, so it's good that they have trialled slightly different sets of docs.

oxfordsimon said:

Having some additional form of ID is not heavy. I need 3 forms of it to get visitor parking permits round here.

Yes it's suprising how stringent they are with parking permits applications in order to stop abuse.

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

Did they explain how you had voted? In person? Postal ballot?

A tendered ballot is a ballot provided to a voter who is recorded as having already been issued with a vote, but who disputes that this is true. This ballot paper, once completed, is not put into the ballot box, but is given to the Presiding Officer and placed in a separate packet.

Thanks for the explanation.

It was someone who had come in earlier in the day - they (the polling booth staff) had put a tick against my name like all the others. As mentioned, I tend to favour the cock-up explanation but those ticks are very precise and double-checked.

The presiding officer made a call and one of the questions asked was whether anyone had noticed anyone suspicious throughout the day (they had been there all day) and no one had.

First time, the presiding officer said, it had happened to her in 15 years.

I do hope it was a cock up, but as you said, they are usually extremely precise about ticking off the right person.

Y - likely to be cock-up but vague unnerving feeling it might not have been...

It's often occurred to me how easy it would be, were I motivated to do so, to go in and vote, read the list of names upside down and pretend to be one of the names not yet crossed off. The system is appallingly open to abuse.
That said, postal vote fraud is probably the bigger issue to address.

I don't get people who don't care about this. It seems to be an attitude of 'you only care about cheating because it's not you who benefits from it'.

rural_voter said:

The Wikipedia list of countries with and without them is pretty telling. Do we want to be in the company of Belarus, Bulgaria and Turkey or Canada, Denmark and Norway?

It's not telling at all, you simply selected countries to make a case. Lots of perfectly decent countries have ID cards.

Cookie said:

TOPPING said:

MaxPB said:

TOPPING said:

CarlottaVance said:

TOPPING said:

So yesterday I went along to vote to be told that I had already voted. As it happened I had come straight from LHR so showed them my passport and after several phone calls was given a "tender" vote. Whatever that is.

Ealing Council area.

Did they explain how you had voted? In person? Postal ballot?

A tendered ballot is a ballot provided to a voter who is recorded as having already been issued with a vote, but who disputes that this is true. This ballot paper, once completed, is not put into the ballot box, but is given to the Presiding Officer and placed in a separate packet.

Thanks for the explanation.

It was someone who had come in earlier in the day - they (the polling booth staff) had put a tick against my name like all the others. As mentioned, I tend to favour the cock-up explanation but those ticks are very precise and double-checked.

The presiding officer made a call and one of the questions asked was whether anyone had noticed anyone suspicious throughout the day (they had been there all day) and no one had.

First time, the presiding officer said, it had happened to her in 15 years.

I do hope it was a cock up, but as you said, they are usually extremely precise about ticking off the right person.

Y - likely to be cock-up but vague unnerving feeling it might not have been...

It's often occurred to me how easy it would be, were I motivated to do so, to go in and vote, read the list of names upside down and pretend to be one of the names not yet crossed off. The system is appallingly open to abuse.
That said, postal vote fraud is probably the bigger issue to address.

I don't get people who don't care about this. It seems to be an attitude of 'you only care about cheating because it's not you who benefits from it'.

Polling booth staff were told (they told me) to ask each person to state their name and address. Not sure the address is on the list to be read upside down (didn't look properly). That is at least a nudge against fraud.

While I was there, incidentally, a Somali woman came into the station and asked for someone to go and help her in the booth to vote (her companion asked for the polling station staff to help) and was told no, it was illegal. So she just stood there and I don't think she got to vote.

Oh yes it was all happening in Ealing yesterday...

The mind boggles as to why councillors felt they'd need to rig the vote in Aston !
Aston ! It is about as secure for Labour as Putin is in Russia at the moment.

Mind you Putin wanted to make sure too.

NEW THREAD

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Glenn, not being a rule taker is why people want to leave the single market and customs union...

Then border with the remainder of the single market and customs union needs to be tangible.

The 'facts on the ground' suggest the UK simply cannot leave in any meaningful sense without redefining itself.

Wulfrun_Phil said:

bardigiani said:

volcanopete said:

2 stories of the night,appalling turnout and the Tory shambles of Voter ID.According to Democracy Volunteers' estimates 1.67% of voters might have lost their right to vote due to ID requirements yesterday.

Only 0.000063% of voters made allegations of fraud in 2017

https://democracyvolunteers.org/2018/05/03/special-report-voter-id-pilots-in-english-local-elections-03-05-18/amp/

Perhaps the solution is to only introduce these requirements in areas where there is a significant history of voter fraud....

Voter fraud is just a fig leaf being used to hide the real motivation from these changes.

And those making that accusation are using it as a fig leaf for their opposition.

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

Richard_Nabavi said:

Scott_P said:

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/992347828969181186

Ah, the 'if you don't agree to a deal which doesn't involve me shooting my feet off, I'll shoot my feet off' gambit.

Have they thought this one through?

Yes, they have seen TMay crumbles at every juncture and have realised they can take advantage of her ineptness.