It's a long time since I wrote my PhD, so this is a genuine question for others of mathematical bent. Why haven't we been getting any outlier Tory leads, or outlier double digit Labour leads? Assume that the real Labour lead is, say, 38-34, and has been for some time. Presumably random distribution of polling leads will be a normal distribution. Then you'd expect one poll in 20 to be outside two standard deviations, wouldn't you? And that should normally be about 2*2.5? We ought to be seeing some 9-point Labour leads and 1-point Tory leads now and then. Is there a mathematical reason why the standard deviation is tighter?
It's a good question, and one I've already lost money on (luckily only tuppence ha'penny, which is all Paddy would allow me to stake) - I was convinced, on exactly that argument, that there would be at least one YouGov in Q1 showing level-pegging or a Tory lead.
(It's not quite a normal distribution, because of rounding and perhaps other artefacts of the polling methodology).
Perhaps given Nick of this parish's penchant for timing, tonight won't disappoint
Kinda reminds me of 1997 when under Clark's stewardship the economy had turned around big time. Trouble was, it wasn't showing enough in the real economy to torpedo labour's laughable 'things can only get better' meme. Tony then inherited the earth in 1998 and 1999.
Can Ossie make enough people feel good enough quickly enough to be given another go? that is the question.
If he had 24 months I'd say definitely. But he only has 12.
People (including me) were sick and tired of the Cons by that time it had been a whole generation under the Tories and they were beset by sleaze and lack of imagination and all of while the sun was shining and the Cons coming in and fixing it. It was and is a very powerful narrative.
The cons have fixed nothing. They've simply stopped the rate at which the hole is growing.
Fiscal consolidation isn't recovery, nor does it address those economic fundamentals where the UK has huge problems. Until we get a reforming chancellor there's nothing happening to fix the holes in the roof. And Osborne isn't one.
It's a start. Debt-to-GDP as has been well-rehearsed wasn't crazy in 2007; the craziness was .
And I think (your preference for?) a cold turkey strategy in 2010 would have brought people out onto the streets. They have already delevered while still facing great dangers, the greatest of which was always losing their job, as this would have rendered debt service impossible.
And without throwing more borrowed money at it, which the capital markets wouldn't have countenanced, GO managed to reverse this threat and, as even the Guardian points out today wrt young people, the jobs situation has improved steadily and continues to improve.
So just halting everything in its tracks, letting companies and individuals pay down some debt, while maintaining what are higher but still manageable bond yields, is a pretty amazing achievement.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Good piece by Seymour Hersch about how the Sarin attack in Syria was carried out by Turkey and her Al Qaeda allies.
Russian tests proved this and were then confirmed by our scientists. If true begs the question whether Cameron already knew this when he asked parliament to vote on invading Syria?
Interested why no one puts Cameron's desire to entangle us in the Middle East and its negative impact on the Conservatives slow move up in the polls. Blair might be beloved of the Cameroons but is loathed by the nation.
Can Ossie make enough people feel good enough quickly enough to be given another go? that is the question.
If he had 24 months I'd say definitely. But he only has 12.
People (including me) were sick and tired of the Cons by that time it had been a whole generation under the Tories and they were beset by sleaze and lack of imagination and all of while the sun was shining and the Cons coming in and fixing it. It was and is a very powerful narrative.
The cons have fixed nothing. They've simply stopped the rate at which the hole is growing.
Fiscal consolidation isn't recovery, nor does it address those economic fundamentals where the UK has huge problems. Until we get a reforming chancellor there's nothing happening to fix the holes in the roof. And Osborne isn't one.
It's a start. Debt-to-GDP as has been well-rehearsed wasn't crazy in 2007; the craziness was .
And I think (your preference for?) a cold turkey strategy in 2010 would have brought people out onto the streets. They have already delevered while still facing great dangers, the greatest of which was always losing their job, as this would have rendered debt service impossible.
And without throwing more borrowed money at it, which the capital markets wouldn't have countenanced, GO managed to reverse this threat and, as even the Guardian points out today wrt young people, the jobs situation has improved steadily and continues to improve.
So just halting everything in its tracks, letting companies and individuals pay down some debt, while maintaining what are higher but still manageable bond yields, is a pretty amazing achievement.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
You know my view on the markets; I don't think they would have stood for more borrowing at that time.
But engagement has failed to check the Russian advance - or force an about-turn in Moscow. Russia acted fast in annexing Crimea, and the worst-case scenario is that it could swallow up more of Ukraine and move on to other areas with large Russian populations, such as Moldova's Trans-Dniester region. The West's tacit concession of the Crimea issue has done nothing to strengthen its diplomatic hand.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent it before now...
Bully for you smartarse, I presume you are a genius. Have to post under a pathetic made up name as you are too scared to post under a real name. Piss off and stalk someone else who gives a hoot you cretin, you are not as smart as you think you are. Contrary to your belief I am doing very well in business thank you, enjoy spending your Giro.
Um, I post under the same pseudonym everywhere online and have done for 18 years so its not difficult to find out who I really am.
And if that's the best you can come up with you really need to learn how to troll properly. I will, however offer, 1 piece of advice from a couple of the billionaires of my acquaintance, the wise understand how little they really know.
Get a life cretin. Bet you had to look up the spelling of that big word. Go pester another loser like that cretin Watcher , you two will be well suited, pair of fantasist losers.
But engagement has failed to check the Russian advance - or force an about-turn in Moscow. Russia acted fast in annexing Crimea, and the worst-case scenario is that it could swallow up more of Ukraine and move on to other areas with large Russian populations, such as Moldova's Trans-Dniester region. The West's tacit concession of the Crimea issue has done nothing to strengthen its diplomatic hand.
Where's Nick Palmer's gloating about us "sabre-rattlers" now? Who has ended up being made to look stupid by Putin as the ceasefire didn't hold at all?
Given how badly its blown up in the faces of the West perhaps Victoria Nuland should lose her job. Don't know what response our leaders were expecting when they overthrew Yanukovich, maybe the same they got when they encouraged Georgia to invade South Ossetia.
Do you expect all or just some of the Ukrainan armed forces to defect if sent to attack their own people again, something the previous elected government never did?
It was the only one , as I said there would be ships built at Govan , Scotland will need navy ships and will build them there, as for rumprn ships that will be up to how much money rumpUK want to give BAE, ie pay once for ships in Scotland or pay BAE to build a new facility and then pay for ships as well. So depends on how rich they feel.
BAe Systems have yet to build a frigate-factory in Scotsoun. It will probably be cheaper to build it somewhere with space; say Govan (oh dear that is shutting down in the next few years) or Portsmouth (next to the repair yards).
Stop reading "DC-Comics" Unckie. Tweezers don't count when the big-boys play....
What I find even odder is that the tories can be so close to Labour with UKIP at its current levels. If 45%+ of UKIP support is coming from the tories they really should be struggling to make 30%.
Well, it's 45% of 10%, i.e. 4.5, and they've had a small net gain from the LibDems, so 35-4.5+2=32.5, more or less.
The other oddity is the stability of the Labour figure with YG - again, random variation should see it bounce around a bit more even if nobody ever changes their mind.
I supose it is the weighting, though - if it's perfectly accurate, it compensates for random swings - if they happen to get 5 more Tories than usual because they've got a larger older group, the weighting notes that they've got 5 too many elderly folk and cuts it back. Not sure of the mathematical behaviour of a weighted figure - perhaps it's got a very narrow standard deviation (as the pollsters would want to avoid wild swings). Populus seems to swing more - perhaps they weight less so the random factor plays more strongly?
It was the only one , as I said there would be ships built at Govan , Scotland will need navy ships and will build them there, as for rumprn ships that will be up to how much money rumpUK want to give BAE, ie pay once for ships in Scotland or pay BAE to build a new facility and then pay for ships as well. So depends on how rich they feel.
BAe Systems have yet to build a frigate-factory in Scotsoun. It will probably be cheaper to build it somewhere with space; say Govan (oh dear that is shutting down in the next few years) or Portsmouth (next to the repair yards).
Stop reading "DC-Comics" Unckie. Tweezers don't count when the big-boys play....
Barrow could do it, and there's space at the BVT site.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
Of course I do. The question is what kind of a project is it. Building a house doesn't take 10 years. Putting high speed broadband in place is an acceleration of existing plans. Dredging the Somerset Levels would save money. It wasn't a question of high profile long lead time projects - though if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
On topic, it seems like twattish behaviour from someone who can't bear the idea that his political career is at an end.
I don't doubt you are right, and if it had just been a 'one off' example of a UKIP MEP falling out with Farage, there'd be no question. However, there have been multiple examples. I'm sure Oscar Wilde might have something to say about that .
It's hard not to question if there's something Farage might not be getting quite right too.
That's a fair point. But, flounces by MEPs seem very common. The Tories have to endure endless defections by has-beens who never were.
PS. It shows how totally stupid the 2010 SDR was. 'Assuming' several years notice of any new emergent strategic threat to the UK. How much hubris can you get?
It was actually the policy that led to me resigning from the Conservative party. I haven't considered rejoining since. They should have frozen the budget and plugged the defence hole from government contingent reserves, and/or no guarantees on increasing pensions and NHS spending in real terms.
The sensible thing to do would be to review the lot in 2015, put the army cuts on hold, halt the drawdown from Germany, review if we have enough survelliance/fighter squadrons and possibly order another 2 destroyers and 4 frigates for the navy.
But pigs will fly first.
Fortunately, we're now an aid superpower. That should stop the Russians in their tracks.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
Of course I do. The question is what kind of a project is it. Building a house doesn't take 10 years. Putting high speed broadband in place is an acceleration of existing plans. Dredging the Somerset Levels would save money. It wasn't a question of high profile long lead time projects - though if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
"Building a house doesn't take 10 years."
Building many houses can. Permission for the the nearly 10,000 houses at Northstowe here in Cambridgeshire was granted in 2007 (it was to be one of Brown's Eco Towns). It was talked about for a couple of years before then.
The council have spent many millions building a misguided bus that will serve the new settlement. Guess how many houses have now been built?
It's a long time since I wrote my PhD, so this is a genuine question for others of mathematical bent. Why haven't we been getting any outlier Tory leads, or outlier double digit Labour leads? Assume that the real Labour lead is, say, 38-34, and has been for some time. Presumably random distribution of polling leads will be a normal distribution. Then you'd expect one poll in 20 to be outside two standard deviations, wouldn't you? And that should normally be about 2*2.5? We ought to be seeing some 9-point Labour leads and 1-point Tory leads now and then. Is there a mathematical reason why the standard deviation is tighter?
I was toying with a guest article on this very subject, including calculation of the probability of outliers (reversed leads) in the next x months...
A bunch of reasons, mostly down to dumb luck.
But average sample size has been increasing of late to stand around 1,900 per poll, meaning the MOE of the lead has decreased from your 2*2.5 to about 2*1.86 = 3.65 (assuming a strong negative correlation between Con and Lab shares). So a 4 point actual lead would only very rarely tip over to a polling lead in the other direction, bearing in mind also rounding.
For example, you could have about 58 polls on the trot (about two months worth) all within the MOE of the lead before you could truly say something "unusual" (p <0.05) was happening in not showing an outlier in either direction, and about 118 polls could pass before a reversed lead became "overdue"...
PS. It shows how totally stupid the 2010 SDR was. 'Assuming' several years notice of any new emergent strategic threat to the UK. How much hubris can you get?
It was actually the policy that led to me resigning from the Conservative party. I haven't considered rejoining since. They should have frozen the budget and plugged the defence hole from government contingent reserves, and/or no guarantees on increasing pensions and NHS spending in real terms.
The sensible thing to do would be to review the lot in 2015, put the army cuts on hold, halt the drawdown from Germany, review if we have enough survelliance/fighter squadrons and possibly order another 2 destroyers and 4 frigates for the navy.
But pigs will fly first.
Fortunately, we're now an aid superpower. That should stop the Russians in their tracks.
If our military were three times the size it is now, what would you want them to be doing in Ukraine?
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
Of course I do. The question is what kind of a project is it. Building a house doesn't take 10 years. Putting high speed broadband in place is an acceleration of existing plans. Dredging the Somerset Levels would save money. It wasn't a question of high profile long lead time projects - though if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
Given the appalling track record of public spending on technology projects, HMG should keep well away from building IT infrastructure such as High Speed broadband.
If our military were three times the size it is now, what would you want them to be doing in Ukraine?
Sorry to butt in but; Over-flights; SIGINT; ELINT; training. You know the peace-keeping stuff.
And if a Tonka GR4 spotted "activity" - unlikely as Sentinel/Dumbos would be tracking them long-time - then a few plonks with Brimstone. We don't need to do much; just be observed observing.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
Of course I do. The question is what kind of a project is it. Building a house doesn't take 10 years. Putting high speed broadband in place is an acceleration of existing plans. Dredging the Somerset Levels would save money. It wasn't a question of high profile long lead time projects - though if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
"Building a house doesn't take 10 years."
Building many houses can. Permission for the the nearly 10,000 houses at Northstowe here in Cambridgeshire was granted in 2007 (it was to be one of Brown's Eco Towns). It was talked about for a couple of years before then.
The council have spent many millions building a misguided bus that will serve the new settlement. Guess how many houses have now been built?
It's a good point someone made (sorry, forget the name) that most people planning on voting UKIP will naturally look at the bottom of the ballot paper, so the impact may be less than would otherwise be the case.
Given the appalling track record of public spending on technology projects, HMG should keep well away from building IT infrastructure such as High Speed broadband.
IT infrastructure wouldn't be a problem as all it really means is writing BT's openreach a very big cheque.
Government IT projects are however a different matter. But that is because people still think that specifications can be changed on the fly....
It's a long time since I wrote my PhD, so this is a genuine question for others of mathematical bent. Why haven't we been getting any outlier Tory leads, or outlier double digit Labour leads? Assume that the real Labour lead is, say, 38-34, and has been for some time. Presumably random distribution of polling leads will be a normal distribution. Then you'd expect one poll in 20 to be outside two standard deviations, wouldn't you? And that should normally be about 2*2.5? We ought to be seeing some 9-point Labour leads and 1-point Tory leads now and then. Is there a mathematical reason why the standard deviation is tighter?
I don't know, but its odd.
It strikes me that the gist of your query is entirely sensible. You would expect an overlap or crossover now and then. The answer is fudging, probably, though that may be a bit unfair. Maybe a pollster will tell us.
Anyway, running , stumbling, or pontificating with this, each poll is effectively a one-off, so the normal distribution you would like to fit it to is in effect notional only, although you could imagine making a given poll really massive, with so many people queried that their responses can be randomised and split into large subsets. But I can't see that happening.
By contrast, in a lab you can hope to run the same experiment many times and try to fit the statistical results to a normal distribution, which is really only an idealization and cannot ever be precisely met in any physical situation, for it countenances the possibility of arbitrarily large values, plus or minus.
The normal distribution is fully characterised by just the two parameters, the mean and the standard deviation, and these can be anything just so long as the overall probability is unity. Of course a proper large poll is the GE. It would be interesting to split the large numbers up in some unbiased way into large subsets and then to plot the resulting spread on a histogram.Perhaps it's been done, or one of us could get a grant from Lord Ashcroft to do this. If someone has done it, or if I'm off the beam, I'm sure I will be chastened.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
Of course I do. The question is what kind of a project is it. Building a house doesn't take 10 years. Putting high speed broadband in place is an acceleration of existing plans. Dredging the Somerset Levels would save money. It wasn't a question of high profile long lead time projects - though if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
Given the appalling track record of public spending on technology projects, HMG should keep well away from building IT infrastructure such as High Speed broadband.
I take it you live in the City Mr Watcher. Out here in the sticks Broadband is more of an issue. My wife has just started streaming a film and has wiped out all the capacity in the house so refreshes and replies are now taking up to 10 minutes.
Naturally if I take your view HMG should get out of everything. David Willetts is in the process of creating the biggest Fk up of this government on Uni loans with a sum equivalent to the Labour NHS computer disaster about to hit the taxpayer. How come all the pseudo accountant Tories have developed Nelsonic vision and chose to ignore it ?
The issue as we have seen time and again isn't Govt\Private good\bad it's competent management and sometimes a little luck.
It's a good point someone made (sorry, forget the name) that most people planning on voting UKIP will naturally look at the bottom of the ballot paper, so the impact may be less than would otherwise be the case.
I disagree. I got sent the form about 1pm and asked what I thought of it without it being pointed out. My initial reaction was that the top line was how UKIP were now describing themselves. I thought it odd and contorted but it was only when I saw UKIP at the bottom that I realised.
The idea that UKIP supporters will always look to the bottom of the ballot doesn't stand up. These elections, once every five years, are the only ones where the list is by party name.
Given the appalling track record of public spending on technology projects, HMG should keep well away from building IT infrastructure such as High Speed broadband.
IT infrastructure wouldn't be a problem as all it really means is writing BT's openreach a very big cheque.
Government IT projects are however a different matter. But that is because people still think that specifications can be changed on the fly....
Precisely. Open reach is currently 2 years behind promise in my area and people are pissed off. Instead I'm getting the offer of a High speed train service I'll never use.
PS. It shows how totally stupid the 2010 SDR was. 'Assuming' several years notice of any new emergent strategic threat to the UK. How much hubris can you get?
It was actually the policy that led to me resigning from the Conservative party. I haven't considered rejoining since. They should have frozen the budget and plugged the defence hole from government contingent reserves, and/or no guarantees on increasing pensions and NHS spending in real terms.
The sensible thing to do would be to review the lot in 2015, put the army cuts on hold, halt the drawdown from Germany, review if we have enough survelliance/fighter squadrons and possibly order another 2 destroyers and 4 frigates for the navy.
But pigs will fly first.
Fortunately, we're now an aid superpower. That should stop the Russians in their tracks.
Re-run of Churchill's 10 year rule on defence spending in the 20s.
On topic this sort of nonsense should not be allowed. The Literal Democrats was a nonsense and so is this. Why are our political masters so indifferent to protecting our democracy from corruption or distortion?
If people are daft enough to vote UKIP that is their choice and they should not be conned into voting something else.
Completely off topic I think that playing Phillip Lahm is as close to getting to play 12 players as the modern game allows. You get a full back and a midfielder for one. He is truly remarkable.
It's a good point someone made (sorry, forget the name) that most people planning on voting UKIP will naturally look at the bottom of the ballot paper, so the impact may be less than would otherwise be the case.
I disagree. I got sent the form about 1pm and asked what I thought of it without it being pointed out. My initial reaction was that the top line was how UKIP were now describing themselves. I thought it odd and contorted but it was only when I saw UKIP at the bottom that I realised.
The idea that UKIP supporters will always look to the bottom of the ballot doesn't stand up. These elections, once every five years, are the only ones where the list is by party name.
We should also remember that the average IQ of UKIP supporters is lower than of every other party except BNP so more are likely to be misled by the imitation description .
It's a good point someone made (sorry, forget the name) that most people planning on voting UKIP will naturally look at the bottom of the ballot paper, so the impact may be less than would otherwise be the case.
I disagree. I got sent the form about 1pm and asked what I thought of it without it being pointed out. My initial reaction was that the top line was how UKIP were now describing themselves. I thought it odd and contorted but it was only when I saw UKIP at the bottom that I realised.
The idea that UKIP supporters will always look to the bottom of the ballot doesn't stand up. These elections, once every five years, are the only ones where the list is by party name.
We should also remember that the average IQ of UKIP supporters is lower than of every other party except BNP so more are likely to be misled by the imitation description .
I was waiting for someone to point that out, lol...
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more in 2011 to counteract the Euro crisis and shoved it in to infrastructure only to be told more "markets" bollocks by people who should know better. If he had done that he would have had a payback on it kicking in now. The makets in 2011 were the BoE and investors seeking a home from the Euro he would have got more debt away but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
Of course I do. The question is what kind of a project is it. Building a house doesn't take 10 years. Putting high speed broadband in place is an acceleration of existing plans. Dredging the Somerset Levels would save money. It wasn't a question of high profile long lead time projects - though if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
Given the appalling track record of public spending on technology projects, HMG should keep well away from building IT infrastructure such as High Speed broadband.
I take it you live in the City Mr Watcher. Out here in the sticks Broadband is more of an issue. My wife has just started streaming a film and has wiped out all the capacity in the house so refreshes and replies are now taking up to 10 minutes.
Naturally if I take your view HMG should get out of everything. David Willetts is in the process of creating the biggest Fk up of this government on Uni loans with a sum equivalent to the Labour NHS computer disaster about to hit the taxpayer. How come all the pseudo accountant Tories have developed Nelsonic vision and chose to ignore it ?
The issue as we have seen time and again isn't Govt\Private good\bad it's competent management and sometimes a little luck.
City? Nope, away from work I'm a rural Watcher. More horses than people around these parts.
Broadband has never been a problem, and much to my surprise, BT have run fibre out here too. No idea why.
It's a good point someone made (sorry, forget the name) that most people planning on voting UKIP will naturally look at the bottom of the ballot paper, so the impact may be less than would otherwise be the case.
I disagree. I got sent the form about 1pm and asked what I thought of it without it being pointed out. My initial reaction was that the top line was how UKIP were now describing themselves. I thought it odd and contorted but it was only when I saw UKIP at the bottom that I realised.
The idea that UKIP supporters will always look to the bottom of the ballot doesn't stand up. These elections, once every five years, are the only ones where the list is by party name.
We should also remember that the average IQ of UKIP supporters is lower than of every other party except BNP so more are likely to be misled by the imitation description .
The kind of comment that's got your party struggling to break 10% and UKIP touching 20%
PS. It shows how totally stupid the 2010 SDR was. 'Assuming' several years notice of any new emergent strategic threat to the UK. How much hubris can you get?
It was actually the policy that led to me resigning from the Conservative party. I haven't considered rejoining since. They should have frozen the budget and plugged the defence hole from government contingent reserves, and/or no guarantees on increasing pensions and NHS spending in real terms.
The sensible thing to do would be to review the lot in 2015, put the army cuts on hold, halt the drawdown from Germany, review if we have enough survelliance/fighter squadrons and possibly order another 2 destroyers and 4 frigates for the navy.
But pigs will fly first.
Fortunately, we're now an aid superpower. That should stop the Russians in their tracks.
If our military were three times the size it is now, what would you want them to be doing in Ukraine?
I think that NATO has a vested interest in ensuring that its Eastern members don't come under threat. And Western powers want the Ukrainians to enjoy self-determination. I think that those aims are most easily achieved if NATO has adequate and credible armed forces. As one of the lead members of NATO, we carry a lot of weight. If we run down our armed forces relentlessly, then we send a message that NATO is a paper tiger.
PS. It shows how totally stupid the 2010 SDR was. 'Assuming' several years notice of any new emergent strategic threat to the UK. How much hubris can you get?
It was actually the policy that led to me resigning from the Conservative party. I haven't considered rejoining since. They should have frozen the budget and plugged the defence hole from government contingent reserves, and/or no guarantees on increasing pensions and NHS spending in real terms.
The sensible thing to do would be to review the lot in 2015, put the army cuts on hold, halt the drawdown from Germany, review if we have enough survelliance/fighter squadrons and possibly order another 2 destroyers and 4 frigates for the navy.
But pigs will fly first.
Fortunately, we're now an aid superpower. That should stop the Russians in their tracks.
Re-run of Churchill's 10 year rule on defence spending in the 20s.
I don't see how boots on the ground in Germany is or could affect our response to Russia over Ukraine. If anything it has shown the value of diplomacy and the strict constraints imposed on military action.
I've never advocated the cold turkey strategy. I thought Osborne should have borrowed more ay but was tied up in his AAA straightjacket which he lost anyway.
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
Given how long its taken to start HS2 or any other large scale infrastructure development do you really think they could have got money in 2011 and actually spent before now...
if started even these would create activity at the design front end - it was a question of choosing small to medium size projects which would keep businesses ticking over.
Given the appalling track record of public spending on technology projects, HMG should keep well away from building IT infrastructure such as High Speed broadband.
I take it you live in the City Mr Watcher. Out here in the sticks Broadband is more of an issue. My wife has just started streaming a film and has wiped out all the capacity in the house so refreshes and replies are now taking up to 10 minutes.
Naturally if I take your view HMG should get out of everything. David Willetts is in the process of creating the biggest Fk up of this government on Uni loans with a sum equivalent to the Labour NHS computer disaster about to hit the taxpayer. How come all the pseudo accountant Tories have developed Nelsonic vision and chose to ignore it ?
The issue as we have seen time and again isn't Govt\Private good\bad it's competent management and sometimes a little luck.
City? Nope, away from work I'm a rural Watcher. More horses than people around these parts.
Broadband has never been a problem, and much to my surprise, BT have run fibre out here too. No idea why.
There appears to be little rationale to how Openreach is being installed. Although in the country my area is typically Birmingham commuter belt so we have mostly professionals and retired people as neighbours all high broadband users. For whatever reason BT don't want to make more money from us. When my kids come home from Uni - large cities they think they've gone back to the era pre the internet as speeds are so slow.
The future will tell whether it is a fact or not , at present it is an educated opinion and may well become a fact or not as the case may be. Just because a loser like yourself does not like it does not make it an untruth.
Glad to see you around. Is this educated opinion the same one that thinks the new Statesman is gospel when it comes to economics.... or is that just a similar case where the education is classics but the opinion subject is theoretical quantum mechanics...
Hard to reply to gibberish, but I see you are still trying to pretend about bank bailouts and who actually saved the UK banks.
Gordon Brown did, at vast cost to the UK taxpayer. He could have done more efficently, but there is no doubt the the was the prime driver behind policy at the time. If the Fed hadn't opened the discount window, RBS would just gave got more money from the UK government, but it is likely Citizens would've been even more heavily constrained with severe consequences off the New England economy.
There appears to be little rationale to how Openreach is being installed. Although in the country my area is typically Birmingham commuter belt so we have mostly professionals and retired people as neighbours all high broadband users. For whatever reason BT don't want to make more money from us. When my kids come home from Uni - large cities they think they've gone back to the era pre the internet as speeds are so slow.
I think the order of fibre installation depends on the easy of upgrade. Where I live (large North Eastern town) BT don't offer anything beyond adsl officially because its not a economically viable due to the high percentage of potential customers with cable, unofficially its because the phone exchange was a prototype for the previous network upgrade and is totally incompatible with anything else.
An anecdote: I was elected in 2010, on the same day as the General election, winning the seat off the Tories. Another candidate in my ward had the same surname as the Tory MP candidate. The number of ballot papers I saw a the count, where the other candidate had been selected, then crossed out, made me wonder how many voted for the wrong candidate. Not impossible (although stretching things) that it could have won the seat.
Had they been smart, they'd have spotted the problem and worked round it, such as being clear which was the local vote and which was national (or dong their final mailings local only - the councillor needed the votes and the MP didn't.) Luckily for me, they didn't.
We talk in terms of high political theory - but simple things like order of candidates on the ballot paper, and distractions such as Mike Nattrass's party, make a real difference
Comments
I remind you of the size of the problem we still face only when I see statements like the Conservatives "have fixed the roof" when they quite patently haven't; nor will the holes in the roof start to be filled until we address overdue reforms in the economy. And Osborne has wasted a Parlt worth of reforms.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27134988
He is an embarrassment
Russian tests proved this and were then confirmed by our scientists. If true begs the question whether Cameron already knew this when he asked parliament to vote on invading Syria?
Interested why no one puts Cameron's desire to entangle us in the Middle East and its negative impact on the Conservatives slow move up in the polls. Blair might be beloved of the Cameroons but is loathed by the nation.
Do you expect all or just some of the Ukrainan armed forces to defect if sent to attack their own people again, something the previous elected government never did?
Stop reading "DC-Comics" Unckie. Tweezers don't count when the big-boys play....
The other oddity is the stability of the Labour figure with YG - again, random variation should see it bounce around a bit more even if nobody ever changes their mind.
I supose it is the weighting, though - if it's perfectly accurate, it compensates for random swings - if they happen to get 5 more Tories than usual because they've got a larger older group, the weighting notes that they've got 5 too many elderly folk and cuts it back. Not sure of the mathematical behaviour of a weighted figure - perhaps it's got a very narrow standard deviation (as the pollsters would want to avoid wild swings). Populus seems to swing more - perhaps they weight less so the random factor plays more strongly?
BBG Reports they cancelled a government bond auction for a seventh week out of eight after nobody essentially turned up.
And that is in their domestic ruble market. You can forget them having any chance to borrow in a major currency.
Building many houses can. Permission for the the nearly 10,000 houses at Northstowe here in Cambridgeshire was granted in 2007 (it was to be one of Brown's Eco Towns). It was talked about for a couple of years before then.
The council have spent many millions building a misguided bus that will serve the new settlement. Guess how many houses have now been built?
None.
A classic example of government interference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northstowe
A bunch of reasons, mostly down to dumb luck.
But average sample size has been increasing of late to stand around 1,900 per poll, meaning the MOE of the lead has decreased from your 2*2.5 to about 2*1.86 = 3.65 (assuming a strong negative correlation between Con and Lab shares). So a 4 point actual lead would only very rarely tip over to a polling lead in the other direction, bearing in mind also rounding.
For example, you could have about 58 polls on the trot (about two months worth) all within the MOE of the lead before you could truly say something "unusual" (p <0.05) was happening in not showing an outlier in either direction, and about 118 polls could pass before a reversed lead became "overdue"...
And if a Tonka GR4 spotted "activity" - unlikely as Sentinel/Dumbos would be tracking them long-time - then a few plonks with Brimstone. We don't need to do much; just be observed observing.
It's a good point someone made (sorry, forget the name) that most people planning on voting UKIP will naturally look at the bottom of the ballot paper, so the impact may be less than would otherwise be the case.
Government IT projects are however a different matter. But that is because people still think that specifications can be changed on the fly....
Anyway, running , stumbling, or pontificating with this, each poll is effectively a one-off, so the normal distribution you would like to fit it to is in effect notional only, although you could imagine making a given poll really massive, with so many people queried that their responses can be randomised and split into large subsets. But I can't see that happening.
By contrast, in a lab you can hope to run the same experiment many times and try to fit the statistical results to a normal distribution, which is really only an idealization and cannot ever be precisely met in any physical situation, for it countenances the possibility of arbitrarily large values, plus or minus.
The normal distribution is fully characterised by just the two parameters, the mean and the standard deviation, and these can be anything just so long as the overall probability is unity.
Of course a proper large poll is the GE. It would be interesting to split the large numbers up in some unbiased way into large subsets and then to plot the resulting spread on a histogram.Perhaps it's been done, or one of us could get a grant from Lord Ashcroft to do this.
If someone has done it, or if I'm off the beam, I'm sure I will be chastened.
Naturally if I take your view HMG should get out of everything. David Willetts is in the process of creating the biggest Fk up of this government on Uni loans with a sum equivalent to the Labour NHS computer disaster about to hit the taxpayer. How come all the pseudo accountant Tories have developed Nelsonic vision and chose to ignore it ?
The issue as we have seen time and again isn't Govt\Private good\bad it's competent management and sometimes a little luck.
The idea that UKIP supporters will always look to the bottom of the ballot doesn't stand up. These elections, once every five years, are the only ones where the list is by party name.
If people are daft enough to vote UKIP that is their choice and they should not be conned into voting something else.
UKIP said it would protest to the Electoral Commission to try to get the name ruled unfair, arguing that it was clearly designed to "con voters"."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27126465
Broadband has never been a problem, and much to my surprise, BT have run fibre out here too. No idea why.
Meanwhile the Lizard had fibre 2 years ago...
Had they been smart, they'd have spotted the problem and worked round it, such as being clear which was the local vote and which was national (or dong their final mailings local only - the councillor needed the votes and the MP didn't.) Luckily for me, they didn't.
We talk in terms of high political theory - but simple things like order of candidates on the ballot paper, and distractions such as Mike Nattrass's party, make a real difference